Lichtenstein Comic Inspired Art Estimated at $35-45 Million 2 2

[SC in SC]

To me the big difference here is you have an artist that is capitalizing on something that was already popular and well known. Lichtenstein, at least, took something that was nothing and turned it into a topic of conversation.

 

To me the big difference is you have Everhart taking a known character and doing an interpretation that is very different from the source material and thus original to the artist. Plus he is doing that work via a contract with the copyright holder.

 

Lichtenstein took the source material, bkew it up and took out a few words. By subtracting a few words it changed the meaning and subtext of the art (I'm speaking solely of the panel with the man looking through the peephole here. I found no value artistic or otherwise from the other examples beyond the original panel.). While that IS inspired, it speaks nothing of his artistic ability. All it says is he saw something a little different that the artist who created it.

 

As for if he did it with permission or not, work for hire or not, and all that I will say this. IF he had written permission from the copyright holder at the time (with no evidence to attest to that, one must assume he did not) then the pieces are legit. Otherwise, they are theft plain and simple and the copyright holder should be compensated, whether that holder is a publishing company or an individual.

 

Regardless of anything else though, one can surely say that Everhart, Picasso, and even Pollack CREATED their art. Lichtenstein copied his.

[metropoliscomics]

interesting link

[The Troll King]

right, but I'm sure those have correspondingly smaller price tags... like the 6k the poster above was quoted.

 

Well, that poster was me and $6000 is about his bottom price. Unless you want a litho and that will run you about $2000+

[The Troll King]

To me the big difference here is you have an artist that is capitalizing on something that was already popular and well known. Lichtenstein, at least, took something that was nothing and turned it into a topic of conversation.

 

To me the big difference is you have Everhart taking a known character and doing an interpretation that is very different from the source material and thus original to the artist. Plus he is doing that work via a contract with the copyright holder.

 

Lichtenstein took the source material, bkew it up and took out a few words. By subtracting a few words it changed the meaning and subtext of the art (I'm speaking solely of the panel with the man looking through the peephole here. I found no value artistic or otherwise from the other examples beyond the original panel.). While that IS inspired, it speaks nothing of his artistic ability. All it says is he saw something a little different that the artist who created it.

 

As for if he did it with permission or not, work for hire or not, and all that I will say this. IF he had written permission from the copyright holder at the time (with no evidence to attest to that, one must assume he did not) then the pieces are legit. Otherwise, they are theft plain and simple and the copyright holder should be compensated, whether that holder is a publishing company or an individual.

 

Regardless of anything else though, one can surely say that Everhart, Picasso, and even Pollack CREATED their art. Lichtenstein copied his.

 

Your final sentence is an excellent point of which I hadn't ever considered. Very nice.

[metropoliscomics]

In 1986, I sold comic books to Roy Lichtenstein.

[Bronty]

ha! that's awesome

[tth2]

To me the big difference here is you have an artist that is capitalizing on something that was already popular and well known. Lichtenstein, at least, took something that was nothing and turned it into a topic of conversation.

Exactly.

[tth2]

Curious to hear everyone else's thoughts but personally I like them somewhat in the sense that they are bright and colorful and feature a character I enjoy. But boy I sure wouldn't pay much for one. It might be fun to pay a thousand bucks even two, for a small one to splash up an office or a kids bedroom but 10's of thousands for that? No thanks. To paraphrase aman's earlier statement that's Derivative with a capital D, baby.

They're horrific. I wouldn't even trade a Boris for one of them.

[Terry Doyle]

Regardless of anything else though, one can surely say that Everhart, Picasso, and even Pollack CREATED their art. Lichtenstein copied his.

 

[Terry Doyle]

In 1986, I sold comic books to Roy Lichtenstein.

 

Did any further acts of plagiarism ensue?

[delekkerste]

Let me just say that:

 

1. Lichentenstein did a lot more than just comic panel paintings, which he only worked on for a few years. Some of his other work is brilliant. He's not a hack, far from it.

