Gaugain lived with Van Gogh for a short time, until Van Gogh went truly stark raving mad, but both men agreed Van Gogh learned a lot about color from Gaugain.
Gabrielle Munter learned about color from Kandinsky, and the Fauvism experiment of Matisse and De Rain reflected the use of saturated color, said to express emotion rather than to reflect reality had its day.
But what of the man who paints as a hermit, who has not hung out with any of these artists, although their work is now available to anyone with a computer, but what of the guy who simply paints and then is told, "Oh, that's like Munter. Go check her out."?
If he has never seen Munter or Matisse's Fauvism phase or DeRain, can an artist have "unconsciously" absorbed the elements by simply seeing their downstream effects?
Painters, for generations, were taught to paint by sending them to museums and plopping them down before the work of a master and instructing them to copy. The sight of those students was commonplace. That was not considered plagiarism, but learning.
In the March 10 New Yorker, Anthony Lane writes about plagiarism in music--Did George Harrison unconsciously plagiarize a three note riff from "He's So Fine," for his "My Sweet Lord," as a judge later wrote that he did?
If we unconsciously plagiarize three notes, or a style of short sentences or long sentences connected by "and's" and "but's" should we be sued and chastised, sued and said to have expropriated, acted unfairly?
And what is language but imitation? And what is the difference between imitation and appropriation?
Of course artificial intelligence "learns" by reviewing the work of others, and incorporating that into an essay. Is that plagiarism? When we learn language as a two year old, are we not plagiarizing other people's thoughts and words? Are we not doing as we learn new languages just what AI is doing?
Somehow, the visual arts seem less bound by the idea of plagiarism. In fact, the ability of an artist to render a "likeness" of a human face or a scene has been celebrated as a skill and as art. Then photography came along and really stole images. Now, people argue about the rights of a sidewalk photographer to photograph someone without their permission. Some primitives, seeing a photograph were aghast and claimed the photographer had stolen their souls.
Sometimes, for fun, it's an exercise to simply see where people arrive, even if the road there is not clear.
So now, at the risk of displaying paintings which resemble each other in a way some may stamp "plagiarism," the Phantom provides:
Youngblood
DeRain
Youngblood
DeRain
Matisse
Youngblood
Youngblood
Matisse
Youngblood
Matisse
Youngblood
Youngblood
DeRain
Youngblood
DeRain
Gaugain
Munter
Munter
Gaugain
Munter
Youngblood
Phantom,
ReplyDeleteIt can’t be plagiarism if the artist never saw the earlier work. Nor were artists who studied at the feet of the masters considered plagiarists. All art sprung from the original cave paintings- one could make the argument that those painters were the only “first”.
It’s striking how similar the style and bold colors are in the above paintings- both the portraits and the landscapes. Granted mine is an untrained eye, but it is one that prefers Obadiah’s work to the others.
Maud
Ms Maud: I think that is the I’m sure Obadiah would blush at your notion that his paintings might even be compared to the masters. But it is peculiar to see these things juxtaposed on line sharing some traits like graffiti on the wall of an Andy Warhol museum show. Maybe that’s one thing which makes art fun—cave art is something which speaks to us across time.
ReplyDeletePhantom
Phantom,
ReplyDeleteObadiah’s blushing face not withstanding, if you were to remove the names of the artists from the paintings above and then asked one hundred people to choose those done by the masters, some of Obadiah’s work would be chosen many times, if not every time. I’d bet on it….
Maud