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Sunday, August 21, 2005

I Hired This Bruegel Guy...



I let this cat read some of 'Wealth Effects,' and he came up with this as cover art. Hmmmm.

5 comments:

j_ay said...

Good pick, although probably costly. Here’s where it’s housed, so they’d be who you have to go through…

http://www.albertina.at/cms/front_content.php
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna, Austria.

Chixulub said...

Heh, you'd think Bruegal would be public domain. He's been dead for more than 70 years. He's been dead for longer than Disney would even pester Congress about Mickey Mouse for. But I guess there's usage and there's usage. The crap that I can snag on the 'net for my blog isn't something I could really work with for print. Plus, I'd want to colorize the print. that or maybe use it as a small-ish woodcut with a colorful background.

Julie Denesha, the best photographer in the world, would pretty much snap any picture I asked her to and refuse payment from a friend. But she doesn't live in Prague these days, she's a photo editor at the Washington Times, so I guess I blew it, not foreseeing the need for this image when she could have taken rolls of it when passing by Vienna.

In any case, cover art and so on is premature when I haven't even got the ms in shape to where I'd send my friend in Zurich a print out to read. For that matter 'ms' is less short for 'manuscript' than for 'mess' these days. It just seems to get worse.

But it all comes out well in the end. I don't know how, it's a mystery.

j_ay said...

Heh, you'd think Bruegal would be public domain.

Dunno. I really don’t know how any of that stuff works, but if one is using it to market something, some kind of permission has to be obtained. I think.
When I go home I’ll check some Harold Bloom books, he usually uses some Michelangelo stuff. It may be copyright “da Pope” for all I know…

Plus, I'd want to colorize the print.

I bet you’d colourize _Casablanca_ too. You bastard!

Chixulub said...

No, I wouldn't do a Ted Turner. But a Warhol type approach could be fun with Fische.

If I was doing a hardback, it'd be a nice emboss for the coverboard as is; also for the 'wallpaper' that binds the board to the first pages of binding.

But then, if I was doing a hardback, I'd be in deep enough financially that rights would be small beer in terms of expenses.

Still, I think guys who've been dead for 500 years are public domain. The rights to a given reproduction, the electronic file used to produce it, that stuff would be copyright protected, but not the image itself. There's no 'used by permission' or 'courtesy of' note on the "Garden of Earthly Delights" detail on the cover of 'Torture the Artist,' only seperate credits for cover design and cover illustration 'by Hieronymous Bosch.'

And I know some good artists and photographers that would probably do almost anything I can't do for myself for less than the cost of paying a museum for a high res file they have licensing rights to. For that matter, if the museum holding Fische is like American ones I know, an artist can make arrangements to go in and do a copy. General restrictions are usually only that the canvas not be beyond a certain size (usually a pretty large canvas is okay, but they don't want you dragging a ten foot canvas in). Also, the rules usually call for the reproduction to be a different size thant he original, at least two inches larger or smaller, presumably to prevent fraud.

Which is really amazing, if you think of it, the idea of letting an art student who's only gone to the trouble to make a couple of phone calls, come into a gallery and set up with easel, paints and solvents right in front of a priceless treasure. They won't let your kid bring their Mickey Mouse doll in because they're afraid it'll get thrown into a Monet, but they'll let a college student equipped perfectly to deface the same set up shop. I'm sure the guards keep a close eye on the copy student, but still...

j_ay said...

I checked two recent Bloom books, both sporting a detail from the Sistine Chapel. Apparently the ceiling has an agent (of sorts) and the photos are accredited to “Scala/ Art Resource, NY”.

I'm sure the guards keep a close eye on the copy student, but still...

Yes, as a student at an art school at one time I got an invite to have everything set up for me (ahhh, the benefits of being cool with professors), but I never felt the desire and it’s *far* too exhibitionistic (people gawk at you more than they do the real painting). Yes, the canvas has to be a different size AND stamped on the back…I think it’s even ‘property of’, as the museum can claim it from you if they wished. I may be wrong.
But yes, when your appointment happens a guard is certainly posted nearby. Drop clothes all around, etc.

I’m not sure how photography would work, as most museums shun this (in the Sistine Chapel they don’t even want you to talk)…and it would need all the proper lighting and stuff to not get a horrible glare off the glass, etc.