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Wednesday, June 27, 2007
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'Bad artists copy. Good artists steal.'
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Today, Tyler Green blogged about an article written by Peter Plagens in the current issue of Newsweek that asks and answers the question, which is the most influential work of art of the last 100 years? Plagens picked Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, arguing that it paved the way for everything from Dadaist photomontages of the 1920s to the Matrix movies. Green instead went with Matisse’s 1907 Blue Nude. He points out that Blue Nude “was so revolutionary, so avant-garde that it pushed Picasso to make Les Dems.â€
This afternoon, I read an article in The Times (London) about how Damien Hirst is being accused by artist John LeKay of copying his idea of the jewel encrusted skull from a 1993 project. LeKay claims that Hirst took the idea while working on a mixed show with him in 1994. If Hirst did in fact copy the concept, the question becomes, what is the difference between Picasso’s encounter with Blue Nude and Hirst looking at LeKay?
To begin with, to my knowledge, Matisse never claimed that Picasso copied him. Instead the two fed off of each other’s work to push the boundaries of contemporary art at the time and influence everything that came after. And this is also not the first time Damien Hirst has been accused of appropriating someone else’s work. The Times article mentions five other occasions, one in which Hirst even paid an artist a goodwill payment after “borrowing†a design.
One could argue that in this overheated art market, these artists are just coming out of the woodwork to get a piece of Hirst, who last week become the most expensive living artist. To be fair, LeKay’s jewel encrusted skulls look no more like Hirst’s gaudy $100 million dollar piece than Picasso’s Les Dems resembles Blue Nude.
So what’s the difference? To quote Picasso, “Bad artists copy. Good artists steal.†I guess the real question is, who will be foolish enough to shell out $100 million for a diamond encrusted platinum skull?Labels: art, blue nude, for the love of god, hirst, les demoiselles d’avignon, matisse, picasso
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