Can photographers be plagarists?

February 8, 2007 7:57 AM

Can photographers be plagarists?
posted by Meatbomb (60 comments total)

Am I missing something, or is that just a link to a one paragraph article and two small photographs?
posted by twine42 at 8:06 AM on February 8, 2007

You're missing something.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 8:07 AM on February 8, 2007

You're missing something. Launch the slideshow.
posted by ColdChef at 8:07 AM on February 8, 2007

"Ninety percent of all art is imitation of other art."
- H. L. Mencken


> Am I missing something

It's a slide show with more discussion. Click the (Launch) button.
posted by jfuller at 8:08 AM on February 8, 2007

That slide show has at least one NSFW pic...
posted by tadellin at 8:09 AM on February 8, 2007

> Can photographers be plagarists?

The very question, and the ambiguity of the answer, shows that there's still something slightly off about the notion of photography as fine art. Not that the notion is entirely false, or even significantly false. Just...a slight but so far ineradicable whiff of cheese.
posted by jfuller at 8:12 AM on February 8, 2007

I should say so.
posted by wfc123 at 8:13 AM on February 8, 2007 [1 favorite has favorites]

It is hard not to laugh at someone who is whining that his blade-runner style is being copied.

What Would Ridley Scott Do?
posted by b1tr0t at 8:17 AM on February 8, 2007

Interesting little sideshow about inspiration vs. copyright infringement in art - but after all that... I still don't think either of the the original set of photographs in question are really that good!

I am intrigued, however, about the one woman who dressed herself up wigs and makeup to look like members of her family... If her father was a cop, maybe that'd be against the law!
posted by SmileyChewtrain at 8:17 AM on February 8, 2007

You may want to add a NSFW warning.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 8:21 AM on February 8, 2007

re NSFW: the slideshow itself gives you a pre-nudeness warning and a way to click past the naughty bits, so I have no regrets.
posted by Meatbomb at 8:27 AM on February 8, 2007

Yes
posted by exogenous at 8:28 AM on February 8, 2007

The slideshow warns of the nudity, and gives you the option of skipping the slide.

The part I liked best was this:
Near the turn of the 20th century, future hall-of-famers Edward Steichen and Alfred Stieglitz came up with their own interpretations of the Flatiron building, while shooting from nearly identical spots, as if to prove that photography is an art, not a literal recording of facts.

I liked that. It showed just how different two photographs can be when shot from the same spot at the same time.
posted by CitrusFreak12 at 8:30 AM on February 8, 2007

(me) "Am I missing something"

Hi, my name is Twine42 and I'll be your village idiot today...
posted by twine42 at 8:38 AM on February 8, 2007

kind of funny that electing to skip the NSFW slide takes you to a shot of a lineup of women in thongs from behind? i don't know where you work, but...
posted by white light at 8:44 AM on February 8, 2007

"Bad artists copy. Great artists steal." -- Picasso ,

which i always took mean great artists add , in some way or sense , to the original idea/concept or execution.

Ignoring the point about whether photography can be considered as fine art or not ; it would appear that the Zielske's 'copied' rather than 'stole'.

Guilty as charged , take 'em down.
posted by burr1545 at 8:44 AM on February 8, 2007

A much clearer case of photographic plagiarism would be (in old skool terms) to swipe a negative somebody else shot, make prints, and pass the prints off as your own work. This is much easier to do in the digital era, and surely accounts for why so many professional photogs post their stuff on the web in size-reduced form, with watermarks, etc.
posted by jfuller at 8:46 AM on February 8, 2007

Can photographers NOT be plagiarists?

There. Fixed that for ya'.

Seriously, the day that I can be sued for plagiarism because I took a picture from above with a tilt-shift lens is the day I beat someone to death with one of my heavy-ass old Nikons.

I'd call the taking a picture that can even be considered to be "plagiarized" more of an act of skill than anything else - taking the same shot twice is hard enough, taking the same shot as somebody else, even when you know how/when they did it, is astoundingly difficult.
posted by god hates math at 8:48 AM on February 8, 2007

Well. I'll take a shot at actually answering the question. What is a photograph? In its purest form it is the representation of 1/60th of a second in time in which the camera is pointed at a specific point in space. So unless the 2nd or subsequent photographer snaps the exact same 1/60th of a second from the exact same vantage point they are by definition two distinct images. Now the IDEA for the photo may be plagerized, the photo itself is not.
posted by Gungho at 8:50 AM on February 8, 2007

Now the IDEA for the photo may be plagerized, the photo itself is not.

