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Artist Peter Doig victorious as court agrees '$10m' painting is not his work

theguardian.com

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Re: Artist Peter Doig victorious as court agrees '$10m' painting is not his work

#61

Post by robryk »

icebraining wrote: post #57
pessimizer wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then it's a perverse market where people have ceased to sell objects, and are now just trading financial instruments. I support the right of the author to disclaim the authorship of any work at any time, despite any evidence to the contrary. He should be able to choose whether he wants his name used as a vehicle in a financial transaction. Not whether it will be , because if some insurance company or law firm wants t…

Not forcing the author to endorse is fine, but in this case - assuming he did paint it - he actually lied. I have sympathy for the particular role that is authorship of art, but if it was something else like a car or a house, and the previous seller publicly and falsely claimed there was something wrong with it, losing you a sale, is that not an harm? If the author sells his works in the open market, why should he th…

Do you think that there should be a blanket prohibition against causing harm to other people by making false statements, even if the person making the false statement doesn't gain anything by doing that?

This would be a stronger prohibition against libel than (IIUC) is present in US. I also don't see how it could interact with investigative reporting -- a reporter often cannot prove his statements without breaking the confidentiality of his sources.

Re: Artist Peter Doig victorious as court agrees '$10m' painting is not his work

#62

Post by icebraining »

robryk wrote: post #61
icebraining wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not forcing the author to endorse is fine, but in this case - assuming he did paint it - he actually lied. I have sympathy for the particular role that is authorship of art, but if it was something else like a car or a house, and the previous seller publicly and falsely claimed there was something wrong with it, losing you a sale, is that not an harm? If the author sells his works in the open market, why should he th…

Do you think that there should be a blanket prohibition against causing harm to other people by making false statements, even if the person making the false statement doesn't gain anything by doing that? This would be a stronger prohibition against libel than (IIUC) is present in US. I also don't see how it could interact with investigative reporting -- a reporter often cannot prove his statements without breaking th…

IANAL, but I don't think defamation law requires the person to gain anything. And in fact, there is a tort of trade libel/commercial disparagement, which is specifically about harm that comes from making knowingly false claims about products or services.

Re: Artist Peter Doig victorious as court agrees '$10m' painting is not his work

#63

Post by Waterluvian »

lallysingh wrote: post #44
biztos wrote: post #37

First, let me say that this looks like mistaken identity or worse; and that I myself am an artist, and like most part-time artists I'm very sympathetic to the interests of full-time artists. However, this sentiment is unrealistically simple: "I feel a living artist should be the one who gets to say yea or nay and not be taken to task and forced to go back 40 years in time." The way the art market works, attribution (…

What's interesting here is how the art isn't valued on its own artistic merits, but by its authorship. The artist's ability to control the value of a work by testimony is weird, but only because the underlying work's value is weird.

It's kind of McLuhanesque. The artist is on display, not the art.

Re: Artist Peter Doig victorious as court agrees '$10m' painting is not his work

#64

Post by RCortex »

tedunangst wrote: post #54
yubiox wrote: post #19

What if he really had painted it? What duty does he have to authenticate it?

Forget this case for a minute. Imagine Alice is selling Bob a house. Carol comes along and says, "Don't buy that house. It's infested with termites." This is likely to cause Bob to reconsider his offer, and Alice will be somewhat pissed. If Carol is correct, there's nothing Alice can do, but if Carol is lying, Alice will likely sue for unlawful tortuous interference with business or somesuch, whatever the legal words…

Thanks for writing this up, helped me clarify different interpretations. From my point of view, whether or not the painting is Doig's affects his brand and the value of his name, which I do think he has the right to control.

Re: Artist Peter Doig victorious as court agrees '$10m' painting is not his work

#65

Post by jeffwass »

lallysingh wrote: post #44
biztos wrote: post #37

First, let me say that this looks like mistaken identity or worse; and that I myself am an artist, and like most part-time artists I'm very sympathetic to the interests of full-time artists. However, this sentiment is unrealistically simple: "I feel a living artist should be the one who gets to say yea or nay and not be taken to task and forced to go back 40 years in time." The way the art market works, attribution (…

What's interesting here is how the art isn't valued on its own artistic merits, but by its authorship. The artist's ability to control the value of a work by testimony is weird, but only because the underlying work's value is weird.

Many collectibles are like that.

Eg : Jimmy Hendrix's first guitar as a child would auction for quite a lot of money. But the same model and condition guitar instead owned by some random guy in Omaha would be worthless.

Re: Artist Peter Doig victorious as court agrees '$10m' painting is not his work

#66

Post by jjnoakes »

jeffwass wrote: post #65
lallysingh wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's interesting here is how the art isn't valued on its own artistic merits, but by its authorship. The artist's ability to control the value of a work by testimony is weird, but only because the underlying work's value is weird.

