Separd Fairey Mural on Houston and Bowery via Bowery Boogie

Last month artist Shepard Fairey who is single handedly putting a team of lawyers children through college erected a mural at the Elizabeth Houston Associates construction barriers on the corner of East Houston Street and the Bowery. This happened to be in advance of Fairey’s Mayday exhibition at Deitch Projects and the City of New York has decided that the work is in fact an advertisement that violated zoning laws prohibiting advertising and that Elizabeth Houston did not have the permit to erect a structure in the area. The city has issued a stop work order on the building being constructed behind the barriers until this has been resolved.

It would be interesting to have someone up to speed with public art zoning laws in New York City hash out the fine differences between the two. A hearing is in the process of being set for the violation. If found guilty of violating zoning laws, Elizabeth Houston Associates will be issued a fine and ordered to remove the mural.

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.

New York Mag has a interview with Nadia Plesner that makes for an interesting read.

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.

Sue Chewy Vuiton again (and fail again) – If at first you don’t succeed-waste court time agian.

Every Editorial Cartoon ever made that has a Louis Vuitton related caricature – Newspapers used to be for profit industries at one time.

Paris Hilton – A living caricature of a human being who is regularly seen with a LV handbag.

Based out of the University of Wisconsin-Madison “The Onion” is one of the leading, if not now the leading weekly satire publications and has now seen fit to give the spiritual sequel to “The Kentucky Fried Movie” which if you have not yet seen let your fingers do the walking to the nearest phonebook and find a video rental place.
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Pop artist Claes Oldenburg best known for his simple and iconic works of 4 story clothes pins and cherry laden spoons is appearing in court as one of the defendants in a lawsuit placed by the House of Mouse.

Back in 2003 the Disney Co. contracted Mr. Oldenburg, his manufacturers Carlson & Co (a San Fernando art fabrication company best know for building Jeff Koons “Balloon Dog”) and his partner Coosje van Bruggen to build a metal statue of a black bow and tie surrounded by a white wing collar to be placed outside the newly constructed Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles; a building which was designed by friend of the artist Frank Gehry.

Gehry personally promoted the idea of Oldenburg doing the peice and thought that a swanky collar and tie, looking as if they had been tossed on the sidewalk by some colossus, would sound a playfully artful keynote for concert goers and passersby. “Collar and Bow” as it would be called was contracted in May of 2003 for $2.2 million and scheduled to be delivered by Aug. 15, 2004. Donations of $1.85 million from Music Center patrons Richard and Geri Brawerman and $1 million from the J. Paul Getty Trust were expected to cover the cost.

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Japan’s Supreme Court has issued a landmark decision opening the way for the sale of a book of collected erotic photographs by the late Robert Mapplethorpe.

This would over rule a 2003 decision by the Tokyo High Court that banned the book’s sale because it was deemed indecent. Tuesday’s ruling is believed to be the first time the top court has overturned a lower court decision on obscenity.

Publisher Takashi Asai called it “groundbreaking” and predicted the ruling might “change [Japan's] obscenity standard.”

Justice Kohei Nasu said the black-and-white portraits were from an “artistic point of view” and led the majority opinion of the five-judge panel that Mapplethorpe was “a leading figure in contemporary art.”

The justices did, however, throw out Asai’s demand for government compensation of arround $20,000 US.

Japan’s domestic obscenity laws were relaxed in the 1990s but imported publications are handled by customs and the laws still ban images of genitals.

Asai, of Uplink publishers, had argued that the import ban was obsolete, pointing out the Mapplethorpe book was in the Japanese parliament’s library and that copies were offered for sale on the internet.

His company had been selling the Japanese version of Mapplethorpe’s 384-page book since 1994. The book, entitled “Robert Mapplethorpe”, contains 20 close-up photos of male genitalia.

Everything changed in 1999 when airport customs officials in Japan confiscated a copy of the book that Asai had been carrying.

Then Tokyo police visited him and gave him a warning, causing Asai to voluntarily suspend sales of the book in 2000.

Asai decided to go to court and in 2002, he won a case in Tokyo District Court. The government was ordered to give back his book and to pay $6,480 US in damages. But a year later, a higher court overturned that ruling. At that point, Asai took the case to the highest court in the land. Leading to today’s ruling.