Well, since the question at hand is "Can photographers be plagarists", should we take that as a "yes"?
posted by tkolar at 8:56 AM on February 8, 2007

to that effect, can photographers be sued for infringement?
posted by phaedon at 8:59 AM on February 8, 2007

Well it's all in the name of art until someone makes a damn dollar.

For all you would be artists out there, let me make it plain. You should prepare yourselves for creative deluges promptly followed by financial droughts. Making money in art is like winning the lottery while being struck by lightening.

If you are behind the curve or, God forbid, too far ahead, you will not make any money. Another artist will produce work very similar to yours at the right time and make all the money.

Someone whose name I cannot recall said something very similar to "creating a piece of art means adding an object to the world." If you are an artist, the very nature of your craft demands that you freely give your creations to the world. If the world rewards you, consider yourself lucky. Even if the world allows you merely to create art and survive, consider yourself lucky.

In photography specifically, even if another photographer follows you around and points his or her camera precisely where you point yours and hits the button precisely when you do, they cannot possibly take precisely the same photograph. Their perspective will always be their own, never yours.
posted by SinisterPurpose at 9:01 AM on February 8, 2007 [2 favorites has favorites]

Two photographers taking pictures with similar composition - no problem.
One artist modifying the work of another - problem.
posted by caddis at 9:04 AM on February 8, 2007

Say what you will but the Nanpu bridge is pretty insane looking nevertheless.
I think the only thing in the series that i would call plagiarism would be the photos of the photos. Even the postcard retooling is more ethical than taking a picture of someone else's work and copyrighting it. Hell, by that logic why can't you just download someone else's photos put a boarder around it and claim copyright as the context has changed?
posted by edgeways at 9:05 AM on February 8, 2007

It's a cliche to say it at this point but digital changed everything. Now everybody is taking 20 shots of anything interesting. Before, you might note that someone took nearly the same picture you did, say of Borobodur. But I can now go online and find a photo that matches mine.

Portraits are different, but fixed subjects? You can't draw the line there. Rather, you've got to go with what some others are suggesting here: alteration of others' work, literally derivative work, versus independent captures of the same subject regardless of similarity.
posted by dreamsign at 9:14 AM on February 8, 2007

Some folks seem to be a bit confused (including the author of the Slate article, at least a little bit).

Plagiarism is an ethical breech, not a legal one. A court decision doesn't really say one way or the other whether plagiarism has taken place. Several of the links here are about copyright violations, which is not the same thing as plagiarism (a plagiarist can quasi-paraphrase something, and it would be 100% fair use, and yet still be a plagiarist if he/or she passes it off as his own; on the other hand, many copyright violations have absolutely nothing to do with plagiarism. The concepts are separate).

Thus, the pictures linked are plagiarism only if the original source is never acknowledged.

But here's the thing: photography, painting, sculpture: these things don't have footnotes. They are not like academic papers.

So even talking about plagiarism here is a bit silly. What should I do? Do I have to provide a written list of sources with every image I take? The first picture is an example of something pretty clear cut (the photog. is a big hack if they never mentioned that they were just reproducing another's vision). But plagiarism is too strong a term, or at least an inappropriate one. Indeed, I don't think we really want to be expanding it much beyond sourced documents.

Now, there should NEVER be a legal issue here. You copyright your photograph. You do NOT copyright the subject matter. I can be a hack and shamelessly copy your subject to the 'T', and there damn well better not be any legal redress for that crap.

If so, all city skylines at sunset will be "copyrighted" etc, and eventually photography will be practically impossible, as every subject will have some bozo asshole out there that thinks only they get to photograph it.
posted by teece at 9:15 AM on February 8, 2007 [2 favorites has favorites]

Interesting stuff. This really galled me:

For sheer gumption, Levine's only rival is Richard Prince, who in 1983 took a photograph of a photograph of a naked 10-year-old Brooke Shields, originally shot for a never-published book by a commercial photographer named Garry Gross. Arguing that a change of context changed the image, Prince displayed his replica by itself in a gallery in the Lower East Side, and re-titled it Spiritual America. Gross couldn't afford to litigate and accepted a $2,000 payoff. Spiritual America wound up at the Whitney Museum, and one copy—Prince made 10—has sold at auction for $372,500. Gross, meanwhile, was thrown off eBay when he tried to sell posters of his original.

