In an intellectual property-focused class I took in college, we spent a whole week arguing about whether artist Richard Prince's photo appropriations of Jamaican Rastafarian portraits by Patrick Cariou was legally just or not. The courts couldn't agree on whether he was abusing the fair use doctrine, and the issue was only recently settled out of court, despite the battle going on for seven years. Our class kept discussing the issue of privilege, and whether cultural appropriation (on top of intellectual appropriation) should be brought into the legal system. None of us could agree.
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Prince is back at the image appropriation game, it appears, as he's been uploading extremely meta Instagrams detailing physical print-outs of other artists' and celebrities' own Instagram photos. Unlike the Carious case, there is so enough privilege from both the appropriation source and appropriationist that the result ends up being rather funny, and an interesting commentary on social media. I imagine this is what it might look like if TMZ entered the fine arts game with a particular interest in selfies.The photos of the print-outs of the photos (woof) are 48x56", and include images of celebs like Sky Ferreira, Pamela Anderson, Glenn Greenwald, and some internet-famous whatevers. There's no word on whether these are part of an upcoming exhibition, but I'd be shocked (and sick to my stomach) if one of Prince's new celebrity subjects sued him for copyright infringement. See some of the meta-grams below:
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