Dear Editor,
I am not on campus every day, but when I am, I make the effort to pick up The Tufts Daily. I have been patiently tolerating the lack of professional journalism when it comes to President Barack Obama, because I feel that it is a bias born out of enthusiasm, real love and excitement for America. It seems, however, that this bias has been extended to every topic even marginally related to our new president, including reviews of the "artist" whose image has become so famous.
I was horrified by the sycophantic portrayal of Shepard Fairey this week, which made no mention of the ongoing scandal surrounding his "artwork" and the real reason why he is viewed so controversially in the art world. Fairey violated copyright law by distributing the "Hope" image without crediting the source photograph. He is currently being sued by The Associated Press for this violation, but the Daily only tells us in a Feb. 6 review of his gallery at the Institute of Contemporary Art that "Fairey selflessly shared his image of Obama with the American people: He does not have a copyright on the image and he did not even seek to officially represent the Obama campaign."
He hardly would have been allowed to copyright the image. He may win this lawsuit, but it will not be his first clash with copyright law. Fairey has been sued or asked to stop selling art and clothing on a number of occasions for misusing the work of other artists. But even disregarding the several occasions on which his "inspirations" were copyrighted, the vast majority, if not all, of his artwork appears to be lifted directly from the work of other artists that is now in the public domain. This artwork is then used by Fairey to sell T-shirts to the Che Guevara fan club set who do not know or care where the images come from. Fairey himself seems not to know or care, as he exhibited when he used a Gestapo image on a T-shirt sold from his Web site.
For a very extensive overview of the evidence of Fairey's plagiarism and the history of past legal action against him, please visit www.art-for-a-change.com/Obey/index.htm. The debate over whether Fairey's reuse of the work of other artists is itself adding something of artistic value is legitimate. However, the fact must be brought to light that Fairey does not draw or edit these images himself; he simply pastes them together and then does not credit the original artists. This may indeed be art, but when it is unknown, it is definitely dishonest artistic practice, and when it goes unmentioned in an article about him, it is dishonest or lazy reporting.
I appreciate the Daily's enthusiasm for covering local artistic and cultural news; however, it is unfair to the Tufts public to either deliberately or in ignorance exclude relevant controversy from an article. This is particularly disturbing to me at a university where plagiarism is rightly considered to be a very serious offense to the intellectual community.
Sincerely,
Alice Tomic
Class of 2010