Prince has just joined my elite Gallery of Assholes. (If the case had been brought before me, I'd have made Prince and Gross switch surnames. Ha!)
posted by languagehat at 9:17 AM on February 8, 2007 [1 favorite has favorites]

I should say so.

Those aren't examples of plagiarism, wfc123. Copyright violations? If the images are not in the public domain, yes (but I suspect they might be in the public domain). A violation of the Flickr TOS? Maybe.

Plagiarism? No. The photographers don't seem to be making any effort to claim those are their original works -- they list authors and titles. They are just posting famous paintings to their Flickr account. No way in hell that is plagiarism. (And if those photos are in the public domain, and the Flickr TOS allows it, those posting are 100% ethical and legal).

Plagiarism is not copyright violation.

A photograph of a photograph is a copyright violation unless the photo is in the public domain. It's not necessarily plagiarism, even if it' sleazy. The only real need to avoid plagiarism is to attribute. Passing off a photo of a photo as your original work: plagiarism (and probably subject to civil suit by the copyright holder). Photographing the same subject in a very similar way? Maybe plagiarism, maybe not. I doubt using the term there makes any real sense. But it certainly not a copyright violation, unless we take copyright into cloud cuckoo land.
posted by teece at 9:30 AM on February 8, 2007 [1 favorite has favorites]

He eventually settled out of court and paid off Caulfield with a suite of Marilyn Monroe silk screens—then worth about $2,000, currently fetching more than $1 million at auction.

Intresting. Man I'd love to be a famous painter.
posted by delmoi at 9:34 AM on February 8, 2007

I'v got to say that Levine's "After Walker Evans" series is the most asinine by far, especially since because of copyright and public domain, one couldn't do the same to her. But I think that in her case it is less a photography issue and more an annoying postmodern artists trying to find something, anything to comment on and just being banal. Others like the Warhol and the Koons I see no problem with. Artists use source photographs all the time.

But the first two photographs, the ones in question, are a bit too similar. I don't want to say plagarism because like others said that's nigh impossible with a camera, but the framing and lighting are just too close. That, coupled with the evidence that the photographers had been asking the original artist about his setup, lead me to believe that they were trying to copy his shots, not to make any sort of artistic or social comment on the original work but instead simply to copy it. Bialobrzeski needs to get the word out to the art world (sounds like he's already at it) and maybe even set up shop in a gallery right across the street from where the new prints are being sold. "Don't buy that imitation crap! Come over here and buy the originals!"
posted by thecjm at 9:37 AM on February 8, 2007

I'm not bitter.
posted by troymccluresf at 9:54 AM on February 8, 2007

exogenous: your link has absolutely nothing to do with plagiarism, either. It's a court ruling deciding that photographs are entitled to copyright. Copyrights are not necessary for plagiarism to have taken place, and are an entirely separate matter. You can violate copyright without being a plagiarist, and you can be a plagiarist without violating anybody's copyright.
posted by teece at 9:56 AM on February 8, 2007

“It’s similar, but different”
posted by lazymonster at 10:09 AM on February 8, 2007

delmoi, famous painters rarely get to reap any portion of the massive sums of money generated by their works because the jackpot usually hits after their death. Better to be the heir of a famous painter (that is unless you are striving to produce art for art's sake).
posted by HyperBlue at 10:49 AM on February 8, 2007

Cobbs is 100% full of shit, if Moore is telling the truth in your article, lazymonster.

She absolutely CAN NOT copyright a close-up of a Geisha's lips as a subject. If a different author took that picture, she has no leg to stand on. Only if they have used her actual pictures does she have any claim.

If that case were ruled in her favor, photography is dead.

Is copying [the subject of] someone’s photograph a defense against copyright infringement? “Absolutely not,” says Cobb’s attorney, Eve Wagner. “In fact, that is precisely what the copyright laws protect against.”

That lawyer needs to be disbarred. That's straight up bullshit, and he knows it. Copyright gives Cobb the exclusive right to make copies of here photographic image. Taking another picture, no matter how similar, in no way copies her image. She owns the exclusive right to copy the negative/print/digital negative, not the subject. Cobb is trying to own "geisha lips that look a certain way." The pictures are obviously not the same shot. Unless Moore used photoshop to alter Cobb's image, there is no case here in a sane system of copyright.

