Cabin Fever: Bits and Pieces (2024)

Back on the Horse

I took a few months off from writing just about anything, with the exception of emails and an 80th-birthday post in December. Among other things, I spent the time pondering this thought:

“Nobody except perhaps a washed-up intelligence agent is less able to survive without his purpose than a dedicated writer.” — William Burroughs, “The Maugham Curse,” in The Adding Machine: Selected Essays (New York: Grove Press, 2013), p. 207.

Having confirmed that I do not feel “without my purpose” — though admittedly uncertain as to what exactly that constitutes nowadays — I put my foot in the stirrup and swung myself up and into the saddle once again. As I’ve done previously, I’ll discover/rediscover my purpose through the daily practice of my craft. Along the way I’ll find the answer to this question: What does a dedicated octogenarian writer have to say?

Here we go.

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(Intellectual) Property is (Not) Theft

I expect to have more to say about these recent verdicts in photo-related copyright lawsuits, but for now let’s just enjoy the first two and ponder the third.

“Richard Prince to Pay Photographers Over $650,000 In Copyright Lawsuits,” by Pesala Bandara, PetaPixel, Jan 29, 2024. Discusses the outcome of cases filed against wealthy “appropriation art” practitioner and serial hacker Prince by photographers Donald Graham and Eric McNatt for Prince’s unauthorized use of their images in production of high-end merchandise sold under his own name. (Full disclosure: I’m a deponent in this case, on the side of the photographers.)

The settlements in these cases follow close on the heels of the Supreme Court decision in the Goldsmith/Warhol fair-use case, which generated all kinds of scare headlines about the death of art from publications that should know better, e.g.:

• “The Andy Warhol Case That Could Wreck American Art,” by Paul Szynol Erik Carter, The Atlantic, October 1, 2022.
• “A Supreme Court Case On Andy Warhol’s Portraits Of Prince Could Force Artists To Change How They Make Art,” by Stephanie K. Baer, BuzzFeed News, October 12, 2022.

I like to imagine Goldsmith hosting an enormous celebration party in her studio for this landmark victory, featuring wild dancing to the sounds of her pseudonymous 1983 album Will Powers: Dancing for Mental Health, which parodies the fads of the early Eighties with its unusual combination of disco fever and self-help audio recordings. You can find out more about it, and sample its delights, here and here.

Will Powers, Kissing with Confidence, Official Video (1983), screenshot

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But then there’s this:

“Kat Von D Beats Photographer in Copyright Lawsuit Over Miles Davis Tattoo,” by Pesala Bandara, January 29, 2024. The jury in this oddball case decided unanimously Von D did not infringe on photographer Jeff Sedlik’s copyright by using Sedlik’s well-known 1989 portrait of famed jazz musician Miles Davis as the basis of a tattoo she inflicted on a friend, free of charge.

I anticipate appeal of this decision to higher courts. Meanwhile, the divergence between these legal outcomes show the inevitable problems resulting from the inherent vagueness of the “fair use” exception to the strictures of the copyright law.

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ATOA Dialogue Video Online

Early last year I posted notices here of a forthcoming Zoom dialogue with Douglas Sheer, co-founder and current president of the critically acclaimed series Artists Talk On Art (ATOA), the art world’s longest-running forum, currently heading toward its 50th anniversary in 2024.

For several reasons, this got postponed twice last spring. So we re-scheduled it for ATOA’s fall season. (I emailed notification of it to all of this blog’s subscribers.) It finally took place live on the evening of November 20, and shortly thereafter the video of it went online at ATOA’s YouTube channel, where you can watch it at your convenience.

The subjects of the conversation range from my childhood through the present, concentrating on the various phases of my professional life and projects.

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CNN = Fox News Lite

Père Ubu, by Alfred Jarry

If you were wondering just how fast CNN could devolve into Fox News Lite, CNN Editor-at-large Chris Cillizza had the answer for you: Just as fast as their little legs could carry them. Read his appalling paean to Trump and Lindsey Graham, “Here’s *exactly* why Donald Trump will likely run again,” published on September 6, 2022. From which you wouldn’t know that America’s homegrown Père Ubu colluded with Russia to gain the presidency, got impeached twice, set off the worst internal attack on our democracy since the Civil War, right now faces multiple indictments from multiple grand juries pursuing multiple criminal investigations, and has stolen and probably sold or bartered or simply given away state secrets — for which behavior espionage charges loom on the event horizon between today and the 2024 election. And that Graham is implicated in much of that.

Boot-licking drivel intended to ingratiate Cillizza and CNN with the Trumpist wing of the GOP and the broader christofascist movement at this particular tipping point. Yes, tune in to watch Cillizza “delve a little deeper into the surreal world of politics.” Not to mention delving a little deeper into the surreal world of terminally corrupted journalism.

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My Two Cents’ Worth on the “Gun Problem”

Watching the NRA’s Wayne LaPierre squirm under interrogation at his corruption trial, this paraphrase of the reasoning of Second Amendment devotees occurred to me:

The problem with guns isn’t guns — it’s people! Guns don’t kill people; people with guns kill people (people with or without guns themselves). So we don’t need to reduce the number of guns available. We need to reduce the number of people available for killing by people with guns. Which people with guns achieve by killing people. There! The problem is its own solution! Fixed it for you!

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Photography Marches On

• “Say cheese: Rats like taking selfies too,” by Issy Ronald, CNN, January 29, 2024.
• A key moment in photo history: Close reading and careful analysis of a photograph vastly expanded the size of the known universe. By funningforrest, Daily Kos, October 6, 2023.
• “The Hottest Gen Z Gadget Is a 20-Year-Old Digital Camera,” by Kalley Huang, Seattle Times, January 16, 2023.
• ” The World’s First Camera Obscura That You Can Take Selfies With,” by Matt Growcoot, PetaPixel, November 15, 2023.
• “This Camera Takes 1,000 Years to Capture a Single Photograph,” by David Nield, ScienceAlert, January 20, 2024.
• “The Woman’s Eyes in This Photo Are Not Blue,” by Pesala Bandara, PetaPixel, May 22, 2023.
• “The digital revolution puts color back into the past,” by Walter Einenkel, Daily Kos, November 26, 2022.

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Reprinted Without Comment from the New York Times

A correction was made on Nov. 3, 2023:
An earlier version of a picture caption with this article misidentified the person whom Leonardo DiCaprio portrayed in “The Aviator.” It was Howard Hughes, not Hugh Hefner.

(See the very end of “Critic’s Notebook: Not the Brightest Killer of the Flower Moon,” by Sean T. Collins, Nov. 3, 2023.)

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This post supported by a donation from Carlyle T.

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