Gallery owner arrested for forged and stolen Ansel Adams photographs

[Bernice Loui]

Yet, Andy Warhol made millions and others millions more to this day... why?

Meh, think pop-music..
Bernice

... mostly a monotonous abomination as far as I'm concerned. A Starbucks on every street corner, but even more Warhols, ad nauseum. I'd pay to join any modern art museum which refuses to show him and offers something fresh instead. An illustrator of common commodities who became just another common commodity.

[Drew Wiley]

There's no secret about Dali, John. If you want an actual Dali painting, you make an appointment with a very select gallery, they research your credentials, and the armed security guard unlocks the door after seeing your ID, and you send em a two million dollar certified check. If you want a signed Dali poster, you walk right into a gallery along Fisherman's Wharf or Ghiardelli Square in SF, drop four or six thousand dollars because the slick salesman tells you it will be worth fifteen grand in six months; and then you eventually end up discovering it isn't even worth 10% the value of the frame it comes with! I am not exaggerating in the least. Because I had accounts with framing wholesalers, I got all kinds of wholesale price lists sent to me. Those mass-produced Dali posters carried a wholesale price of around 15 dollars apiece, and thousands of them were printed at a time. The number of sheets of paper he personally signed in advance of even printing is hard to say; and he certainly didn't need the money, and most of it didn't go to him anyway, but all added up in that style of economic empire. And rich n' famous conspicuous consumption was his lifestyle.

The same could be said about any number of famous painters. But no truly great artist ever got greedy or ever committed a crime, did they? They're all immaculate saints deserving their pedestal. You might want to ask Caravaggio about that one. C'Mon, John, this is the real world.

The AA trust is legit. But that doesn't stop others from trying to illicitly get a piece of the action. And as far as "tripod holes", I've probably been over more of the Sierra Nevada with a big camera than Ansel himself. And that fact makes me appreciate his sensitivity to the light far more than most, and NOT depreciate it, as you seem to be insinuating. But it also intuitively informs me there are infinitely more things there to inspire film capture than just what Ansel himself saw, and many other ways of doing so, composition and printing wise. Frankly, I wish I had another eight lifetimes to see more of that one range, if only they'd be pre global warming years, and hopefully pre-REI jogging shoe Muir Trail mentality too.

[jnantz]

There's no secret about Dali, John. If you want an actual Dali painting, you make an appointment with a very select gallery, they research your credentials, and the armed security guard unlocks the door after seeing your ID, and you send em a two million dollar certified check. If you want a signed Dali poster, you walk right into a gallery along Fisherman's Wharf or Ghiardelli Square in SF, drop four or six thousand dollars because the slick salesman tells you it will be worth fifteen grand in six months; and then you eventually end up discovering it isn't even worth 10% the value of the frame it comes with! I am not exaggerating in the least. Because I had accounts with framing wholesalers, I got all kinds of wholesale price lists sent to me. Those mass-produced Dali posters carried a wholesale price of around 15 dollars apiece, and thousands of them were printed at a time. The number of sheets of paper he personally signed in advance of even printing is hard to say; and he certainly didn't need the money, and most of it didn't go to him anyway, but all added up in that style of economic empire. And rich n' famous conspicuous consumption was his lifestyle.

The same could be said about any number of famous painters. But no truly great artist ever got greedy or ever committed a crime, did they? They're all immaculate saints deserving their pedestal. You might want to ask Caravaggio about that one. C'Mon, John, this is the real world.

The AA trust is legit. But that doesn't stop others from trying to illicitly get a piece of the action. And as far as "tripod holes", I've probably been over more of the Sierra Nevada with a big camera than Ansel himself. And that fact makes me appreciate his sensitivity to the light far more than most, and NOT depreciate it, as you seem to be insinuating. But it also intuitively informs me there are infinitely more things there to inspire film capture than just what Ansel himself saw, and many other ways of doing so, composition and printing wise. Frankly, I wish I had another eight lifetimes to see more of that one range, if only they'd be pre global warming years, and hopefully pre-REI jogging shoe Muir Trail mentality too.

