Do artists have the right to use images of celebrities in their work? The California Supreme Court says yes. “The court said celebrities have the right to prevent their likenesses from being used simply to sell products, a doctrine illustrated by a 2001 ruling against an artist who sold T-shirts and lithographs with drawings of the Three Stooges. But in a unanimous decision, the justices said artists and publishers have a constitutional right to produce works that include an image, creatively transformed, of an actual person.”
Blog
Celebs, Incorporated
“The decision permits authors of fictional works to create characters based in part on celebrities, as long as the portrayals differ from the real people. Celebrities will continue to be able to demand compensation when their actual faces or names are used on coffee cups or other commercial merchandise.”
Protester Dumps Red Paint On Chapman
A man was arrested in London after throwing red paint on one of the Chapman brothers. “The unidentified man fought with the Turner Prize nominee after throwing the paint in an apparent protest at his alteration of work by Goya, the Spanish master. The attack came the day after Jake and his brother Dinos were shortlisted and strongly tipped for this year’s £20,000 prize.”
Publisher Withdraws Book After Plagiarism Charges
Publisher Little, Brown has taken the unusual step of withdrawing a book – a history of the creation of the atomic bomb, after four wurthors complained that the book contained passages drawn from their work, uncredited.The author, Brian VanDeMark, 42, said yesterday that he had no comment. In a telephone interview on Friday he said that he was confident that ‘detached readers would find a majority’ of the passages in question to be ‘reasonable paraphrases.’ But he added then that “a minority should and will be reworded or credited in a footnote.”
Vienna Philharmonic – Stuck In The Old Culture
It’s been six years since the Vienna Philharmonic first let a woman play as a member of the orchestra. But women are still scarce in the orchestra, and a long established culture stubbornly resistant to change is difficult to move…
Surprise Winner For Orange Prize
A longshot has won this year’s Orange Fiction Prize. “What was billed as a race between two million-selling authors, the American Donna Tartt and Zadie Smith from England, went instead to the relatively little-known Valerie Martin for Property, a novel of exceptional power about slavery in 19th century Louisiana.”
Jazz Takes A Non-Jazz Turn (Again)
The insular, elitist world of jazz is being rocked in more than one sense of the word. Young musicians, and even some old ones, are thumbing their noses at jazz purists and exploring popular forms of music, from grunge to indie-rock to rap. Flip through your local record store’s jazz bins and you’ll find pianist Jason Moran covering the rap classic ‘Planet Rock’ and the veteran organ player Dr. Lonnie Smith tackling an entire album of Beck songs. Some jazz artists are even borrowing a page from hip-hop, packing their discs with guest appearances by rappers.”
Eurovision – Send It Up In A Song
European TV’s Eurovision Song Contest is “quite possibly the world’s most garish musical spectacle. Each year, contestants kitted out in everything from Viking helmets to bondage outfits perform original compositions to taped backing music. Viewers across Europe (some 150 million in total) vote by telephone for their favorite, excluding their own nation’s song. The most famous winner was ‘Waterloo’ in 1974 by ABBA, who went on to become to pop-music kitsch what Jesus is to Christianity.”
How Did 9/11 Change The Arts?
“It’s going on two years now, and the work is just beginning. Artists found a daunting, inevitable theme for the 21st century in the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. A spate of recent works — in film, fiction, music and poetry — suggests how broad and multivalenced the responses will be as this singular national trauma continues to sink in and penetrate our consciousness.”
NY Phil/Carnegie Merger Could Resonate In Pittsburgh
News of the impending merger of the New York Philharmonic with Carnegie Hall has some observers of the classical scene in Pittsburgh thinking that the embattled Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra could take a page from the Phil’s book. “Given the national significance of the Philharmonic and Carnegie Hall, the unexpected consolidation raises the possibility that a stronger collaboration between the Symphony and the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust could be viewed more favorably as a way to stabilize the Symphony’s finances. The Trust, an arts presenting organization that owns four theaters in the Downtown Cultural District, has for five years successfully brought the PSO and Downtown arts groups together in its ‘shared services’ initiative.”