Google "Richard Prince" and look up how he steals images and reinvents them. Everything from his cowboy photos to recent works of other photographers have provoked the same discussion. Unfortunately he's been caught out a few times.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/06/ar...ts&oref=slogin

As for Francis Bacon, I was under the assumption he took all his own photographs, or had friends take them for him. A year or two ago there was a huge retrospective in London cataloging his works and his influences, providing detailed scrapbooks of where he took his reference material.

Many artists paint directly onto the references.

David, the concept of the Auteur is convoluted and a minefield. On the surface it is easy to call something plagiarism where another would call it allusion or homage. Unfortunately you both will be going round in circles.


Final point I nearly forgot: almost none of Shakespeare's plays were his own. Most classical paintings were not painted by the names they are attributed to. Most history is not a true or fair account.