In yesterday's post we looked at possible infringements of copyrights in recent collections. The incidents reported mainly involved a fashion house and a student/independent creative.
But another recent case revolved around a fashion designer and an artist: a few garments from the S/S 18 collection (showcased in Paris during the Resort shows) of Russian designer Vika Gazinskaya were indeed suspiciously aesthetically similar to artworks - shown during the "Freecaching" exhibition at the Tomorrow Gallery in New York in November 2016 - by Brad Troemel.
Like the other creatives mentioned in the previous post, New York-based Troemel turned to Instagram to complain and make the due comparisons, highlighting how a review on Vogue mentioned a few of Gazinskaya's inspirations for this collection, among them "vintage dresses, choreographer William Forsythe, Katharine Hepburn... thrift-store finds on trips to London and L.A".
Troemel wrote to her on Instagram: "If you're going to go through the trouble to shout out a choreographer you might as well acknowledge what you actually copied ya goof. These go for $1500 a pop so DM me to get the address you can send the check to."
In another post he added: "You are an international fashion brand selling goods that are direct copies of my work for thousands of dollars. I'm a working artist trying to figure out how to pay my rent next month. This is not a horizontal relationship of influence. Ironically, the work you copied came from an exhibition about the financial difficulty of being an artist in NY, to the extent that I lost my studio and buried all of my art in Central Park as a makeshift storage unit -- but you probably already know this considering how well acquainted you are with the series lol."
While Troemel wasn't initially mentioned as an inspiration, Gazinskaya's pieces looked incredibly like his works: the grids of coloured and white blocks, bits and piece of texts and random numbers in Troemel's works seemed indeed to have been recreated in four designs from Gazinskaya's collection.
Embarassament hit new levels when Gazinskaya admitted on Instagram: "Actually, it is too obvious to 'hide' it. So, it is an inspiration. And I can use art in my clothes as much as I want. If u copy someone being an artist too, pls do not compare yourself with others."
Now, you may wonder, who's right or wrong here and what is inspiration and what is copyright infringement? Students who have been at my lectures and workshops will know the difference: you can take inspiration from a palette, an idea, a fold or a print and reinvent things (think Valentino Vs Zurbarán); you can generally use freely images of paintings and illustrations created by artists who died more than 70 years ago (according to European law; in other countries things may vary), even though you may have to check in case there are now foundations, organisations, museums or heirs dealing with their estates, in which case you may need a license (even if Valentino's collection had literally copied Zurbarán there wouldn't have been a copyright infringement case).
In the case of modern artists, well, you wouldn't have to pay Marina Abramović if you said that she inspires you as a person, but if you print an image of one of her videos or her face on a garment, well you are infringing her copyright and, in the case of her portrait, also the rights associated to her persona. So, you may as well contact the artist and suggest a collaboration, otherwise you may have to try and settle things down in an amicable way asking for retrospective approval to the original creator of those images (usually for an undisclosed sum of money - see Mary Katrantzou Vs Professor Kitaoka case - this is the most sensible choice in Gazinskaya/Troemel's case). At times things can get more complicated, so, while these are the general rules, you should always keep yourself updated with new laws and carefully look at the single cases.
The problem Gazinskaya can't seem to see is actually very simple: she can't use art in her clothes as freely as she thinks, and the process of "copying" someone in art is very different from "copying" someone in fashion.
An artist may indeed be making a satire of another artist by "copying" or altering a work of art: Norman Rockwell copied the pose and attitude of his "Rosie the Riveter" from Michelangelo's Isaiah as portrayed on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, but apart from the fact that Michelangelo is dead and gone, well, that was a parody; Sturtevant was a pioneer of the "remake, reuse, reassemble and recombine" exercise that prompted many critics in more recent years to talk and discuss about product, copyright and autonomy and the list could go on and on, including Andy Warhol, Nam June Paik, Jeff Koons, Damien Hirst and many more.
Troemel himself likes exploring issues of appropriation and ownership and he is a bit of a prankster: he is inspired by the freedom, but also the darker side, of the Internet, including the universe of hackers, trolls, and obscure marketplaces from the deep web where you can get drugs (in previous exhibitions he has used objects from The Silk Road); he also launched an Etsy store featuring temporary food sculptures designed to get destroyed and perish during shipping and announced of liberating six wolf spiders at the New Art Dealers Alliance art fair.
The war between the two parties is continuing on Instagram: Troemel posted an hilarious cease and desist letter from Gazinskaya's laywers accusing him of defamation.
The letter states: "(…) you are disparaging my client on the Internet with false claims of 'theft' regarding my client's decision to use the idea of multicolored blocks and letters (which is not protectable) and express it in a way that you claim is a 'direct copy' of your work but most certainly is not (...) Using inspiration from existing material is presumably what you did with your Rubik's cube-looking art, and indeed your art in general has been reported (including in The New Yorker) as being based on preexisting material. In any event, my client's designs not violate your art any more than your art violates the rights in 80's-inspired grid patterns that were all the rage when I was a kid."
The letter also hints at previous incidents that occurred when the artist was 11 and downloaded illegal music from Napster (his family eventually paid for that infringement...).
In one of her superficial comments Gazinskaya also mentioned Mondrian's grids as inspiration (well, even Mondrian who died more than 70 years ago, poses some serious copyright issues and dilemmas, so I wouldn't mention him if I were you...). But, apart from the fact that Troemel started developing his grids in 2007 inspired by the pictures of industrial sculptures of German husband-and-wife team Bernd and Hilla Becher, in this case his designs do not look borrowed from Rubik's cube, the shades and nuances for his squares are indeed different from those in Rubik's cube and they look like an arrangement of coloured fabric tiles on a wall (you can't claim that all coloured squares are trying to replicate Rubik's cube, but contrary to what Gazinskaya's lawyer states, yes you can protect multicoloured blocks and letters when they are arranged in a certain and specific order - remember the case of Chanel Vs Maty Ventrillon? The copyright issue wasn't in that case around the Fair Isle patterns that are in the public domain, but in their "the black and white design and the pattern arrangement" that were Ventrillon's).
Answering the letter Troemel added: "The strength of appropriation as an artistic strategy is based on its acknowledgement of source material. To re-contextualize meaning requires - for the viewer and maker - acknowledging what the context was in the first place and how the source has been newly approached since. Jeff Koons isn't claiming to have *invented* Hoover vacuums and sell them in Walmart with the brand name crudely scratched off the side."
The conclusion? As the dispute continues on Instagram, well, fashion designers should remember that the Internet or an art exhibition aren't huge supermarkets where they can shop for nothing and then reuse those images on luxury garments (well, if they have the money they can surely buy copyrighted images or invest in artworks...). Artists are indeed not part of a "sharing economy", unless they state so. In the meantime, if you fancy a job in the fashion industry, opt for fashion law, that seems to be where all the business is at the moment.
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