There’s undeniably a difference between painting from sketches or photos you made of real-life scenes you yourself observed and painting from someone else’s sketches, or someone else’s photographs. Just as there’s a difference between witnessing and bearing witness, there’s a difference between direct, firsthand observation and response — no matter how creative and accomplished — to the observations of others, not unlike the distinction in law between eyewitness testimony and hearsay. So asserting, á là Whitman, that “I am the man, I suffer’d, I was there,” stakes out a position akin to Goya’s “Yo lo vi (I saw this)” in his etching series “The Disasters of War.” […]
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Most if not all of Bob Dylan’s “Asia Series” paintings are based on identifiable photographs not of Dylan’s making — none of them recent, but at least some of which remain under copyright protection. I consider it perfectly reasonable to hold him accountable, as a visual artist, to the same strictures his attorneys would hold anyone who produced and marketed an interpretation of his work. In what ways are graphic artists allowed to respond to photographs — and, conversely, disallowed from responding to them — both legally and ethically? […] While I consider the protection afforded me by the copyright law appropriate and necessary, I also believe in the justness of the “fair use” exception thereto, when properly applied. I make use of this myself, as a researcher and scholar and author, and allow others to make use of it in relation to my own work, so long as they respect the rules that apply to “fair use.” I can’t recall ever complaining about anyone quoting an excerpt from my writing — even a lengthy one — in a non-commercial context. […] I’m variously amazed, amused, bemused by the amount of misinformation about IP issues in circulation, and the attitude of hapless bewilderment adopted by many otherwise competent professionals in relation to them. While copyright law, trademark law, and patent law certainly have their complexities, the basic principles thereof, including the “fair use” exception to the copyright law, hardly qualify as arcane. Don’t let the laziness or ineptitude of others discourage you from learning about this. It ain’t rocket science. Even trademark law and patent law, much less familiar to the lay public, function according to elementary rules and reasoning that aren’t hard to grasp. […] |
 SPJ Research Award 2014 |
Bob Dylan: The Painter and the Photograph (4)
If you read his published interviews, his liner notes for his own and other people’s albums, his autobiography Chronicles: Volume One, and take into account the hundreds of songs by others he’s included in his own performances and recordings, you’ll find him giving credit and paying homage to countless figures in the creative arts on whose work he’s drawn for inspiration. He’s done that voluntarily, and (in my opinion) forthrightly and generously. Which make his lack of candor in this situation all the more disturbing; it’s beneath him, an untypical act of bad faith. […]