Read on Twitter
Saw this on Posterati today, the great NYC poster shop, and reminded me how is seems generally accepted now to nearly directly copy historical work, this Midnight Cowboy poster by Waldemar swierzy, 1969, and this Young Fathers recent cover -
I remember when this started a few years back, and the major labels often had legal issues..is there a general rule of thumb presently for how far one can pull from an influence in a mood deck and still be considered a transformation? or do people just not care anymore?
Perhaps it's also my and my friends having started working during the early modern internet era [IE 2006] where almost any video or content you posted was absolutely demolished with criticism [ANTVILLE comes to mind]..no "like" buttons back then.
generally speaking these things aren't wrong to me, but overall there could be more transparency. If you are a young artist it must be confusing.
don't mean to single out this particular case, I think it struck me because when the album art came out I was excited to see it as it felt fresh and daring. Then to realise it's actually a direct lift of a poster from nearly 50 years old left me a bit deflated.
As a new director I couldn't work out how a small budget video I pitched on ..and lost, when it was finally released it looked like a half million dollar shoot. As I got older I found out that yes it was a half million dollar shoot, just the production co or a brand paid for it.
also ..that is fine, but if I had known that when I was starting out I wouldn't have been as confused and depressed. The aura of genius, as if these things appear from the ether fully formed, perfect and without history, is dangerous.
From the responses here and to personal stories I've been hearing from friends lately about work appropriation it's time to start calling motherfuckers out
genuinely curious as we have to reject our own work often as it's too derivative of our teams influences, but maybe that's more my personal comfort level rather than the industry acceptability?
