Teaching the Law & Ethics of Image Use

Alex WatkinsArt & Architecture Librarian

University of Colorado Boulder

Art has always built on the Past

Apollo Belevedere Michelangelo, David

Titian, Venus of Urbino

Manet, Olympia

Picasso, Women with a Straw Hat Jasper Johns, After Picasso

Lichtenstein, Whaam and the comic source

Jeff Koons, Niagara FallsAndrea Blanch, Silk Sandals by Gucci

Images essential in a digital age

• Blogs• Presentations• Papers• Digital Scholarship• Websites• Flyers• Social Media• Art• Videos

Recycling imagery feels comfortable and commonplace. If one lives in a forest, wood will likely become one’s medium for creative play. If one grows up in a world filled with cheap, disposable images, they easily become the stuff of one’s own creative expression

Olivia Gude

Session Plan

• Copyright & Fair Use• Teaching the law of image use• Ethics in image use• Teaching ethics• Case studies discussion

What is the purpose of copyright?

To promote creation of culture

By rewarding creators with limited monopoly

Applies only to Fixed Expression not the Idea

Ed Ruscha, Some Real Estate Opportunities Eric Doeringer

Copyright for ImagesTwo Potential Layers of Copyright:The underlying object & the photograph

Public Domain + Sufficiently Creative

Photo has copyright

Photo does not have copyright

Work does not have copyrightWork has copyright

What is Fair Use?

It is legal, unauthorized use of copyrighted material

Allowed because the culture created is more valuable than the monopoly

It creates a space for creativity, and is a safety valve for free speech

The Four factors:Purpose and character of your use

Picasso Guitar, Newspaper, Glass, Bottle

The Four Factors:The nature of the copyrighted work

Four Factors:The amount and substantiality of the portion taken

Four Factors:The effect of the use upon the potential market

Shepard Fairey Mannie Garcia

Fair Use Narratives

Teaching Copyright & Fair Use• No copyright scares, the point is not

to make students afraid.• Case Studies + Discussion/Debate• Have Students come up with their

own fair use narratives for their work.• Also an opportunity to discuss

Creative Commons and how to find images effectively.

Jeff Koons, String of PuppiesArt Rogers, Puppies

Ethics in Image Use

Tom Forsythe, Food Chain Barbie

Jeff Koons, String of PuppiesArt Rogers, Puppies

Vaseline Ad, Sea of Skin

Spencer Turk photograph

Gillian Wearing, Signs that say what you want them to say and not signs that say what someone else wants you to say

Jeff Koons, String of PuppiesArt Rogers, Puppies

Patricia Caulfield Andy Warhol

Shepard Fairey Mannie Garcia

Patrick Cariou Richard Prince

Robert Rauschenberg, PullMorton Beebe, Cliff Diver at Acapulco

they think it's just a photograph

Arnold Newman

The reason there’s a legal issue here is because there’s a moral one

Patricia Caulfield

Lisa CongdonStephen Oakes, National Geographic

Christian Marclay, The ClockCory Archangel, Super Mario Clouds

BuzzFeed

Daily Mail

Patrick Cariou, Yes Rasta Richard Prince, Canal Zone

The ethnographic photograph is perhaps the paradigmatic appropriative object, born of an aggressive technology in contexts of political and cultural domination. Such photographs present a fixed point, literally, figurally, and metaphorically, of dispossession and appropriation. They render the bodies of the powerless through the intellectual and ideological categories of the powerful in relation to a series of dynamic axes-race, gender, subjugation, and their social classifications.

Elizabeth Edwards

Patrick Cariou, Yes Rasta Richard Prince, Canal Zone

Patricia Caulfield Andy Warhol

“Warhol had found the original photo in a women’s magazine; it had won second prize in a contest for the best snapshot taken by a housewife”

“Warhol was very innocent of doing a disservice to this photographer because this is not what you might call a ‘remarkable photograph.’ It was not an earthshaking photograph, but Warhol make a remarkable series of paintings out of it”

Rainer Crone

Ivan Karp

Teaching Ethics in Image Use• To separate the legal from the ethical• Even if you can, should you?• We want students to think critically

about their own image use, and how they would feel if the tables were turned.

• All images have subjects, meaning, artistic choices

Richard Prince Case

Richard Prince, Canal Zone

Patrick Cariou, Yes Rasta Richard Prince, Canal Zone

Patricia Caulfield Andy Warhol

Shepard Fairey Mannie Garcia

Robert Rauschenberg, PullMorton Beebe, Cliff Diver at Acapulco

Jeff Koons, String of PuppiesArt Rogers, Puppies

Christian Marclay, The Clock

Thank You

Further ReadingBaselitz, Georg, Kirk Ambrose, Elizabeth Edwards, Ursula Anna Frohne, Cordula Grewe, Daniel Heller-Roazen, Ian Mclean, Saloni Mathur, Lisa Pon, and Iain Boyd Whyte. “Notes from the Field: Appropriation.” Art Bulletin 94, no. 2 (June 2012): 166–86.

Buskirk, Martha. “Commodification as Censor: Copyrights and Fair Use.” October 60 (April 1, 1992): 83–109. doi:10.2307/779036.

Buskirk, Martha. The Contingent Object of Contemporary Art. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2003.

Gude, O. (2004). Postmodern Principles: In Search of a 21st Century Art Education. Art Education, 57(1), 6–14.

King, Elaine A., and Gail Levin, eds. Ethics and the Visual Arts. New York: Allworth Press, 2006.

McClean, Daniel, ed. The Trials of Art. London: Ridinghouse, 2007.

McClean, Daniel, and Karsten Schubert, eds. Dear Images: Art, Copyright and Culture. London: Ridinghouse, 2002.

Merryman, John Henry. Law, Ethics, and the Visual Arts. 4th ed. London ; New York: Kluwer Law International, 2002.

Nelson, Robert S. “Appropriation.” In Critical Terms for Art History, edited by Robert S. Nelson and Richard Shiff, 160–73. 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003.