In any event, that's not plagiarism at all, either.

It's damn dangerous how expanded copyright is getting in some peoples mind. There is nothing new under the sun -- if you can copyright a subject, art is dead. Or at least, all good art would become increasingly illegal.
posted by teece at 11:00 AM on February 8, 2007 [1 favorite has favorites]

Even though the sculptor in the slideshow apparently received about $125,000 apiece for his string-o-pups sculptures...that's decent coin, assuming he could produce the three in less than a couple of years...
posted by maxwelton at 11:01 AM on February 8, 2007

It's damn dangerous how expanded copyright is getting in some peoples mind. There is nothing new under the sun -- if you can copyright a subject, art is dead. Or at least, all good art would become increasingly illegal.

This is true. I've been threatened with a lawsuit over someone claiming copyright to a serial number I published.

And to answer the question at hand, I think that the various examples of "homage" is at worst bad taste. If it isn't, the guy who took the first photo of a "money shot" is going to have his real payday once he learns about this.
posted by maxwelton at 11:05 AM on February 8, 2007

The Eggleston slide reminded me of Geoff Dyer's wonderful book The Ongoing Moment.

Seeking to identify their signature styles, Dyer looks at the ways in which such canonical figures as Alfred Stieglitz, Paul Strand, Walker Evans, André Kertész, Edward Weston, Dorothea Lange, Diane Arbus, and William Eggleston, among others, have photographed the same things (barber shops, benches, hands, roads, and signs, for example).

In doing so, he constructs a narrative in which these photographers—many of whom never met—constantly encounter one another.
posted by dontoine at 11:45 AM on February 8, 2007

This is neat. In the one photo class I took in college, on the first assignment my roommate and I took a bunch of pictures of downtown Williamsport (while intoxicated, but that's besides the point). I took one picture that had half of an office building and half of a twirly parking garage. When I developed it and showed it to the professor, she showed me one of her personal photographs that she had taken in college (different college, different town) that was IDENTICAL to the picture I had taken.
Quite freaky. I'd never seen any of her photos before.
posted by sperose at 11:58 AM on February 8, 2007

This is excellent. More for the pictures themselves than for any of the content about plagiarism, though. I'm surprised by what people consider plagiarism. Gillian Wearing's family portraits might have been inspired by Cindy Sherman, but plagiarism? It makes for a fuller article to fret a little bit over completely unproblematic cases, I suppose.

I'm not surprised that similar images of that Nanpu bridge have turned up. What a wild structure. Pretty much every Nissan magazine ad in existence contains those glowing car-light trails: I highly doubt the similarity was intentional.

The best thing about the article was this link to tilt-shift photography sites. Never seen the technique before, and it's wonderful.
posted by painquale at 12:03 PM on February 8, 2007

Phalanxes of photographers portraying the same scenery simultaneously from the same spot might have problems picking their own shot out of the group's.

In his Art vs. Photography battles, Jeff Koons has won (vs. Andrea Blanch) and lost (vs. Art Rogers.)
posted by cenoxo at 12:13 PM on February 8, 2007

If so, all city skylines at sunset will be "copyrighted" etc, and eventually photography will be practically impossible,

I believe that's the case with the Eiffel Tower. Technically, I think they've copyrighted the way the lights are set up, or some such nonsense.
posted by Alt F4 at 12:13 PM on February 8, 2007

The Ecstasy of Influence by Jonathan Lethem. (I was gonna post it to the front page, but here's as good a place as any).

A much clearer case of photographic plagiarism would be (in old skool terms) to swipe a negative somebody else shot, make prints, and pass the prints off as your own work.

That is plagiarism. This case is not. Even if somebody decides to shoot Gary Coleman in a clown suit on a donkey, and I do the same, that's not plagiarism. That's copying.

Maybe it's a semantic distinction, but I think plagiarism is taking someone else's "work" and passing it off as your own. Are David Lynch's talking bunnies a plagiarism of Donnie Darko? Of course not, *unless* he uses the exact same costume or exact same dialogue.

So no, the composition of a photograph cannot be plagiarized. It might be copyrighted, but that's a whole 'nother ball of wax. One is a moral (and ethical) violation, the other is legal.

