One of my favorite authors (read Winter’s Tale if you read nothing else of his), Mark Helprin, has written an editorial (NYT) arguing that the copyright on works of art should extend indefinitely. Helprin’s arguments seem logical – art doesn’t make much money to begin with, art is hard work, the creator deserves to be rewarded for that work. I’m an artist, so he’s preaching to the choir. Except – since when is anything involving art logical or simple?
Art doesn’t arise through spontaneous generation. Great art, especially literature, always builds on and reacts to earlier works. In order to create something new, artists devour and digest earlier creations; the art of the past is the fertile soil in which today’s art germinates. The current fascination with collage, altered art, and curiosity cabinets is only the most obvious manifestation of art reusing and reinterpreting the past. It is extremely difficult to tell where influence ends and creativity begins, which is why the argument over plagiarism and how to quantify “originality” never ends. (Was Warhol creative when he painted pictures of cans of soup? Was Shakespeare, when he rewrote an earlier play, likely by Thomas Kyd, to get Hamlet? What about T.S. Eliot quoting almost everybody, including both Shakespeare and Kyd, in “The Waste Land”? When does it stop?)
Strangely, artists and authors hold radically different views on copyright. Obviously we’d like to be able to support ourselves through our creative work. We also know that’s not possible for all of us, especially those of us who aren’t willing to market ourselves or run a small business. Yet we still make art anyway – because we get something else out of the creative process. And we don’t much like to be constrained during that creative process by the fear of violating copyright. Art is partly subconscious – we don’t always know where ideas come from. Presumably they come from somewhere. . . or may even be coincidentally similar to something else. How many truly original ideas are there?
That’s the question asked quite effectively in a story by Spider Robinson: Melancholy Elephants.
I wonder how a conversation between Helprin and Robinson would end. . . for instance, Robinson might ask Helprin where he got that catchy title.
Update: for those who are interested, Boing Boing linked to this page refuting Helprin’s stance in great detail.