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Can someone help me ID a Picasso painting?

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Emma Winner

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Aug 28, 2004, 10:35:48 PM8/28/04
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I picked this up at a Thrift Store. Feels real, but is most probably
not (I don't have such luck!).

The signature is "Picasso 22" and it looks like his signature and his
MO was to put a year after the signature.

Here's the painting:

http://twinforks.com/picasso.jpg

If anyone knows what this is, send an e-mail to picasso AT
twinforks.com

Thanks!

King Rundzap

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Aug 29, 2004, 9:58:16 AM8/29/04
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The url you posted isn't working, and the domain itself
(twinforks.com) seems to be not working.

Yes, it's very unlikely that you picked up a Picasso at a thrift
store, lol. It could "feel real", but most stretched canvas covered
in paint would feel real :-)

The "Online Picasso Project",at http://www.tamu.edu/mocl/picasso/, by
the way, has a lot of his works online. I'm not sure if they have
pictures of all of it, yet, but the goal is to create an online
catalogue raisonne. I would check for your work there first. It will
give you information on the current owner of each work. Maybe you
picked up a student copy.

--King Rundzap

y...@askjfk.com (Emma Winner) wrote in message news:<1b0df3ea.04082...@posting.google.com>...

Milton

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Aug 29, 2004, 1:57:45 PM8/29/04
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Unless you got REALLY lucky it looks like the painting is adopted from

Pablo Ruiz Picasso
Les amoureux.
Paris. Winter/1923. Oil on canvas. 130,2 x 97,2 cm. National Gallery
of Art, Washington. OPP.23:04; Z.V:014; PP.23:030; P.III:1330; DC:308

© Estate of Pablo Picasso/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Larger On-Line Picasso Project Image Available for Consultation
For questions please CONTACT the On-Line Picasso Project

Here's the URL (which may or may not work):

http://csdll.cs.tamu.edu:8080/picasso/PicassoBrowseItem?id=3125

Credit to the King for the mentioning the great site.

kingr...@hotmail.com (King Rundzap) wrote in message news:<425a3330.04082...@posting.google.com>...

Emma Winner

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Aug 29, 2004, 6:39:27 PM8/29/04
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sorry...

the url needs a JPG at the end...

http://twinforks.com/picasso.jpg

This is obviously a dupe of "The Lovers." Also it's signed -- is that legal?

Here's the signature:

http://twinforks.com/picassosig.jpg

thanks

King Rundzap

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Aug 30, 2004, 6:58:07 AM8/30/04
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y...@askjfk.com (Emma Winner) wrote in message news:<1b0df3ea.04082...@posting.google.com>...

Yeah, it's a copy of that work. This opens up many great areaa for
discussion if anyone else is interested (I haven't noticed these
topics done to death on rec.arts.fine, but maybe I just overlooked
them). Copying the work of other artists is pretty standard in the
artworld, and has been standard for centuries. Students are even
encouraged or required to do it. The basic thinking is that in trying
to copy someone else's work, you're figuring out how they did the
work, and you'll be picking up techniques you can use later, in your
own works. It's not very different from bands doing cover songs.

Also standard is everything from doing your own version of someone
else's work (but not trying to copy it exactly) to appropriating or
referencing select elements of their work, whether conspicuously or in
a very veiled way.

It's interesting that current copyright law in the U.S. doesn't
exactly cohere with this practice in the artworld, but apparent
standards have emerged. The basic idea at present is that one can
copy, or do a "close version" of another's copyrighted material (and
all artworks are copyrighted upon creation, by definition in the U.S.
copyright law) as long as the copy is for "personal use" only, and not
exchanged for profit or used for public promotion.

Additionally, copyright is not forever. The basic rule (although
there are many exceptions, http://www.unc.edu/~unclng/public-d.htm has
a good chart of those) is that copyright extends for the life of the
author plus 70 years after the author's death. For the Picasso work
that you acquired a copy of, it is difficult to tell if is still
copyrighted or if it is now in public domain. That would take some
research, since for its time period, it depends on whether it was
published with a copyright notice, whether the copyright was renewed,
etc. The copyright on it would at least expire in 2018, as the law
now stands.

Now, suppose that the Picasso work is still copyrighted. Technically,
the thrift shop selling the copy did violate copyright. However, the
biggest factor that makes it an issue or not is whether the copyright
holder (in this case Picasso's estate) decides to take legal action.
The main concerns there tend to be the costs of taking legal action
versus the likelihood of receiving damages and being reimbursed for
the legal costs, and that is usually also balanced against the
copyright holder's assessment how potentially damaging the copy is (is
it receiving a lot of publicity? May it put the copyright holder in
what they consider to be a 'bad light'? Could it take away public
credit for the work? etc.) The bottom line is that the Picasso
estate isn't likely to go after a thrift shop that made a few dollars
on a copy. It's too expensive, they're unlikely to be reimbursed for
their costs in taking legal action (supposing that the Thrift Store
loses), and it's just not that damaging, as it's not receiving a lot
of publicity and it's unlikely to ever be professionally mistaken for
the real thing.

Another interesting thing to discuss is a very ambiguous aspect of the
copyright law--just how close to the original does a copy have to be
in order to violate copyright? The standard has been to base this on
either percentages or something like "likelihood that an average
person would be able to tell that the work is essentially a copy of
the original", but as you can guess with something so vague, those
standards continually change, fairly quickly. There are also
"loopholes" for works quoted with intentions of criticism, spoof, etc.

It's interesting to note that a lot of famous pop art that has made
artists, subsequent owners, galleries, auction houses, etc. a lot of
money (think of Warhol, Lichtenstein, etc.) was a copy of some other
copyrighted work, and there are questions about the extent to which
those artists received permission to use the copyrighted works.

--King Rundzap

Emma Winner

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Aug 30, 2004, 10:51:48 AM8/30/04
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Thanks for the thorough answer. You would think copying the signature
would be a major no-no. I read that Picasso was very worried about
counterfeiting and put the date after his signatures to help prevent
that. But I guess one could copy the date, too.

I do see knockoff paintings in those mall "art" shops. Most are very
bad repros. This one looks just like the original except the colors
are more subtle (at least gauging from the web).

sarpedon

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Aug 31, 2004, 9:16:00 PM8/31/04
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kingr...@hotmail.com (King Rundzap) wrote in message news:<425a3330.0408...@posting.google.com>...

A related issue is that while the work itself may have passed out of
copyright, the owner may retain the soul rights to reproduction and is
making money from sales of photos, prints, etc. It is the
reproduction, itself, that may be copyrighted.

sarp

King Rundzap

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Sep 1, 2004, 8:18:46 AM9/1/04
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You can copyright particular reproductions (such as particular
photographs), but once the work is in public domain, anyone can
legally reproduce the work. There isn't a separate "reproduction
copyright" that you can hold. The only way to (maybe) restrict the
work at that point from being photographed and published, for example,
is to have it on private property that has a policy against
photographing particular or all items. I say "maybe" parenthetically
there because I'm not sure of the legality of trying to prohibit
photography of something like that . . . not sure if anyone has
challenged it legally.

But the whole idea of copyright is that only the copyright holder has
the right to reproduce (copy) the work for profit, or produce a
"likeness" of the work for profit.

--King Rundzap

the_...@yahoo.com (sarpedon) wrote in message news:<59b1da2d.0408...@posting.google.com>...

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