Nadia Plesner, a Danish 26-year-old art student, designed a T-shirt depicting a Darfurian child holding a Louis Vuitton bag with a Chihuahua on his shoulder in the vein of Paris Hilton. The image was printed on t-shirts to bring about increased attention to the plight of Darfur and the West’s insistence to trivialize or overlook the issues there.
In February of this year the Marc Jacobs run House of Louis Vuitton issued a copyright lawsuit demanding $20,000 a day for each day she continued to use this image and reimbursement for legal fees. Plesner is scheduled to meet with Louis Vuitton in Paris with her lawyer on May 30th since she refused to comply.
While the House of Louis Vuitton is busy spending thousands of dollars suing her instead of capitalizing on the moment by making a donation in her name to charity and realizing that parody/caricature and non competitive market copyright have a considerable barring on this “copyright” case. May Bad at Sports suggest other parody related/for profit targets for their attention. SNL Season 31: Episode 10 - Where a copyrighted Louis Vuitton like background was used to parody a sweet sixteen skit.
Building on its long history of supporting the arts, today Gap introduced Artist Editions T-Shirts, a limited edition collection of t-shirts designed by 13 of today’s most influential contemporary artists, including Chuck Close, Jeff Koons, Marilyn Minter, Kiki Smith, Cai Guo-Qiang, Barbara Kruger, Ashley Bickerton, Kenny Scharf, Glenn Ligon, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Kerry James Marshall, Hanna Liden and Sarah Sze.
Gap worked in close partnership with the Whitney Museum of American Art and Art Production Fund to create the collection with the 13 artists, who are all previous Whitney Biennial participants. The Whitney Biennial is a special exhibition held every two years at the Whitney Museum of American Art that features the most important contemporary art in the United States. Gap is a proud sponsor of the 2008 Whitney Biennial.
The limited edition collection is available exclusively at select Gap stores in the U.S., Canada, the U.K. and franchise markets, as well as online in the U.S. at gap.com. It’s also available at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and at Colette, a Paris-based boutique. The t-shirts range in price from $28 to $38.
I am not a music purist or an art hardliner by any stretch of the imagination. I am daily amazed at the fact that the art world thinks advertising is a four letter word and that any ounce of success is met with buckets of scorn. I do have to say though that in all the years that I have kept up with the art business and the advertising business I have rarely if ever seen a mix of art and commerce so off putting and poorly fitting as Vera Wang’s latest blitz for her new clothing line at Kohls.
As you can see and hear in the video below the concept is three women (an asain, a redhead & a blond) are driving across the American west (ala a trip with Raoul Duke and Dr. Gonzo) with their hair down and feet swaying in the breeze to the tune of…………. America’s “Horse With No Name”. Whether deservingly or not the song has a inherited theme that is about as contrary to the message of the video as is really possible.
It’s as if the writer of the concept was so determined to get the idea of “American” across in the commercial he/she picked the song cause it was written by a band called America and matched his/her use of the barren desert. I can only assume the person went to U2 and tried to get the rights to the song “In God’s Country” and was rightfully told to take a hike and this was their second choice?
To me this is as tasteless as the Sony PSP ad promoting the new “white” player by showing a Aguileraesque white girl death gripping a black girl. Also as mindless as the rightfully humorous perfume ad in Eddie Murphy’s film Boomerang
Vera waits for years to release her budget conscious clothing line to have it played this way? You know someone in that boardroom thought this was dumb but I guess had the sense to keep his/her job and say nothing.