Drew you paint every single "artist" whose style you don't appreciate as a fraud and people who appreciate them to be a moron. It's really kind of comical to be honest. I've got no problem with Warhol, American Post/Modernists, Expressionists &c I wish there was more of that, and less rocks and trees to be honest. I'm not insinuating the depreciating of anything, but you make claims over and over again as if what you say is "fact" when it's opinion. You trash people as frauds and without a idea of originality in their whole body yet it's OK for others to make photographs like AA and /or find tripod holes, steal other people's style, and claim they are doing "original work". it's a bit much.

[Alan Klein]

Alan - you're missing the point. A photomechanical press reproduction of a painting is not legally an original painting; nor is something based on a paint-by-numbers map filled in with colors in another country by an assembly line of workmen. Even the legal definition of a serigraph (silkscreen) or lithograph has certain stipulations, and technique-inherent quantity limits, different from mechanically mass-produced things like posters, whether they're done cheaply or good. Things go terribly awry otherwise. For example, Dali signed stacks of blank paper even on his deathbed, without even seeing the end result, which was in fact, thousands of ordinary posters of his work, which ended up selling for high prices due to his own signature, but which inevitably proved almost worthless to gullible collectors who thought they were getting a sound investment.

"Investment" is the deceptive hook in the bait. It's what one hears, or at least distinctly implied, walking into a Lik gallery, and what got Kincade into a lot of trouble. If you just happen to like a particular gernre and want it on your walls, and don't mind spending the money, fine. But there are legal limits to what the seller can claim about it before transgressing the boundary of fraud. What finally bagged Kincade was the manner his franchisees became defrauded; but he had been waving a red flag at a bull all along, failing to notice another angry bull was also watching.

There's certainly nothing wrong with the manner Kincade came up with an especially high quality manner of making reproductions, or even offering those in custom colorized fashion to match specific client decor (though it's not to my own taste). Rather, it was when he got highly successful and overextended himself, and like numerous others before, was facing financial collapse to his oversized house of cards, which by then included his own theme-park-like real estate venture, that he finally overstepped the line conspicuously enough to get into real trouble. But he had been flirting with that fate for quite awhile, as if almost teasing authorities.

I don't know what Lik or Kincade told their buyers. I wasn't there. What I'm saying is that many oil painters sell copies of their work that are reproduced mechanically and then they add a few oil strokes and sign their name on it as the artist and sell them as editions. The people buying them are not told they are original paintings but rather are editions of the original. Perfectly legal. The cruise ships have these auctions all the time on every cruise ship. We bid for one ourselves. Actually I thought someome would outbid my bid but no one raised their hand and we got stuck with it. Plus 15% to the auctioneer.

Here's a description of the process on ships:
These auctions mostly feature prints by contemporary artists, such as Tarkay, Britto and Yaacov Agam. The pieces are created with a process called Giclée, French for fine spray. This requires a very expensive ink-jet printer dropping miniscule dots of very fine ink. One Giclée print can cost $50 to manufacture, and the quality is amazing. One of the most recognizable artists is Peter Max, and his pieces usually fetch a good price on any ship. Max’s affiliation with cruises even led to a commission by Norwegian Cruise Line to create the artwork for the hull of the line’s newest ship.

Peter Max often adds considerable cachet to his cruise ship pieces by not only signing them, but adding a unique dab of paint to each prints making it slightly different. But you need to know that Peter Max has made thousands of these pieces, so even though yours (which can cost several thousand dollars) is technically unique, it isn’t exactly rare. Check the online market for Peter Max before you cruise to see what I mean.

https://www.foxnews.com/travel/guide...p-art-auctions

[jp]

Drew you paint every single "artist" whose style you don't appreciate as a fraud and people who appreciate them to be a moron. It's really kind of comical to be honest. I've got no problem with Warhol, American Post/Modernists, Expressionists &c I wish there was more of that, and less rocks and trees to be honest. I'm not insinuating the depreciating of anything, but you make claims over and over again as if what you say is "fact" when it's opinion. You trash people as frauds and without a idea of originality in their whole body yet it's OK for others to make photographs like AA and /or find tripod holes, steal other people's style, and claim they are doing "original work". it's a bit much.

I like rocks and trees and I can't stop photographing them.