It's damn dangerous how expanded copyright is getting in some peoples mind.

see the Lethem piece: "Jefferson's vision has not fared well" :(
posted by mrgrimm at 12:54 PM on February 8, 2007 [1 favorite has favorites]

edgeways: Even the postcard retooling is more ethical than taking a picture of someone else's work and copyrighting it. Hell, by that logic why can't you just download someone else's photos put a boarder around it and claim copyright as the context has changed?

Completely absurd as it is, many museums try to use this type of argument to control the reproduction of the famous works that they hold. Often, they will claim that camera flashes damage the art, to stop people from taking direct pictures of the original - an obvious lie. Meanwhile, they claim copyright over the reproductions sold in the gift shop.
On the topic of plagiarism, I got the above link from galleryhopper. I don't really think it was worthy of a "via", but the whole sourcing of links issue in the blogging world is a pretty interesting branch of this debate.

teece: Do I have to provide a written list of sources with every image I take?

I wonder.. Certainly artists are supposed to (or at least frequently do) reveal their major influences. On the other hand, I've heard of various cases where artists have guarded/hidden certain direct inspirations, in order to disassociate from that inspiration for political reasons, or to make their work appear more original to some observers.. For example, there is an episode of the fantastic Private Life of a Masterpiece on Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. Apparently Picasso denied the influence that African tribal masks had on that particular work - ya, whatever..
posted by Chuckles at 1:00 PM on February 8, 2007

teece - I had guessed that to be the case. Copyright law aside, I found it jarring, the manner in which they baldly duplicated the image. I know there is a Big Picture here, but from my limited vantage -

I want it, name your price.

I'm not paying you, I'm taking it because I can.

btw - I'm not saying that I disagree or fail to comprehend, just that my gut is mumbling wrong under it's breath.
posted by lazymonster at 1:55 PM on February 8, 2007

A fairly good couple of essays in Harper's this month consider "plagiarism", influence, and derivation in the creative arts with regard to copyright laws. There's one overwrought essay by Jonathan Lethem and two regarding the controversy of Molotov man which I enjoyed much more. Check 'em out.
posted by inoculatedcities at 2:43 PM on February 8, 2007 [1 favorite has favorites]

IMHO, in photography as art the idea and personal feelings should dominate over the straight and simple visualization of subject. This way, plagiarism is less possible in photography, once it is not easy to reveal the same feelings of similar (or even identical) subjects for different artists.
posted by oMoses at 2:45 PM on February 8, 2007

Incidentally, re: Chuckles' comment about taking photos in museums, I recently visited MoMA for the first time since I moved away from New York and had the misfortune of discovering while I was there that it was "Free Friday". The museum was flooded with tourists taking pictures of Monets, Wyeths, Pollocks, etc. on their camera phones. I understand they want to sell overpriced books in the museum store, but I have to say I found the whole episode baffling.

Oh and sorry for not noticing somebody already posted a link to the Lethem article.
posted by inoculatedcities at 2:53 PM on February 8, 2007

Comic book artist Eddie Campbell (From Hell, Bacchus, Alec) has a series of posts on the subject of plagiarism, focusing on the Roy Lichtenstein. 1 2 3

He doesn't have much sympathy for people who accuse Lichtenstein of plagiarism.
posted by Kattullus at 2:55 PM on February 8, 2007

There's vermin who'll steal a good idea and milk it.
There's artisans who'll take a good idea and improve on it.
There's innovators who'll come up with new ideas.
[There's idiots who'll steal a bad idea.....]

As a full time art photographer, I try to innovate and improve on what I know and what I see every time I pick up the camera, the mouse or the compiler in an attempt to synthesize something beautiful. On rare days, I get a glimmer that I'm succeeding. On most days, it's just hacking through the jungle. I know I'm not a unique and special flower, but at least I'm doing something creative to make my world better.

There's only so many vantage points from the top of the Empire State Building. Even so, there's an infinite number of focal planes, lighting situations and weather circumstances not to mention infinite variation of darkroom processes and final presentation.

Tomorrow, I'll go on a rural shoot with a large format film photographer (I shoot digital) and we'll undoubtedly point our lenses in the same direction at the same subjects (trees! barns! snow covered fields!), and neither of us is going to worry that we'll step on each other's toes with our visual art. It's just Not Like That.

In other words -- just get over it.
posted by seanmpuckett at 5:12 PM on February 8, 2007

Alt F4: That's actually trademark (or at least the equivalent for buildings in the US is) and in that case is held by the lighting designers. I guess you could shoot it in the daylight and sell the image (not sure) but not when the lights are on.

