Current mood:

curious

creative legal recourse?
so, an ex-student of mine emailed me all in a tizzy because she walked into an anthropologie store here in san francisco and saw a store display that is strikingly similar to artwork she's been making and showing around town. she's pretty distressed and is wondering if there's any legal recourse for her--she's an artist struggling to make ends meet and feels like it's terrible to see a large corporation cribbing her aesthetic and visual metaphors.

the question here is a big one: visuals are in the public domain in that each of us sees things we like and then consciously or unconsciously integrates them into our output or sensibilities. no one can copyright a style, you know? but then again it's pretty awful to see someone (or a large company, even worse) sort of ripping off your idea and turning it into a marketing ploy. and you get left behind because you were the little guy who couldn't get it together enough.

below is an image of her artwork--a video still, actually. she incorporates painting and video into projections that are time-based but makes still images and sculptures based on these images. one whole series was of floating islands:



and this is the photo she sent me of the anthropologie store display:




I mean, no one "owns" the idea of floating islands. And i can think of other artists who's work this reminds me of, but then again, it also seems like the store display designer could definitely have seen the artist's work and cribbed it. It's a bit hard to say.

Sadly, I don't think anything can be done about it. It reminds me of the time when Urban Outfitters contacted me to see if I would sell my Anti-Factory clothing through them in limited edition batches. The first thing that came to my mind was that they would take them, sell them in the stores, but also figure out a way to make very similar ones to incorporate into their next product lines to cut me, the middlewoman, out of the equation. But at least in that case they actually asked first, eh?

The whole Urban Outfitters/Johnny Cupcakes shenanigans from a few years back is another example, it seems....