Just Plain Dumb

Artist Josafat Miranda has agreed to destroy the paintings he made based on other artists’ photographs.

“I didn’t steal these images,” Miranda told the [Artinfo] in his defense. “My only mistake was not giving the original artists credit. I’ve now spoken to them and apologized to them. We came to the agreement that I have to take everything down and destroy it, which is exactly what I’m going to do.”

This makes no sense. If Miranda actually believes his only mistake was lack of accreditation, why destroy the work? My guess is that Miranda knows quite well that his work is not simple plagiarism, but rather outright copyright infringement.

Yes, there are artists out there whose practice is based on mimicking or copying other artists works. The difference is that these artists make it quite clear that copying is at the crux of their conceptual praxis and, more importantly, they don’t attempt to pass off their work as original.

This was just plain dumb.

Via Artinfo.