Don’t Bother with Image Protection

Lately, I’ve spent a lot of time talking about reproductions of art, and why art can’t be photographed in many museums and galleries.
In part 1, I covered my teenage conspiracy theories about the prohibition of photography, while in part 2, I talked about learning the real reasons during my time in University. Then I switched gears for a bit and talked about image protection, listing some examples of bad ideas and good ideas.

In this entry, I will talk about the issue from a different angle. I will be asking something that should have been considered long before any time is spent on content protection schemes. That question is “Do painters even need to worry about infringement?”

I know, it sounds crazy. You might be thinking, “Kyle, I know you embrace the open source movement, free culture, the creative commons and all that, but this is our livelihood you’re talking about. Give it away! Are you mad?”
As artists, we own the rights to images we make; surely we must protect them, right?
Absolutely, we should protect our work, but I don’t believe that a blanket “All Rights Reserved!” model is necessarily the best approach for a painter to take.
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Keep a Schedule and Work Hard

I would like to start this post by pointing out how long it has been since my last update.

One of the reasons for starting this blog was to provide myself with a way of working more discipline into my schedule. Part of being a full-time artist is making your own hours, and setting your own work schedule. Having that much flexibility has the potential to lead to a very unproductive lifestyle. One way of preventing this is by keeping regular hours. Wake up at a set time each day, go though a set morning routine, then enter the studio, and work away for 8 hours, then clock out and go home.

It would be a bit dishonest to say that I stick to this schedule rigidly. I must admit that on occasion, I do show up late, sneak out early, and take some extended breaks. The important thing is to at least try to maintain some sort of regular schedule. Oscillating between 0-hour work weeks and 100+ hour work weeks is not a good way to live your life. I know too many artists who regularly do nothing until they have an upcoming show, which kicks them into high production mode, where they produce artwork nonstop, they have their show, then they burn out and take some time off to recover, waiting for inspiration to re-enter their practice. I have found that lazing about, waiting for inspiration to enter my life is a shortcut to a creative dead end. I can’t remember who first said it, but being a professional is about doing the thing you love most on the days you don’t feel like doing it.
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Why Reproductions Are Good for Art

Lately, I’ve spent a lot of time talking about why art can’t be photographed.
In this entry, I will ignore the issue of copyright, and taking pictures of art directly. Instead, I will talk about the reproduction of art in general. I will explain why I do not think that the reproduction of artworks is a bad thing. In fact, I will be arguing why I think that reproducing art is actually a very good thing.

Before I go forward with this argument, I would like to go back. Way back.
In the 1935 essay “Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”, Walter Benjamin wrote about the mechanical reproduction of art, and the damaging effect this had on tradition and value. Reproduction was seen as a threat to the authenticity of a piece of art. He made use of the word “aura” to describe this value.
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Good Ideas for Protecting Your Images

After my last entry, Bad Ideas for Protecting Your Images, you might be thinking that I am against the idea of artists protecting their work. Absolutely not. I am only against bad ideas that either won’t work, are likely cost far more than they are worth, or will irritate your audience and potentially drive potential collectors away. Most of the methods I criticized earlier have some sort of negative impact on the audience. They take away from a viewer’s ability to enjoy the work while giving them nothing extra in return. The image protection methods that I would encourage make life easier for viewers.

Best of all, my recommendations are fairly cheap, quick and practical.
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Bad Ideas for Protecting Your Images

The last several posts have been inspired by a conversation I had with several recent graduates at the 2010 OCAD grad show.
Their work was good, and I was interested in seeing more. When I asked if images of their work was available on their websites, I discovered that they both refused to show any samples of their work on-line due to fears of copyright infringement. This struck me as backwards. Hiding their art from the world seems like the exact opposite of what any young, emerging artist should want.

One of the artists said that he had every intension of making his work available, but he would only do this once he had figured out some technical copy-protection tools.
In this entry, I will discuss my objections to several different technical copy-restriction techniques, and propose some examples of what I think are better alternatives.
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An OCAD Grad Show Conversation

The last two entries, Why Can’t I Photograph Art, and Why Can’t I Photograph Art: Part 2 were inspired by a conversation I had back in May during the OCAD grad show.

           I was talking to one of the graduates. He was good. He had the pretentious B.S. down well enough to keep up with the art snobs, critics, and grant applications, but he also had legitimately interesting ideas to discuss with other artists. They were good ideas, and they inspired good paintings. It was going well, and I asked if I could see any more,

           Do you have a card? I asked him
           Nope.
           Perhaps a website, with a gallery section?
           Nope.
           A facebook fan page with a few uploaded images?
           Nope.
           Anything?
           Nope.

