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warhol is turNiNG iN his Grave
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Warhol is Turning in His Grave
(Originally published in
The Guardian,
November 13, 2007.)
The excellent program for Pop Art Portraits, the current exhibition
at London’s National Portrait Gallery, has a lot to say about the
pictures hanging on the walls and the diverse source material the
artists used to produce their provocative works.
Apparently they cut up magazines, copied comic books, drew
trademarked cartoon characters like Minnie Mouse, reproduced
covers from
Time
magazine, made ironic use of a cartoon Charles
Atlas, painted over iconic photos of James Dean and Elvis Presley
— and that’s just in the first of seven rooms.
The program describes the aesthetic experience conjured up
by these transmogrified icons of high and low culture. Celebrated
pop artists including Larry Poons, Robert Rauschenberg, and
Andy Warhol created these images by nicking the work of others,
without permission, and transforming it to make statements and
evoke emotions never countenanced by the original creators.
Despite this, the program does not say a word about copyright.
Can you blame the authors? A treatise on the way that copyright
and trademarks were —
had to be
— trammeled to make these
works could fill volumes.
Reading the program, you can only assume that the curators’
message about copyright is that where free expression is con-
cerned, the rights of the creators of the original source material
must take a back seat to those of the pop artists.
There is, however, another message about copyright in the
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