Thursday 5 February 2009

Bacon and Bama



"Artists will beg, borrow or steal anything that may be of use to them." said Francis Bacon. (see below)

Re: the pix of Obama. The lawyers from AP are jumping in delightedly, smelling money. What a crock of shit. See the story following.

NEW YORK – On buttons, posters and Web sites, the image was everywhere during last year's presidential campaign: Barack Obama looking upward, as if to the future, splashed in a Warholesque red, white and blue and underlined with the caption HOPE.
Designed by Shepard Fairey, a Los-Angeles based street artist, the image has led to sales of hundreds of thousands of posters and stickers, has become so much in demand that copies signed by Fairey have been purchased for thousands of dollars on eBay.
The image, Fairey has acknowledged, is based on an Associated Press photograph.
AP says it owns the copyright, and wants credit and compensation.(my italics, P.)
"AP safeguards its assets and looks at these events on a case-by-case basis. We have reached out to Mr. Fairey's attorney and are in discussions. We hope for an amicable solution."
Blah-di, blah di, bleeding blah.

I was going to make some pithy comment on this story, but what the hell. The glad tidings is it prompted me to go and search for some stuff on Francis, who was always using bits of other people´s work, and found the following web site which I think is rather good.
http://www.geocities.com/pantherprousa/bacon/bacon_influences.html
Still, I doubt Velasquez would have sued.
He just would have had Francis burned at the stake.


LAURA, you say you would like to be my Facebook "Friend" (I agree about the quotes) Fine, but I don´t know how to make it so.

3 comments:

Laura said...

Some of your posts referred to Facebook but when I searched on your name it did not appear that you have a Facebook account. Given that, we can't be "friends"...it all sounds rather silly, doesn't it? I will settle for your delightful blog.
Thanks

Patrick O'Gara said...

Laura, my wife says you should look for Patrick Denis O´Gara

Laura said...

Got it, thanks!