A curious thing is that I think Abell probably will get some recognition from the art world out of this episode, and museums are increasingly interested in blurring the lines between work produced as "art" and popular culture, and if they weren't they wouldn't have been interested in the Richard Prince photo at all. The Prince photo is only interesting as an appropriation of a pop culture icon, not unlike Warhol's Brillo boxes or Campbell's soup cans (did the designers of that packaging ever get any recognition for that? did they call it plagiarism?).
The price of the Prince photograph seems a bit of a distraction to me. I suspect Sam Abell was well compensated for the Marlboro campaign, and that might be why he can afford to be reflective rather than outraged. An artist who sells their work at a modest price, becomes famous, and then sees the work go for a high price in the secondary market won't have been so fortunate, though that's not a bad position to be in either.
Wow. Thanks for posting this. I admire Abell for the decency and thoughtfulness of his worldview. But I still find Richard Prince's work fascinating in the conceptual sense. I think it's important. I may be alone here, but I can see why the Guggenheim would want to own and show it.
To Abell, the image is what matters, and he created it. To Prince and the Guggenheim, what Prince intentionally did with the image created the art. I imagine Prince would say, when I appropriate and collect these advertising images, when I contextualize them and make you think about the culture in which they exist, when I make you consider the meaning behind the banal advertising form -- I've created something new. And that is the art.
Whatever it is, I can see why reasonable people would differ about its value or importance as art. But I don't think what Prince did was plagiarism. Plagiarism (or rather, infringement of intellectual property) would be to set up and copy the whole cowboy theme for a different cigarette's ad.
Geeze, I've been incorporating advertising in my images for a while and had no idea I could make a million! I don't even care who the original photographer was, it is all corporate propaganda as far as I'm concerned, created for public consumption. I've consumed it and spit it out again with some of my internal juice dripping from the edges. The art establishment wouldn't exist without moneyed corporate sponsors filling their coffers and it is a good turn for them to give some of it back for a change. Prince is "cheeky" indeed to beat the Guggenheim with their own stick. Beat them harder and more often.
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Chris Saganich
http://www.imagebrooklyn.com
I imagine Prince would say, when I appropriate and collect these advertising images, when I contextualize them and make you think about the culture in which they exist, when I make you consider the meaning behind the banal advertising form -- I've created something new. And that is the art.
Whatever it is, I can see why reasonable people would differ about its value or importance as art. But I don't think what Prince did was plagiarism. Plagiarism (or rather, infringement of intellectual property) would be to set up and copy the whole cowboy theme for a different cigarette's ad.
-Laura
I agree with this to a certain degree. I haven't seen the Prince photo in person, so I guess what I wonder is whether the object is really interesting enough to be collectible by a major museum, compared, say, to the work of Damien Hirst, which has both conceptual and object value. Does it make me think about advertising in a different or better way than a good critical essay about the Marlboro man would? As conceptual art, is the concept really that new or innovative? Does Marlboro man + irony = art still?
Wow. Abell is a spectacularly sensible and levelheaded person. Lesser mortals would be hopping mad, I think.
Silly me, I didn't realize Abell was here at the thing in Charlottesville this week, I should have gone. Anyway the whole thing was sold out, all I got to see was some J-P Witkin. Which was quite thought-provoking, I might add.
Prince's Marlboro work seems to me just like an extension of Duchamp's Fontaine. Which is fine, after all Duchamp opened a huge vein to dig for artists.
What bothers me is the absence of "share-alike" mentality. I couldn't find the article, but the anecdote was that a tourist was forbidden to take a digicam snapshot of Prince's reproduction of the original ad. If you're allowed to sample, I think you need to allow sampling in turn, just like the GPL/copyleft/Creative Commons type of license require to.
There's no culture without sampling or imitation, but playing selfish while at the same time lifting from other artists just stinks.
At least the Grey Album was distributed freely.
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Photographic Plagiarism 
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