Appropriation Art and Fair Uses: Cariou V Prince (ARTLAW: COPYRIGHT) (Richard Prince Case Against Patrick Cariou ‪)‬

'Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.' So wrote TS Eliot in The Sacred Wood in 1920. His epigram was probably adapted from Igor Stravinsky's comment that 'a good composer does not imitate; he steals', as were sayings attributed to Picasso--'bad artists copy; good artists steal'--and Le Corbusier: 'All artists steal; but the truly original artist repays a thousand-fold.' Each of these truisms was expressed during the first half of the 20th century, before the development of Appropriation Art in the 1970s by US artists such as Richard Prince, Sherrie Levine, Louise Lawler, Elaine Sturtevant, Cindy Sherman and Mike Bidlo. Prince was widely acknowledged as being the principal originator of this postmodern practice when he made what he called 'rephotographs' that appropriated other people's photographic images--notably Untitled (Cowboy), 1989 (using images from Marlboro cigarette advertisements, which fetched $1,248,000 at a Christie's auction in November 2005).