But yes we need a wholesale review that art business practices and postmodern styles and influences are here to stay. Among Gen-x like myself, there's an attitude that if it's good, it will get copied and re-born somehow in another flavor.. We're the generation that attained world domination in the cmoputer field with open source. Creative commons licenses for photography was adapted from the software business. It's a massive shift that can't be undone. Stock imagery is worthless. Creativity is forever changed. Napster & p2p. Spotify/Pandora instead of rare CDs. Music Sampling. The Beastie Boys knew more about post modern art than we do. Artificial limitations via editions common to LF photography are sometimes just as sus as Lik or Kinkade. I expect a younger generation would be even more laissez faire about the content protection business.

[Drew Wiley]

Well, the law isn't that casual. The wild west frontier of all these new digital implications might not have gotten ironed out yet; but it is already on the ironing board under inevitable review.
Even I will personally admit the digital revulsion has attained the summit of world composting, at least if e-waste actually decomposed without poisoning everything around in the process.
But I don't know how one would go about "editioning" large format prints if they're like me, and rarely print two exactly the same, and seldom more than two of the same image. I'm just hinting how your own kids will likely rebel from the all the digi obsession of their parents' generation, and go back to vinyl and turntable music. Being cool is only cool until it's no longer cool.
"Post-modern" was becoming a worn-out passe expression probably before you were born, and was basically nonsense art-speak gibberish to begin with. But everything revolves in cycles, and it even it will be back if all this digi technology doesn't exterminate life on earth first.

Glad to hear that you think rocks n' trees are still worthwhile. I can't live without them. I grew up near rocks 14,000 ft tall plus the biggest trees on earth, and right on the edge of the second deepest canyon on the continent (the very deepest was slightly to the south of there). And I pity anyone who thinks "culture" is only a Noi Yoik thing. It's greatest achievements and skyscrapers are puny compared to what God did using the basics of geology. Not even the Cathedral of Notre Dame holds a candle to many of the glacially sculpted pinnacles I've photographed. And up there, no need for stained glass either.

[jnantz]

I like rocks and trees and I can't stop photographing them.

But yes we need a wholesale review that art business practices and postmodern styles and influences are here to stay. Among Gen-x like myself, there's an attitude that if it's good, it will get copied and re-born somehow in another flavor.. We're the generation that attained world domination in the cmoputer field with open source. Creative commons licenses for photography was adapted from the software business. It's a massive shift that can't be undone. Stock imagery is worthless. Creativity is forever changed. Napster & p2p. Spotify/Pandora instead of rare CDs. Music Sampling. The Beastie Boys knew more about post modern art than we do. Artificial limitations via editions common to LF photography are sometimes just as sus as Lik or Kinkade. I expect a younger generation would be even more laissez faire about the content protection business.

I know the feeling .. it's not the I don't like rocks and trees but to basically make claim that everything else is fraudulent to me is a bit much. and I couldn't agree more about the Beastie Boys, was just listening to some of their music. Made me sad when I learned that MCA passed.

[Drew Wiley]

I don't know of a single photographer on this forum who EVER claimed everything but rocks n' trees is fraudulent. Not even close. Where did that idea come from?

[jnantz]

Where did that idea come from?

Not hard to read between your lines. As I said it's pretty comical some of the things you have said over the years.
Between people being illegitimate, frauds, or "wasting precious resources" ... it's a bit much.

[r_a_feldman]

It's funny, I did some work for people years ago and they took what I made them and turned them into Christmas cards ( and had the gall to mail me one. LOL ) , others took images and made made them into sleep screen/screen savers on their work computer, others made 20x24 prints on their wall. what can you do, not like I gonna bother to bring the case to Judge Wapner, not worth the time ... the worst though is when you do a job for someone as a news-ist and they pay you a pittance and then sell it's use to the city for like $30G and you see it on busses, billboards, newspapers, brochures &c and you aren't even given a by-line. LOL. whatever.

The US Supreme Court recently heard oral arguments in the case Lynn Goldsmith brought against the Andy Warhol Foundation for (mis)use of her photo of Prince. Apparently (according to NPR) the justices had a fun time in their questioning and even Justice Thomas asked questions. The main qustions are what constitutes “Fair Use” and if Warhol’s work was “transformative” of Goldsmith’s photo.

Here is a link to an analysis of the case, from the perspective of someone who supports the Warhol Foundation’s position: https://hls.harvard.edu/today/suprem...20221012%20(1)