Clearly I'm a day late, if not a dollar short with this, but I think there
are issues that not only can be clarified, but should be. A crucial
distinction is being fudged when we talk simply about "copyright."
Maria Daniels gets to the heart of the matter when she writes: first,
> Seeing the work of an artist who deals with issues or
technical > problems similar to my own always helps me, and in several
cases I have > been able to find slides but no publication in the library
(book checked > out, missing, only has black and white plates, the slides
were shot from a > personal copy of an exhibition catalog owned by a
visiting faculty member, > etc.). The times I couldn't find any
publications OR slides I really went > bonkers. There is nothing worse
than hearing, "oh so and so did something > similar, you should check it
out," then searching fruitlessly for any > published work by that artist.
In a more positive light, wouldn't you like > an art school to show your
photographs as examples to new artists? I > would. > > One other point.
The artworks students see are usually determined by which > artists even
get published or shown in the first place, and we end up > seeing some of
the same work over and over again just by virtue of its > accessibility.
So we are limited in the range of work we end up seeing.
And very much to the point at hand when she says,
> There should be a distinction between someone
> copying material for profit (or to avoid paying for it), and copying for
> teaching.....
I think there is, de facto if not de juro (or however you say "law" in
Latin).
But let us assume for the purposes of this discussion that both author
and artist have the same goal: fame and fortune. Unauthorized copying of
a *text* steals both -- fortune because it reduces sales of copies of the
book; fame because many sales lead to best-sellerdom, ie, celebrity/fame
(which in turn leads to more sales).
Unauthorized copying of an *artwork* on the other hand, does not deprive
the artist of money. What's for sale after all is the "original" (or an
edition of "originals"). The copy in qeustion is generally used in a way
that actually enhances the fame of both artist and work, not only NOT
lowering sales, but most certainly increasing them. And any artist's power
is strongly related to his/her influence. If art students never saw slides
of, say, a Rauschenberg, he might not even exist.
Which is why artists freely -- and often for free -- disseminate their own
slides, indeed vie to have them reproduced in as many places as possible,
including the classroom. Not only do they not expect to be paid for this
use, they may well pay for it themselves, as when galleries pay for color
plates to reproduce the work of their artists in a magazine article.
You can proclaim all you want that teaching of art should be done from
originals -- and many schools do make an effort to get students to
museums and art centers, sometimes as often as once a semester! -- but
Podunk University is not going to stop its "art in the dark" classes and
fire everyone except studio art teachers (who also use slides of course).
True, there is a relatively new, but growing, industry that sells
"authorized" slides, presumably paying royalties to the artist (tho my
sense of the way these things work is that this is not necessarily the
case, and may well be at best a one-time fee). Making bootleg copies from
these slides nevertheless helps the artist, tho it rips off the
middle-person. Of course most museums sell slides of their own and other
museum's holdings (never the ones I'm most interested in, needless to say.
But most museums let you take your own slides of their art on the walls,
if not works on loan. [3M's now-discontinued 640T was excellent for
hand-holding by Tungsten light, presumably there are others.])
To recap: Copying large portions of text for teaching purposes usually
rips off the creator. Copying images for teaching purposes usually helps
the creator.
Of course it goes without saying that by "copying" I mean for a use
that focusses on the style and technique of the originator. Plagiarism,
ie., presentation of another's work as one's own, is a different case. As
for instance, in the famous string-of-puppies case:
A photographer (whose name I forget, sorry to say) had posed a man and
woman holding a "string of puppies" and was selling the photograph as a
copyrighted image on greeting cards. Without permission, payment, or even
acknowledgement of the source, Jeff Koons hired a woodworker to carve -x-
number of identical "sculptures," copying the photograph right down to the
barette in the woman's hair. He lost two court cases on that, causing
"appropriation artists" across this great-land-of-ours to stamp their
feet, beat their breasts, seethe with righteous indignation (a performance
in itself) and cry "freedom of expression."
Cheers,
Judy