 

2. Regarding the comic panels, yeah, maybe he should have somehow acknowledged the original artists. But, that stuff was even more disposable back then than it is today, and it's not like he took a Brian Bolland cover of a trademarked character, he took random panels from disposable 10c comics that would have faded into the dustbin of history had he not turned them into art.

 

3. Art is not just about the finished product. It's about new thoughts, new ideas, new techniques, new ways of expression and new ways of feeling. Sure, Don can create a faux-Pollock in his kitchen, but he wouldn't have been able to if Pollock hadn't done it first and called it art. Not to mention, Pollock's work is mesmerizing. As for Lichtenstein, he didn't just take a big lightbox and trace those comic panels - go read about what he did and how he did it.

 

4. Those Peanuts themed pieces are horrific and hardly worthy of comparison.

 

5. There's a marketing aspect to art, sure, though I suspect that's more prevalent now than back then. I can accept that there's not a lot of great artists these days, but are we supposed to deny that Warhol, Lichtenstein, Johns, Rauschenberg, etc. are great artists, even if they were all represented by the preeminent kingmaker of the day?

 

I think this #OccupyTheArtWorld mentality is not only anti-elitist, but bordering on anti-intellectual as well. I would suggest doing some study into the art movements from the Impressionists through the present to see how they evolved. After doing so, I think many will realize that art is an important reflection of culture and history at its time, and not just the product of whatever the galleries want to flog onto the public at any given moment.

[delekkerste]

In the other thread I spoke about Pollack at length. I even went so far as to create a "Pollack" piece specifically for Bedrock. I called it, "The Tall Texan"

 

And I'll repeat myself from the other thread as well:

 

Figurative representation, taken to the extreme by the hyper-realists, is not the height of artistic expression. Would the art world really have been better served if it had never branched off into abstraction and people were still only doing portraits and still-lifes and landscapes? To say that "my kid could do what Pollock did", as some do, or ask what the point of it is really misses the point.

 

The point is that Pollock and others who led the revolution in Abstract Expressionism broke new ground in determining what art could be. This group of artists put New York City on the map as a leading art capital and arguably influenced nearly every artist that followed by firmly breaking away from realistic representation (not that they were the first, as various European movements had started to do so starting with the Impressionists). Doing so also represented a complete rebellion against established artistic norms and traditions and thus often conveyed themes of anarchy, disorder and nihilism even without portrayals of figures. In developing his own style, Pollock also revolutionized painting technique - just think about what painters had been doing for centuries versus how Pollock created his paintings.

 

So, no, it's not just about talent, representation or even just passion. It's about challenging established norms and changing what billions of people in generations who followed think about what art is and can be. It's about innovation. It's about intellectual revolution. It's about cultural impact. It's about changing the course of history. Jackson Pollock did it. Hilo Chen...not so much.

 

I might also add that most abstract artists went to art schools and were trained in classical drawing and can probably draw/paint figurative representations as well as most commercial illustrators and comic book artists. Being reasonably involved in the art world, including serving on one of the acquisitions committees at the Guggenheim Museum, I have come across ample evidence in my experience of this.

 

I was at the home of a very prominent NY financier earlier this week and saw his and his wife's amazing collection of Modern and Contemporary Art, which included a slew of amazing Bacons (including 2 that were in the recent exhibitions at the Prado, Tate and Metropolitan Museums), a Picasso, many first-rate Warhols, De Koonings, Lichtensteins and Twomblys, among others. Easily a 9-figure collection. Now, Modern/Contemporary Art is far from my favorite thing (I'm very partial to Baroque art, particularly 17th century Dutch/Flemish), but, seeing so many masterpieces assembled under one roof, I couldn't help but be hugely impressed. Even if you prefer portraits and landscapes, to be surrounded by so many examples of innovative and influential styles and iconic images was really breathtaking, and to hear someone who is very passionate and knowledgable talk about the art in its proper historical context was really quite a good learning experience.