Many collectibles are like that. Eg : Jimmy Hendrix's first guitar as a child would auction for quite a lot of money. But the same model and condition guitar instead owned by some random guy in Omaha would be worthless.

I feel like this analogy isn't quite right.

I would compare the guitar to a paintbrush. Both are tools which, in the right hands, can make beautiful things. So the value comes from the pairing of the tool to the wielder, and I would expect an artist's paintbrush to be valuable when tied to a specific artist just like Hendrix's guitar, and both mostly worthless otherwise.

But the art itself should have value mostly independently, and I think the analogue to that would be the music. If someone else produced exactly the same music as Hendrix, I think it should be almost as valuable.

Re: Artist Peter Doig victorious as court agrees '$10m' painting is not his work

#67

Post by ChoHag »

ghaff wrote: post #33
mhurron wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nor were all of the mentioned facts in the pre-trial coverage. Which actually should never have mattered, because the trial never should have happened. Doig said, no, that is not my painting. That should have been the end of it, but the other party didn't like that and tried to get the court to say otherwise because they thought they had basically won the lottery.

One can imagine scenarios where an artist disclaims that they created something out of spite (with family or whatever) and that disclaiming greatly decreases the value of some sold item. If that painting or whatever was fairly obviously the artist's work, would you still feel the same? This case seems odd based on the news coverage though (based on the coverage in respectable publications like The New York Times and…

> an artist disclaims that they created something ... disclaiming greatly decreases the value of some sold item

If this concerns you, you should not be as dependent on items whose value hangs so tightly on the word of a disinterested (or worse, interested) party.

Re: Artist Peter Doig victorious as court agrees '$10m' painting is not his work

#68

Post by tedunangst »

RCortex wrote: post #64
tedunangst wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Forget this case for a minute. Imagine Alice is selling Bob a house. Carol comes along and says, "Don't buy that house. It's infested with termites." This is likely to cause Bob to reconsider his offer, and Alice will be somewhat pissed. If Carol is correct, there's nothing Alice can do, but if Carol is lying, Alice will likely sue for unlawful tortuous interference with business or somesuch, whatever the legal words…

Thanks for writing this up, helped me clarify different interpretations. From my point of view, whether or not the painting is Doig's affects his brand and the value of his name, which I do think he has the right to control.

There's a number of things one can say to manage reputation. "That's a terrible work." "I disown that." "Better off burned." "Not part of my catalog." But "I didn't paint that" is a statement of fact, it had better be true. One might consider an author who writes a book that flops. They can ask the publisher to stop printing it, but they can't demand people pretend that they didn't write it. However, there is the case where a movie director demands their name be taken off a bad movie. Fuzzy.

Re: Artist Peter Doig victorious as court agrees '$10m' painting is not his work

#69

Post by jeffwass »

jjnoakes wrote: post #66
jeffwass wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many collectibles are like that. Eg : Jimmy Hendrix's first guitar as a child would auction for quite a lot of money. But the same model and condition guitar instead owned by some random guy in Omaha would be worthless.

I feel like this analogy isn't quite right. I would compare the guitar to a paintbrush. Both are tools which, in the right hands, can make beautiful things. So the value comes from the pairing of the tool to the wielder, and I would expect an artist's paintbrush to be valuable when tied to a specific artist just like Hendrix's guitar, and both mostly worthless otherwise. But the art itself should have value mostly in…

Would you pay the same amount to see a famous band play a concert vs a very good cover band?

Re: Artist Peter Doig victorious as court agrees '$10m' painting is not his work

#70

Post by jjnoakes »

jeffwass wrote: post #69
jjnoakes wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like this analogy isn't quite right. I would compare the guitar to a paintbrush. Both are tools which, in the right hands, can make beautiful things. So the value comes from the pairing of the tool to the wielder, and I would expect an artist's paintbrush to be valuable when tied to a specific artist just like Hendrix's guitar, and both mostly worthless otherwise. But the art itself should have value mostly in…

Would you pay the same amount to see a famous band play a concert vs a very good cover band?

If the concert was purely music and the very good cover band played the music just as well, then sure.

Concerts are about more than just the music though. They are often about the stage presence, visual affects, and the nostalgia, in addition to the music.

That being said, if this cover band had just as good a show as the original band, and somehow the same amount of nostalgia (i.e. they've been covering the original band's songs since the start and have always been just as good in concert), then again I would say yes. I don't think that's likely though.

I mean, if you boil down what you are paying for to its essence, and provide an alternative with exactly the same quality in that essence, then you should be willing to pay the same. It's almost by-definition.

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