Post #137570 by bigbrotiki on Wed, Jan 26, 2005 3:56 PM

On 2005-01-26 00:45, ToonToonz wrote:
This print on eBay kind of reminds me of the pop artist, Jeff Koons, copyright lawsuit:
The Jeff Koons sculpture "String of Puppies," based on a photograph Koons saw on a greeting card. The photographer sued for copyright infringement. A Federal court agreed with the photographer.

If I understand the eBay print thing correctly in this thread, it appears that Artist A, Artist B, and Printer C are involved.
Artist A creates the ceramic mug, Artist B creates a painting of Artist A´s ceramic mug and Printer C buys the painting by Artist B of of Artist A´s ceramic mug and then makes prints of it to sell on eBay and who knows where else.
So who is doing what to whom?
Or???

I have no idea myself, but you forgot to put in "Photographer B", which is me. I used my 20 years of film lighting experience to light and photograph the Tiki mugs for the Book of Tiki so they look like pieces of art, glowing from the inside, to show them like they were never seen before. My aim was to elevate mundane restaurant ware to museum pieces. (Compare my photo of the SCA Ku mug from page 104 with the vintage menu photo from page 159, and you will see that by creating a "Sheen" in the glaze he appears more three-dimensional, "yummy" looking.)

But for my part, I feel flattered that Flounder was inspired by some of my photos to paint the mugs. A.) He basically continued my concept and DID make them into pieces of art, which B.) was achieved with a hell of a lot of work by him (painting), which C.) probably nobody else would have done as well as he did.

So: I elevated Florian Gabriel's original work by photographing it like a star, and Flounder elevated that again by painting it so well.
Now for the guy who sells these prints, HE is the only true Rip Off artist in the chain, not adding, just copying the result! He should be stopped.