 

Abstract art is not just some big joke being perpetrated by museums, art dealers and high-brow art critics. If you think it is, I would respectfully suggest that you take a course about it (as I did a couple of years ago) or otherwise do some serious reading and study into it first. I'm not saying that there isn't a huge amount of ego, salesmanship, insane pricing and some pseudo-intellectual chicanery in the contemporary art world, but that just comes with the territory; it doesn't detract from the merit and importance of decades' worth of these works.

[SC in SC]

To me the big difference here is you have an artist that is capitalizing on something that was already popular and well known. Lichtenstein, at least, took something that was nothing and turned it into a topic of conversation.

Exactly.

 

I agree with you on this point. There is artistic merit in seeing something where others don't. Lichtenstein did that. Where he failed was when he decided to just copy the original. It's obvious he was inspired, but to just crop and copy the panel and lead people to believe that he was the person who created that art was simply not the right thing to do. It's no different than if an author were to take some lyrics from the middle of a song and publish them as a poem under their own name.

 

In the publishing world, if you use a portion of an author's work without the permission of the author it's called plagerism. If you use a portion of an author's work and call it your own (whether you have permission to use it or not), it's called being a hack. Apparently in the art world it's called inspiration.

[pinupcartoonguy]

Oh, , it's also very possible that some of the panels that Lichtenstein used were in the public domain, which would mean that that were free to use by anyone--legally. It man be an explanation for why he was never sued for copyright.

 

By the way, how many of you have actually seen these things in a museum? As many of you like to note re twice up art, bigger is better.

[tth2]

Where he failed was when he decided to just copy the original.

Yeah, dude, we got it the first 38 times you said this.

[comix4fun]

Oh, , it's also very possible that some of the panels that Lichtenstein used were in the public domain, which would mean that that were free to use by anyone--legally. It man be an explanation for why he was never sued for copyright.

 

 

 

 

The copyrights were valid for 28 years from the time of first publication for any piece produced prior to 1978. Those pieces were eligible for a renewal of another 28 years as well. In 1978 copyright law was changed to allow for an additional 67 years instead of 28. So the potential length of copyright on these images is most likely still in effect.

 

However, we don't even have to dig that deeply.

 

The piece that started this thread: "I CAN SEE THE WHOLE ROOM AND THERE'S NOBODY IN IT ! " as produced in 1961 (credited as 1963).....it was lifted from a Steve Roper Sunday Strip published in August 1961.

 

I don't think that piece was in the public domain, being that the ink on the Sunday strip wasn't even dry when it was ...dun dun dun... "Transformed" .

[pinupcartoonguy]

Oh, , it's also very possible that some of the panels that Lichtenstein used were in the public domain, which would mean that that were free to use by anyone--legally. It man be an explanation for why he was never sued for copyright.

 

 

 

 

The copyrights were valid for 28 years from the time of first publication for any piece produced prior to 1978. Those pieces were eligible for a renewal of another 28 years as well. In 1978 copyright law was changed to allow for an additional 67 years instead of 28. So the potential length of copyright on these images is most likely still in effect.

 

However, we don't even have to dig that deeply.

 

The piece that started this thread: "I CAN SEE THE WHOLE ROOM AND THERE'S NOBODY IN IT ! " as produced in 1961.....it was lifted from a Steve Roper Sunday Strip published in August 1961.

 

Ah, but 1963 is a magic year in terms of copyright. So unless those images published prior to 1963 were renewed 28 years later, they are in the public domain. Also, to receive copyright production prior to 1963, simply having the art published wasn't enough. You actually had to have the notation copyright (or the c with the circle around it) 19xx. I didn't say all the stuff the Lichtenstein used was in the public domain, but some of it may have been, especially the romance stuff.

 

I don't think that piece was in the public domain, being that the ink on the Sunday strip wasn't even dry when it was ...dun dun dun... "Transformed" .

