Originally Posted by
Mike Corey
Thought
this might be of interest to both you and the artist.
In a nutshell, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals has just upheld an artist's work depicting Alabama football uniforms despite the artist's lack of a license.
Here's some
background.
That's not really what I'm talking about, although that is also an issue an artist needs to keep in mind. What I was focusing on was the rendition of a photo taken by another person (in these cases sports photographers). The paintings might not be exact duplicates, but it is obvious they come from moments that someone else has captured. Once again, I am not focusing solely on Jason's work here; this is a common practice, but it's one that I have personal qualms with. When I did my football paintings I knew that wanted to work from images taken at field level, but to me part of the artistic process is capturing the image that I want to work with. So I beat down every door I could think of at Duke before finally getting permission to go take pics on the field during one of the spring games. The basketball paintings are the same...my paintings have to be from my own camera originally or I don't consider the painting to be fully mine, so I took tons of photos from my seats in Cameron when I was lucky enough to go. Even on commissioned portraits I really insist on taking the photos, and only grant exemptions when the distance is too far or the person is dead.
As far as the Alabama case, I think the artist lucked out. I asked permission from Duke, that guy didn't. And in Jason's instance Duke does not seem to be so much of a stick in the mud as the Tide appears to be. Didn't he even say K has a copy of one of them? Same with me, Cutcliffe has one of my prints of Brett Huffman hanging in his basement next to the Mannings. (Brett loved that..I did too..lol) But I'm working on a cookbook that will feature several of my paintings including the football ones and scenes outside featuring our tailgates that I have no doubt that we'll have to go talk to Duke about licensing issues before we get it published. They might not complain if we don't, but I don't want to take that chance.
Anyways, different issues, and overall just a matter of artistic opinion. For me..the whole thing has to be mine from start to finish. But as I said before, there is no way any one person could capture all the photos that Jason worked from knowing that they were working towards this outcome. I like the final painting very much.
Q "Why do you like Duke, you didn't even go there." A "Because my art school didn't have a basketball team."