On Oct. 31, New Orleans artist and gallery owner Ally Burguieres was sent a screenshot of a social media post made by Taylor Swift. At first, she was ecstatic to see the post, featuring an illustration she had done, one that is used as the logo for her store. But that moment of excitement, thinking Taylor Swift had shared her work with the world, quickly turned into devastation when she realized it was in fact a copy of her drawing that had been shared. Another New Orleans artist had copied the fox, adding her own signature instead and removing the crown shown in the original drawing. She also added a quote from Swift’s new song, “I Know Places,” which is what led to the post being shared on Swift’s social media pages.
Ironically, Swift has as of late been in the media a great deal talking about her decision to pull her entire music catalog from Spotify, making a point about how important it is for artists to be respected and paid for what they do.
“I’m not willing to contribute my life’s work to an experiment that I don’t feel fairly compensates the writers, producers, artists and creators of this music,” Swift stated, “And I just don’t agree with perpetuating the perception that music has no value and should be free.” She went on to say, “My hope for the future, not just in the music industry, but in every young girl I meet . . . is that they all realize their worth and ask for it.”
Burguieres adds, “The timing of the quote could not be more ironic, as this is an instance in which my work has been pirated from me and shared to millions without consent, credit or any payment.”
Swift even told Rolling Stone a story about an actress she knew who was auditioning for a part: the director narrowed it down to three actresses and chose the one with the most Twitter followers. So she admits to understanding how important social media popularity can be for an artist or performer. She even credits MySpace as a big reason why she got her record deal in 2005. The letter Burguieres sent to Swift stated, “Your work ethic and talent have resulted in the ability to boost other artists to the public stage, and I believe with this power comes a responsibility to correctly credit the images you share and to find positive ways to mitigate damages and mistakes when they occur.”
By the time Burguieres, Swift or her people, or even the artist who copied her work realized what had been done, it was too late. The image had already gone viral, receiving hundreds of thousands of likes and views on Facebook and Instagram, all with another artist’s name attached to it. While Swift’s social media team did remove the posts in early November, they never offered Burguieres a formal apology or made any revised posts crediting her as the original artist.
Burguieres makes it clear that she doesn’t think any of what has occurred was done maliciously. She has communicated with the artist, who admittedly copied her work unaware of what would come out of it, under the impression that she was merely using the image as a reference for her own work. She claims she was not aware the fox belonged to another artist or that it was copyrighted, and also seems to be of the opinion that she had altered it enough, slight changes occurring through the reproduction as well as the removal of the fox’s crown, that it was not an intentional rip off of someone else’s work. Furthermore, Swift’s social media team likely had no idea that this was a copy or that the original image had not only been created by another artist but was also of much personal importance as a logo for that artist’s business. What could have been, and still could be, for that matter, done differently is how it was handled once the mistake was brought to everyone’s attention. While Facebook’s communication team told Burguieres they felt the removal of the posts remedied the situation, it did nothing to give credit to her with the same attention the copied image received. Swift’s team could have gone a step further from removing the posts and actually issued an apology as well as an additional post crediting Burguieres and bringing attention to her small New Orleans boutique the fox now represents. After repeated failed attempts to contact Swift’s team to find a solution, she has hired a lawyer who has been in touch with Swift’s law firm, but nothing has been resolved at this point in time.
This situation, and others like it, brings up many important issues for artists today. On one hand it begs caution from artists who frequently refer to the outlets such as weheartit.com, a sort of image-focused version of Facebook similar to Pinterest, and do Google-image searches to find reference images for their work. But with that database at your fingertips, why seek out live models or take your own photographs for reference when someone else has most likely already taken a similar image and posted it to the web? It also makes working artists wary of sharing their work on the Internet.
You don’t have to look very far into any art community to find a plethora of similar stories about artwork being copied or stolen. Our very own local artists have tales of this happening to them. Local artist Susan Carter entered a logo design contest being held by Nashville’s Frist Center when they first made their move into the old post office downtown. The images she entered had a postage stamp outline around them. Her designs were not chosen, yet the logo the Frist Center uses to this day has a stamp outline.
“I feel they just took from one artist here and another there and called it their own and didn’t award anyone anything,” explains Carter, “I guess someone else could have had my same idea, but . . . it didn’t seem right.”
Nashville artist Holly Marie Matthews had a very recent experience with someone taking credit for her work: “I started at my current job and rebranded the entire company . . . logo, website, biz cards, tradeshow material, et cetera.” After recently beginning the interview process to expand their team, she decided to do some digging around to see where the contractor who previously did design work for the company was now. “On their website they have all of my rebranded work and are claiming they did it themselves.” Their résumé shows that they stopped working with the company a month before Matthews started and began this rebranding for which they are taking credit.