[comix4fun]

I want to preface this by saying you make wonderfully salient points, mostly. However, at a certain point people should not let what their own two eyes see and what their common sense tells them be replaced by whatever "art theory" is prevalent at any given time. People tend to allow themselves to be bullscatted with alarming regularity when their own intellect and instincts will guide them to the path of enlightenment far more quickly.

 

 

2. Regarding the comic panels, yeah, maybe he should have somehow acknowledged the original artists. But, that stuff was even more disposable back then than it is today, and it's not like he took a Brian Bolland cover of a trademarked character, he took random panels from disposable 10c comics that would have faded into the dustbin of history had he not turned them into art.

 

 

They were always art. Always. Painted on the side of a building, or tucked away inside "Forbidden Romance #127" they are all art. The creators all deserve to be appreciated and attributed. Nothing about what was done to these panels, no divine hand of God touching them, happened or would ever warrant deletion of their actual creators from existence.

 

 

I think this #OccupyTheArtWorld mentality is not only anti-elitist, but bordering on anti-intellectual as well.

 

 

Point of order....if someone actually is an "elitist" doesn't it mean that, by definition, they don't care what the "inferiors" think of them. So how would an "elitist" know if something was "anti-elitist" if they don't care what those who are their "lesser" think in the first place?

 

Wouldn't they just be sitting, planning world domination, sipping the life essence of baby seals from the Chalice of Christ, and being fitted for a new suit made out of orphans?

 

I like your other points better. They don't require me to empathize with guys like Angelo Mozilo.

[tth2]

Oh, , it's also very possible that some of the panels that Lichtenstein used were in the public domain, which would mean that that were free to use by anyone--legally. It man be an explanation for why he was never sued for copyright.

 

 

 

 

The copyrights were valid for 28 years from the time of first publication for any piece produced prior to 1978. Those pieces were eligible for a renewal of another 28 years as well. In 1978 copyright law was changed to allow for an additional 67 years instead of 28. So the potential length of copyright on these images is most likely still in effect.

 

However, we don't even have to dig that deeply.

 

The piece that started this thread: "I CAN SEE THE WHOLE ROOM AND THERE'S NOBODY IN IT ! " as produced in 1961 (credited as 1963).....it was lifted from a Steve Roper Sunday Strip published in August 1961.

 

I don't think that piece was in the public domain, being that the ink on the Sunday strip wasn't even dry when it was ...dun dun dun... "Transformed" .

It`s interesting that it was a comic strip rather than a comic book, because didn`t comic strip creators typically own the rights to their work, unlike comic book creators in those days, and wouldn`t they have been more vigilant than either comic book creators or comic book publishers in policing those rights?

[comix4fun]

Oh, , it's also very possible that some of the panels that Lichtenstein used were in the public domain, which would mean that that were free to use by anyone--legally. It man be an explanation for why he was never sued for copyright.

 

 

 

 

The copyrights were valid for 28 years from the time of first publication for any piece produced prior to 1978. Those pieces were eligible for a renewal of another 28 years as well. In 1978 copyright law was changed to allow for an additional 67 years instead of 28. So the potential length of copyright on these images is most likely still in effect.

 

However, we don't even have to dig that deeply.

 

The piece that started this thread: "I CAN SEE THE WHOLE ROOM AND THERE'S NOBODY IN IT ! " as produced in 1961 (credited as 1963).....it was lifted from a Steve Roper Sunday Strip published in August 1961.

 

I don't think that piece was in the public domain, being that the ink on the Sunday strip wasn't even dry when it was ...dun dun dun... "Transformed" .

It`s interesting that it was a comic strip rather than a comic book, because didn`t comic strip creators typically own the rights to their work, unlike comic book creators in those days, and wouldn`t they have been more vigilant than either comic book creators or comic book publishers in policing those rights?

 

 

I don't know if the artist, William Overgard, had that kind of deal or not. He came onto Steve Roper after Bill Woggon left, he didn't start the strip.