Gerry Mac's Custom Crafted GuiTardis, The Tardis Guitar

Sampling and appropriation gets easier and easier, sharing and spreading of information is rampant, and personal privacy becomes a thing of the past, where is the individual in all of this?  As we move forward in this brave new world we must be careful to homage those who came before.  Much of art and creativity stands on the back of that which came before.  Building from a strong foundation is important in any disciple, Picaso would have garnered no respect for his cubism if he could not demonstrate an understanding of fine art and more conventional techniques.  And no matter how creative and curvaceous a Gehry building, he needs engineers to to make them stand. So too does a collage by  Richard Prince require the foundation of quality photographs and images. If those images do not originate from him then he owes something for there use. There is no slippery slope or blurry line here. The source material was not his, we know from whence it came, he made 2.5 million dollars, he owes a royalty.  He is perfectly free to use any material that inspires his creativity, but he is even more free to create that material himself.  But as I have explored earlier in this blog snapshots are easy, photography is art. Let's face it 20years ago Mr Prince would have been cutting little slips of paper from magazines and glueing them to poster board. They would have been seen by few and he probably would not have had the patience to do more than a couple. But in this digital age he can churn out these things rapidly, without the need of a Warhol style factory (Warhol being someone who also stood on the backs of others and paid no royalty), they are seen by many. This is all ok and takes little from his creative ability to see the forest and the trees. But the foundation was not his and he needs to compensate the mason who laid it.  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/01/arts/design/richard-prince-lawsuit-focuses-on-limits-of-appropriation.html?_r=3&hp=&pagewanted=all Read the article the inspired this. And thank you to the School of Visual Arts for pushing the envelop of art, creativity and visual communication in this exciting time.