As a person who spends all day looking at contemporary art as my job, everyone in my field considers this lawsuit totally insane. The way Sarah Morris's audience (and she has a very big one) approaches her work has absolutely nothing to do with the way Lang's work is approached. Unless origami masters are using terms like "endgame", "the death of painting," or "the history of abstraction."
Fine art is really about invisible distinctions between existing objects, the difference between Duchamp's urinal and any other urinal. Contextualizing something in a contemporary art museum, even a much more direct appropriation than this, radically transforms it. In my view, applying intellectual property violations to contemporary artworks is at least as insane as any of the software patent shenanigans we have seen. No one is happening upon Morris's work and thinking she is a great origami designer.
Why would that give someone a pass on copyright law that would, were the copy not deemed fine art, get someone in a mess of legal trouble?
I see a weird connection here with claims of exemptions to copyright violations from people saying that the avi file they have is really just a very large integer.
As iffy as the "is it art" question can be, I think it is safe to assume that if it is on display as art, as these paintings were, then it is art. Being on display makes it clear the intent was for it to be art, which should be enough to answer any legal questions in which "artness" is a factor.
Yes. At the margins, it's a complicated argument. But many people and institutions have purchased Morris's work for hundreds of thousands of dollars, and she has shown all over the world.
Fine art is really about invisible distinctions between existing objects, the difference between Duchamp's urinal and any other urinal. Contextualizing something in a contemporary art museum, even a much more direct appropriation than this, radically transforms it. In my view, applying intellectual property violations to contemporary artworks is at least as insane as any of the software patent shenanigans we have seen. No one is happening upon Morris's work and thinking she is a great origami designer.