#nocterm

this is dumb as hell and you missed the point but ive been trying to find some copy of this video so thanks.

I think you missed my point. 

I understand what Mr. Laric is trying to do here. He believes that transformative works have artistic worth (true), that because creators rely on the work of past creators, all works are to some extent transformative (debatable, but I mostly agree), that because transformative works constantly shift and alter the source, all art is ephemeral (this is where we start to part ways), and that because all art is ephemeral, no one can truly be said to ‘own’ it, and a copy is a work of art in its own right (I vehemently disagree with this). 

I believe that, even if you don’t think of art as property, artists still have the right to their own work. Just as a scientist contributes to the sum total of human knowledge, an artist contributes to the sum total of human beauty. Just as a scientist deserves to have their contribution recognized, an artist deserves to have their contribution recognized. And just as plagiarized research is stealing someone else’s contribution to science, plagiarized art is stealing someone else’s contribution to art. There’s a difference between ‘making discoveries that build on someone else’s’ and ‘trying to pass someone else’s discovery off as your own’. IMO, Untitled falls into the second category, as much as a ‘research paper’ that’s long strings of text copied from other people’s papers. 

And yes, this gets muddied when it comes to commercial art-  how much of a contribution to the sum total of human beauty is Bubsy? - but I think it’s true no matter what the purpose of the art is, no matter why it was made, no matter how ugly or stupid or pointless you personally think it is. I think that companies that require artists to sell the company their full rights to their work are exploiting their artists. 

Animation is notoriously bad in this regard. There are many cartoonists who cannot continue series they would love to continue because they had to sell their rights to their work just to be able to get it out there. In addition, animation has some of the worst working conditions of any given creative industry- animators are frequently overworked and underpaid, and told that they can’t complain because they’re working their ‘dream job’ and there are lots of people who’d give their left leg to be an animator. Many of the great animators of the last century died in poverty, and most of them will never be household names. 

 And ironically, in his attempt to prove that art is ephemeral and cannot be owned, Laric is exploiting these animators (and the commercial artists he hired to copy their work) as much as any corporation did. He is erasing their contribution to human beauty; he is claiming their hard work for himself, and because it’s commercial art and therefore not Art, he can get away with it. 

The average animator’s yearly is somewhere around $50,000 a year, and they’re frequently pulling long workweeks and crunch-time deadlines. A single piece of Mr. Laric’s art sells for $20,000. 

 I don’t hate Mr. Laric. I think he has some measure of skill as an artist (his hologram-sticker paintings are neat, for instance). I think the things he is trying to say are interesting and important. But I don’t think it’s right or fair that he can profit off other people’s work without even giving them implicit credit. 

I think it is exploitative as hell. I think that stealing art from ‘commercial’ artists is classist as hell, that stealing from artists from other countries who might not ever know you used their work is racist as hell, and that passing other people’s work off as your own devalues art, no matter why you’re trying to do it. And I think that lauding Untitled as ‘High Art’ perpetuates the cycle where corporations can exploit ‘commercial’ artists, while ‘high’ artists make ludicrous amounts of money by being white and having the right connections.