Visual Plagiarism

What is Visual Plagiarism?

Visual Plagiarism is where you take somebody else's ideas and work and pass them off as your own. It is considered both cheating and theft- if a student plagiarises, it is viewed as an attempt to gain an advantage over other students in assessments and gradings as they are trying to use other people's ideas and works.
In the working world it is an even more serious offense and is treated as theft- the plagiarist is stealing another person's work to use it as their own and this can result in a hefty fine, a lengthy lawsuit and a ruined reputation.

What about homage?

It's not all so black and white in the art and design world. People can pay 'homage' to, or be greatly inspired by, the works of others from previous times.

A classic example of this is the painting 'Night Hawks' by Edward Hopper (1942).

It is his most famous painting and also one of the most copied... but not plagiarised. How?

These two images are so obviously directly influenced by 'Night Hawks', it would be easy to say that the artists plagiarised the work. However, being inspired by another person's work and creating a piece that pays direct reverance to that work is often referred to as 'homage' and there is a long standing history of this in art and design.

Homage would be plagiarism if the artist tried to say that the work was all their own creation... But this would be an incredibly stupid move and it's obvious with a painting so famous as 'Night Hawks' that any copies would be a homage to it.

The problem today (especially with the help of the internet) is that the plagiarism of lesser-known works is becoming much more common. Artists and designers today are now combatting this and there has been a rise in court cases against infringing individuals in the USA especially.

Examples of Plagiarism

This image is the original artwork of Samantha Ravndahl, who is the artist, model and photographer of this piece.

This is Lil' Kim's cover for her Nov 2013 single 'Dead Gal Walking', clearly directly taken from Samantha's photograph. Lil' Kim and her team are now facing legal action from Samantha as a result of this, and are being sued for a massive $150,000.

(sourced from http://youthoughtwewouldntnotice.com/ and http://www.musictimes.com/)

In this image the work on the left is plagiarised from the photography work on the right.

Copying a photograph in another media is still plagiarism- although you could say 'I used the photo as a reference' that would be untrue as the details, composition and content of the images are almost exactly the same as the photos.

Another thing to note is that reference photographs should always be credited (even if they are free use you should always check the terms- some sites may require a license or other registration before you can use them!) and some stock providers will not allow their stock to be used commercially.


(sourced from http://youthoughtwewouldntnotice.com)