voilà un beau cas à défendre pour ceux qui se disent artistes
enfin, beau, c'est pas vraiment le mot, mais surement plus couillu que la gueguerre fratricide anticatholique, combat historiquement bourgeois d'ailleurs
en gros c'est la marque Louis Vuitton qui attaque une artiste, parce qu'elle représente un de ses sacs dans un tableau, porté par un enfant africain
je trouve pas de bon article en français désolé, lvmh et la mediasphere française c'est une grande histoire d'amour
Artist takes out new suit in old Louis Vuitton case
Wednesday, 30 March 2011 20:22
Nadia Plesner made her first court appearance in her case against Louis Vuitton last week
[Plesner’s ‘Darfurnica’, celebrated by the culture minister at its local opening, includes the disputed Louis Vuitton image]
Louis Vuitton is once again pursuing artist Nadia Plesner over images she uses in her art, which the French fashion giant claims include its own copyrighted design: the iconic ‘Audra’ multi-coloured bag.
Louis Vuitton has successfully obtained a Dutch court order instructing her to remove the offending image from her website, publicly displayed paintings, and anywhere else. It also imposes a fine of 37,000 kroner per day that the image is displayed.
Plesner, who lives in the Netherlands, is appealing against the decision, which was ex parte – meaning that she was not present in the court when it was made on January 27. At the time she was in Denmark promoting her debut solo exhibition ‘Intervention’, which contains the offending image.
The ‘Intervention’ exhibition centres around a faithfully-sized recreation of Picasso’s ‘Guernica’ – which is entitled ‘Darfurnica’, and designed to create awareness of the plight of Darfur, and create debate about the priorities of the celebrity-obsessed media, by juxtaposing elements of popular culture with harrowing images of third world suffering.
At the centre of the piece is an African child carrying those most iconic trappings of western luxury: a clothed chihuahua and the problematic designer bag.
The image of the child first appeared in 2007 in her ‘Simple Living’ campaign on t-shirts and posters that Plesner sold in order to raise money to help the people of Darfur.
Then as now, Louis Vuitton took exception to what it perceived to be its product being portrayed. As a result, on April 15, 2008, Plesner became involved in a lawsuit issued in Paris, which claimed damages totalling over €1 million.
In the face of prolonged litigation that Plesner’s lawyers said could stretch up to ten years, Plesner finally agreed to stop selling the t-shirts in June 2008. Although she didn’t pay the damages, Louis Vuitton let the matter drop.
But Plesner wanted a way for the image to both live on and be more protected by freedom of information legislation. Consequently she decided to incorporate it into her next large artwork ‘Darfurnica’.
According to Plesner, the theme of the piece is “the disappearing boundaries between the editorial and advertising departments in the media”.
As she says on her website: “With terrible atrocities happening in Darfur, how is it possible that it is glossy ‘news’ that has dominated the headlines in the same time period? Has show business outruled human rights?”
The latest controversy developed when the ‘Intervention’ exhibition by the Esplanaden3 gallery in Copenhagen came to the attention of Louis Vuitton, which claimed that ‘Simple Living’ t-shirts and posters were once again being sold.
Plesner has filed her own counter-lawsuit against Louis Vuitton in the Netherlands, in which she claimed that the gallery sold a few t-shirts depicting the image until 26 January 2011, but that she personally had not sold any since she had agreed not to. She went on to claim that a t-shirt that Louis Vuitton said it bought there was in fact sold by a ‘Danish newspaper’.
Besides the matter of merchandise, Louis Vuitton’s accusations centre on the contravention of its intellectual property rights, and explicitly references her painted artwork.
As Louis Vuitton says in its court summons: “Plesner has included the picture in a painting that the Galleri Esplanaden has recently been offering for sale.”
Plesner responding by claiming that Louis Vuitton is now backtracking and trying to claim that it was only concerned about selling t-shirts and posters.
According to an article from March 16 in Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter, a Louis Vuitton spokesman confirmed that its concern was merely the merchandising issue.
Plesner, however, said she has asked Louis Vuitton to lift the ex parte order, and it has not done so.
Despite this, Herning’s ‘Heart’ museum of contemporary art has been showing the ‘Intervention’ exhibition since March 22. The museum’s director, Holger Reenberg, was outraged at this attempt to curtail artistic expression, viewing it as part of a trend that sees ever more attempts to limit artistic freedom. He said of the lawsuit: “This arouses the rebel in me, for it is an agenda-setting case.”
It seems the core argument that the case will be decided upon is whether or not the image shows an exact copy of the Louis Vuitton bag, and if not, whether closely imitating its famous pattern is enough to warrant restrictions – especially in an artistic, and largely non-commercial context.
It’s clear there are many who favour the freedom of expression side of the argument however. On March 11 the Danish Visual Artists’ Association, Bkf, came out in support of Plesner, promising financial support for the lawsuit.
According to Bkf lawyer Klaus Pedersen, artists have a long tradition of being inspired by and using motifs and elements from the world around them.
Even the template for ‘Darfurnica’, Picasso’s ‘Guernica’, was inspired by newspaper photos of war, and it too sought to raise awareness of the Spanish Civil War. The significance of this is not lost on Plesner.
“I have tried to create a modern version of the painting to show how the media is today, where everything is mixed together in a big hotchpotch and is just quickly entertaining, sensation-based and superficial,” she explained.
http://www.cphpost.dk/culture/culture/122-culture/51329-artist-takes-out-new-suit-in-old-louis-vuitton-case.html
