I've always been puzzled about why, exactly, one artist would think it's OK, let alone legal, to use the work of another artist without permission. But, strange as it seems, there are many artists who do think that - so many that there's a label for them. They're called "appropriation" artists; and Richard Prince is one of them. Prince used photographs from Patrick Cariou's book Yes Rasta, to create new versions for what Prince called his "Canal Zone" series. To my eye, Prince's versions - done without Cariou's permission - look to violate Cariou's moral rights as well as his copyrights; but that may just be me. What I can say is that federal District Judge Deborah Batts has ruled that Prince infringed Cariou's copyrights. The decision was anxiously anticipated by those in the art world, and it has attracted comment in several quarters:- Cariou v. Prince (discussion and link to full text) in Loeb & Loeb's IP/Entertainment Law Weekly
- Key Copyright Case Highlights Pitfalls of Appropriative Art, by Nicholas O'Donnell and Mitchell Stein of Sullivan & Worcester
- Yes Rasta: Richard Prince loses copyright suit, in the Cardozo Art Law blog
- French Photographer Patrick Cariou on His Copyright Suit Victory Against Richard Prince and Gagosian, in ARTINFO
- Ruling Imagination: Law and Creativity, by Professor Peter Friedman
- Parsing Patrick Cariou v. Richard Prince: The Copyright Infringement Ruling, by Paddy Johnson
- Cariou vs. Prince: The Copyright Bungle, by Joy Garnett
- Appropriation artist found to have infringed copyrights after failing to show transformative use, by Matthew Becker, edited by Chinh Vo
- Cariou v Prince and the Gagosian Gallery: Fair use of photographs in artworks, in Art and Artifice
- "Appropriation" is Usurpation, Court Says to Richard Prince, by Amelia Brankov
