Anxiety of Influence

It's not yet out on stands, but Harper's Magazine has two very interesting articles this month (Feb) on the appropriation of art by other artists who then use it to create something new. One is called "On the Rights of Molotov Man" based on an symposium at the New York Institute for the Humanities entitled "Comedies of Fair U$e." The article is an excerpt from a dialogue between the painter Joy Garnett, whose series on Riots featured a man throwing a Molotov cocktail, and the photographer Susan Meiselas, who took the original photograph of a Nicaraguan Sandinista. Joy Garnett had not asked for Susan Meiselas' permission before appropriating her work from the internet and using it as the basis for transforming it into the centerpiece painting of her series. The two argue over whether art's purpose is to decontextual or contextualize, the role of technology in helping to further decontextualization, and who owns the rights to subject material. The article immediately following is Jonathan Letham's "The Ecstasy of Influence: A plagiarism." Letham argues that source plagiarism is the essence of the artistic endeavor and that the arts do not operate according to the same principles of commodity exchange that other goods do. Art and culture, he argues, are a public commons and should not be restricted (especially by big corporations like the Disney Co. who have themselves liberally lifted from previous culture). Both articles, in light of the issues raised very recently over the plagiarism of historians, memoirists, and novelists, are pertinent and enlightening.

[image: Rene Magritte's, La reproduction interdite (Copying Prohibited), 1937 - Rotterdam Museum]