Pamela Travis Cisneros recently discovered that someone on Instagram attempted to repaint several of her paintings and then post them as their own. On one of the posts they gave her a hashtag credit, but not on all of them. “At first I was shocked, then flattered, then kind of befuddled. In this case I don’t think they’re selling them, just [using them] for their personal use and enjoyment, so I’m fine with it,” states Cisneros. She has also been notified of someone using one of her paintings as their profile picture on Facebook. “Once you put something out there online, watermark or not, you no longer have control over it,” she explains.
Other stories include instances of artists teaching their bosses new techniques only for them to turn around and teach workshops on the methods, even asking the original artist who taught them for further advice beforehand but never offering credit or a cut of the profits; or professors stealing concepts and designs from their students.
Local artist Ryan Frizzell (a.k.a. The Rhinovirus) has had his work stolen in many different ways. “I designed a poster once for a benefit I was playing in Chattanooga at JJ’s Bohemia, and the promoter for the show liked the flyer so much they marked out the names and used it for their boyfriend’s band’s show the next week,” Frizzell explains. “Another time a photographer buddy of mine happened to see a 3D design I had done on another band’s flyer locally, and told me [about it]. I was never asked, or given credit. I didn’t care anything about money; just give me credit for the artwork.” Frizzell went on to describe many other situations including everything from people stealing originals out of his portfolio over lunch while he was in the bathroom to other artists using his same characters and themes. “It’s upsetting to an extent, but I don’t own a copyright to any of these things, so what can ya do, but tuck that anger away and shake your mental fists, right?”
While all similar, the particulars of how artwork can be copied, stolen or misrepresented vary from story to story. It can happen in so many different ways, sometimes subtle and questionable, other times blatantly and without shame. All artists react differently, too. Some are flattered or too shocked to form an opinion, while others are insulted and offended. Most artists seem to only want credit for their work, not concerning themselves with money. The lines become particularly blurry when social media is involved, which seems to be the common thread connecting stories of plagiarized artwork. Scott Borchetta, president of Big Machine Label Group and defender of Swift’s decision to leave Spotify criticizes the streaming service, stating, “They take [the music], and they say, ‘We’re going to put it everywhere we want to put it, and we really don’t care about what you want to do. Give us everything that you have and we’re going to do what we want with it.’ And that doesn’t work for us. . . .” And yet it would appear as though that is what they have done with Burguieres’ copied illustration, however accidental it may have been. As both Burguieres and Swift point out, it is important for an artist to have control over how their work is shared. But how can that control be established on the Internet?
For just as many stories as there are about work being stolen, artists are also quick to point out how hard it is to know when theft is actually taking place. Many admit to using reference images from the Internet, and at what point does it stop being referencing and become copying? It is important to note that even if an artist is referencing a photograph rather than a painting or drawing, that photograph is still someone’s artwork. The same goes for designs and clip art. Someone out there took the time to design it. Is it just a matter of hoping you don’t get caught? Or should all artists stop drawing things if they can’t do it from their imaginations alone? Perhaps websites like “Paint my Photo” are the solution. At paintmyphoto.ning.com you will find a database of photographs that have been uploaded directly by the photographers themselves, inviting artists to use their work for paintings and drawings. Or maybe it’s as simple as working a little harder to research the images you want to reference. Perhaps if the artist who referenced Ally Burguieres’ fox had traced the original back to her, she could have asked for permission to reference it. Or maybe some believe that in this case the fox was changed just enough so that it shouldn’t be considered stolen art work anymore, and that permission wasn’t needed.
Since this is obviously an important issue to Swift, we can only hope that she will join in on conversations like these. An extremely respectable and admirable response to the whole situation, given her recent outspoken comments about such issues, would be to invite Burguieres and perhaps other artists into an open, public forum discussion about questions of ownership, control and our rights as artists—both visual and musical. Whether Swift humbles herself to do so or not, the rest of us should. The more stories like this that can be shared, the more open and honest conversations we as artists can have about where to draw the line on theft. Burguieres is aware, perhaps now more than ever, how sensitive and confusing this topic can be.
“It raises questions about the rights of artists when it comes to social media, and the responsibilities of social media users—are they responsible for the content they share? Would the situation have been different if people were able to share music files and other copyrighted art forms in the same way they share visual art? Especially since Taylor just went on a media blitz defending artists’ (i.e. musicians’) rights to control when, how, and under what circumstances their music is made available, it’s interesting to think that we visual artists aren’t able to so easily assert our rights or control the sharing of our creative products.”
She has also said that she doesn’t see a point in looking for fault; she only wants to work with Swift and her team to find a positive solution.