In the US most buildings are trademarked. The building owners own the rights to images of their building and photographers cannot sell images of their building without their consent. This is not the case of city skyline shots with multiple buildings, though I'm not clear on how many buildings you would need to include to bypass the trademark of any given building.
posted by johngumbo at 8:39 PM on February 8, 2007

In the US most buildings are trademarked.

Wow, weird.

I was under the impression the original intent of trademarks was to protect the consumer. You know, so someone couldn't put any old crap in a bottle and put a Coke label on it.

Trademarking buildings suggests they are trying to prevent someone building a copy of the building in order to fool consumers into entering it instead.

"Watch out for the fake Empire State Building!"
posted by Jimbob at 10:10 PM on February 8, 2007

god hates math writes "Seriously, the day that I can be sued for plagiarism because I took a picture from above with a tilt-shift lens is the day I beat someone to death with one of my heavy-ass old Nikons."

I've got an F4 reserved for just this purpose (and well stopping bullets).

thecjm writes "But the first two photographs, the ones in question, are a bit too similar. I don't want to say plagiarism because like others said that's nigh impossible with a camera, but the framing and lighting are just too close."

That's just crazy talk, there's only so many view of objects like this. Take this image of Calgary. Half the semi serious photographers in Calgary must have taken this shot at one time or another. The vagarities of landscape make the vantage a natural. It's for sale on posters everywhere. Even if some famous photographer had taken this previously and shown it in a collection my taking the picture isn't plagiarism or copyright infringement.
posted by Mitheral at 11:13 PM on February 8, 2007

I think Vancouver should sue Calgary for that fake Harbor Center Tower they've built.
posted by Meatbomb at 12:04 AM on February 9, 2007

Wait, these mediocre night shots of Shanghai were shown at a museum? And money was involved? Who are these people that pay such money and where can I find them?
posted by Poagao at 12:17 AM on February 9, 2007

That'd be a good trick Meatbomb considering the Calgary Tower predates the Vancouver version by 10 years.
posted by Mitheral at 7:04 AM on February 9, 2007

So timed exposures of city skylines from standard vantagepoints can be copyright now? Does that mean the first person that took a picture of the millenium bean in Chicago can start raking in money from all the copyright violations?
posted by JJ86 at 9:35 AM on February 9, 2007

johngumbo: In the US most buildings are trademarked. The building owners own the rights to images of their building and photographers cannot sell images of their building without their consent.

I am no lawyer, but I believe you are mistaken about this. Some very distinctive buildings in the US have indeed been trademarked, but trademark offers no legal protection from the making or selling of images of such buildings. There's been at least one fairly well-known lawsuit over the matter, in which the photographer won.

There have also been plenty of incidents of photographer harassment by misinformed police or private security guards, particularly in the last five years or so. The average shutterbug doesn't have the inclination or the resources to pursue such matters to a legal resolution. But with few exceptions, it's generally legal to take pictures of anything you damn well please.
posted by Western Infidels at 1:25 PM on February 9, 2007

The very question, and the ambiguity of the answer, shows that there's still something slightly off about the notion of photography as fine art.

I would disagree.

Painters copy each other down to the brushstroke all the time. Usually this is a "creative exercise" and not the sort of thing that gets put into galleries, but still, it's done. A lot.

Are these copies then forgeries? Are painters plagiarizing each other?

Photography as an art form is newer than painting, drawing, and sculpture, so it has brought up new concerns. Also, the ease with which you can reproduce a photograph brings up all sorts of issues - many of which are hinted at in the slideshow - for example, if you take a photograph of a painting and sell it, are you ripping off the artist who did the painting?

Just because there are questions about the methodology doesn't mean that photography is any farther from fine art than any other traditionally recognized medium.


"Bad artists copy. Great artists steal." -- Picasso ,

which i always took mean great artists add , in some way or sense , to the original idea/concept or execution.

I have a different take - bad artists tell you that they're copying. Bad artists attribute their work to other artists. Good artists blatantly take elements, styles, and sometimes whole pieces from the work of other artists and call them their own.
posted by grapefruitmoon at 12:48 AM on February 10, 2007

Something I use frequently when I discuss derivative works with other people. Or myself.
posted by Samizdata at 10:42 PM on February 10, 2007