New York-based artist Richard Prince was sued for copyright infringement after using a photo of a Rastafarian Smoking a Joint taken by Donald Graham.
According to a report by The Guardian, Prince is known for appropriating other people's art in his work. Graham filed the lawsuit on December 30 against Prince, the Gagosian Gallery, and its owner Lawrence Gagosian. The Gallery is where Prince's images were exhibited from September to October 2014. Graham claimed that Prince reproduced his work without his permission.
The New Portraits collection showcased 37 inkjet prints of Instagram posts called "screen saves." The Rastafarian Smoking a Joint image sold for $100,000 at the Frieze art fair in New York. That sparked the controversy.
PetaPixel reported that the complaint stated that the copyrighted photograph had the original image of the Copyrighted Photograph fully intact. There were only minor changes to the work, which were cropping, and putting it inside an Instagram frame. It has a fist emoji, and the caption "richardprince4 Canal Zinian da lam jam."
Artnet wrote that the suit pointed out that Graham spent two weeks in the mountains of Jamaica back in 1996. He had his photo equipment to capture photographs of Rastafarians in their environment. According to the complaint, the photograph was a "seminal work" in the career of photographer Graham. He even has a 4 feet by 5 feet display of the photograph as "one of only two of his fine artworks (the Copyrighted Photograph being the more prominently featured of the two) at the New York apartment and studio he maintained from 1997 until 2011."
Prince is notorious for appropriating other people's established works. He has been through legal battles in the past. Prince recently settled a copyright case in 2014 after a legal skirmish that lasted for three years. The copyright case was filed by photographer Patrick Cariou whose Cariou's Yes, Rasta, which is a book on Rastafarians, was used by Prince in his Canal Zone series.
