The work that creative people produce needs to involve original ideas for it to abide by copywrite laws. Due to the Copywrite Act 1988, it is illegal to use someone else’s work, including their ideas, without consent until 70 years after the creator's (writer, musician, artist etc.) death. Even though it sounds very simple, problems easily arise because of where our ideas come from. We are inspired by everything around us, including other people's work. The world around us, including music, books, films and theatre all play an important role in aiding creative minds and artistic ideas. We take inspiration from them, which will be evident in our work. However, this arises the question, "where do we draw the line between taking inspiration from someone else’s work, and simply stealing their idea?"
Before the 1850s, most artwork was created for private collections, such as royalty. Therefore, artists before this time were very unlikely to take inspiration from existing artwork. However, now that art is displayed in galleries and museums, as well as in society like posters and album covers, it is much easier to find inspiration, as well as to copy existing artwork. If your taking inspiration from somebody else’s work in order to create your own, is your art still original, or are you simply copying someone else’s idea? For example, the DVD cover for E.T shows two fingers touching, and it is clear that inspiration had been taken from Michelangelo’s work on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, when God and Adam's index fingers are touching. However, even though the idea of the touching fingers is the same, the E.T DVD cover has an alien and a boy. It also has a completely different background, the method used to create them is very different, the styles of both images are not alike and the purposes of them are completely different. Therefore, are the similarities there because inspiration is taken from one piece in order to create another, or is this copying?
The argument could then arise that if an artist has used elements of another person's work, but put their own personal stamp on it, then the art is original because it only mimics parts of an existing piece, and is not an exact replica. Damian Hurst gets a lot of criticism for his work for this reason. His sculpture of the scientific model of the human body was not his idea, and he didn't make the work himself, but it was his idea to make it on a much larger scale than the first models. Is this Hurst’s piece an original piece of art, or idea stolen from someone else?
No comments:
Post a Comment