           This took me by surprise, because unlike so many artists, he seemed to have a concern for the business end of the art world as well as the studio end. But this huge critical piece of the puzzle was being left out completely.
           It had to be an oversight. Here was a young artist who had something going, and no website? No online presence of any kind? Was he a Luddite?
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Why can’t I photograph art? part 2

Why can’t I photograph art?
           Why do some museums, galleries and artists object to having their artwork photographed?
           In my last entry, Why Can’t I Photograph Art, I described the event that sparked my interest in the subject of photographing artworks. I covered my thought process at the time, and described how my adolescent mind tried to figure out what reason their was for banning photography in museums and galleries. I didn’t get very far.

           It wasn’t until my University years that I discovered the real reason why artworks could not be photographed: Copyright Law
           So I now had the official, legal reason for not being allowed to photograph artworks, but this seemed strange to me. Copyright law makes sense for books, songs and movies. In these mediums, money is made by selling multiple copies of the same thing. With paintings, there are no copies; there is only one. A song can have multiple copies and be sold multiple times, but every painting is unique; it’s the only one like it in the whole world. I finally had my answer, but something about it didn’t sit right with me. Why would a one-of-a-kind object possibly need copyright protection?
Continue reading Why can’t I photograph art? part 2

Why Can’t I Photograph Art?

           Have you ever heard something that didn’t sound right, something that just seemed wrong, yet you were never able to point out exactly what was wrong with it? I’ve had that feeling many times, and every time I think I’ve got it figured out, another idea emerges to counter my previous understanding.
           For years, one question kept popping up in my mind, and I couldn’t find a good answer for it. That question was: Why can’t I photograph art?
           Why do some museums, galleries and artists object to having their artwork photographed?
Part of me always instinctively shied away from photographing photographs, something about that just felt wrong to me; I’d sketch those out.
           But paintings? Sculptures?
           What’s wrong with taking pictures of those art forms?
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Wasted Time? What to Look for in an Art Blog

           The last two entries in the Wasted Time series, Business Advice from Art Blogs and Repeated Advice from Art Blogs dealt with two central issues:
1. My frustrations over the plethora of art blogs that offer vague, generic, and repetitive business advice.
2. My scepticism of their claims on the importance of blogging.
I also ranted a bit about why visual thinkers should be asked to write.

           It is important to keep in mind that these business and marketing centric art blogs represent a small fraction of what is out there in the blogosphere, and dismissing every art blog thats out there as repetitive and generic would mean missing out on a lot of great, unique content. Trying to read everything thats out there would take many lifetimes, so strategies to quickly assess they quality of an art blog is critical. This post covers some of the techniques I use while skimming over a blog to gauge weather I should read more, or move on to the next one.
           When I come across someone’s art blog, I start skimming through their advice. If their ideas seem insightful, unique, genuine, powerful or authentic, I will give it a good, detailed read.
But, I wont automatically take their advice to heart until they pass one very crucial test: is the art on their site any good?
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Wasted Time? Repeated advice from Art Blogs

          In my last post, Wasted Time? Business Advice from Art Blogs, I talked about the repetition of advice that was so common on the art blogs I came across during my research. They all presented lists of advice, and the advice was always the same.

          One piece of advice that came up everywhere was the importance of blogging. Every single art blog stresses the importance of blogging. The advice reads like this: If you aren’t blogging already, start yesterday. If you are blogging, blog more!

          I know that I went into art because I am a visual thinker. I’m a Modernist at heart, believing that a medium should focus on its specific areas of competence. Ideas that are best expressed through words should be expressed as words, and ideas best expressed though images should be expressed through images. The ideas that are in my paintings are the ideas that I don’t know how to put into words. If I could say it better than I could paint it, I’d have written about it.
          I suspect that a good number of my fellow artists are also primarily visual thinkers. Visual thinkers can best express themselves though images, not words. In fact, based on the vast majority of artist’s statements that I’ve come across, I’d suspect that many artists aren’t really familiar with words at all, and I’d like to suggest that they stay very far away from them in the future.
          Some of the worst writing I have ever seen came from an artist. And thats fine. Not every writer is a great artist, and not every artist has to be a great writer. But these art blogs are telling artists, telling visual thinkers, that they have to write about their art, and write a lot.

          So, when everyone is saying “blog blog blog, then blog some more!”, The easiest thing for a person wanting to take that advice is rewording and repackaging what has already been said. The temptation to copy and paste other articles, do a quick re-write, and hit ‘post’ is very understandable. I’d do it too if it wasn’t for that little Modernist inside my head screaming, “be more original than that!”.
Continue reading Wasted Time? Repeated advice from Art Blogs