Gudmundur Gudmundsson more popularly known as Erro is a 77 year old Icelandic artist. Erro first became interested in art when looking at a catalogue for the Museum of Modern Art in New York, leading to him going to art school in Reykjavik at the age of 19. Following further studies in Oslo, Erro travelled across Spain, Italy, France and Germany in the mid 1950’s including studying at the Florence academy of art in 1954 and at the School of Byzantine Mosaic art in Ravenna in 1955. After this in 1958 he settled in Paris, and started displaying his work in a number of museums. If you would like to read more from where I got this information just click on the link. However due to some of his latest pieces of work having very strange resemblances to other artists work, there has been an uproar about him on many art forums and articles on the internet. This latest uproar has been between Erro and a very well known comic book artist called Brian Bolland. Now before I voice my opinions on this I will have to look at the rules when it comes to copyright. As well as the artistic differences between the Erro canvas version and the 'original' Brian Bolland comic book version.
Brian Bolland is a british comic artist born in 1951, brought up in Butterwick, Lincolnshire he is best known for his work as one of the Judge Dredd artists in the British comic 2000AD, he was also part of what is known as the ‘british invasion’ of the the american comic industry this involved Bolland producing artwork for Camelot 3000. Bolland is primarily a cover designer which clearly shows his qualities as I would say it is more important to be producing the front cover of a magazine than the inside pages. When Bolland has produced work for internal pages it has been for high calibre stories such as Batman: The Killing Joke and Batman: Black and White. Bolland had been producing his own self published work at art school, in 1971 Bolland got his first paid job at Time Out an underground magazine in London. After making a number of friends in the business and hundreds of comic strips later in 1977 Bolland got what turned out to be the biggest job he could have expected, Judge Dredd. If you would like to find out more about the background of Brian Bolland then please follow this link.
Copyright laws for visual artists today seem pretty simple. If you create artwork without stating copyright on the image, you still own the copyright to the artwork. However to emphasize the copyright laws there is the copyright symbol that can be placed on your artwork along with name and date the artwork was created. This symbol only makes any difference to the protection of the document if a copyright case goes to court. Even if the original artwork is sold to a buyer this buyer does not have the right to produce more copies unless the rights to the artwork are also bought and stated in writing. Copyright law in the UK as of the latest changes in 2004 cover copying, adapting, distributing, electronic transmission and renting or lending of copies.
The picture above shows Erro pictured with his version of Tank Girl behind him to the left. For you to compare, below is Brian Bolland pictured with his comic version of Tank Girl.
This controversy initially came about when it was noticed at a art exhibition by Mike McMahon that part of one of his comic strips had been essentially copied and reproduced. Who’s name was it on this canvas copy of McMahon’s work, of course it was Erro.
Below is McMahon’s red death comic strip featuring in the bottom right some sort of metal faced thing that strangely resembles what is Erro’s very own masterpiece, that he was displaying proudly in his name at a exhibition. But wait a minute McMahon’s comic strip was created before the canvas version. So how can he be displaying it in his name.
It was this occurrence that alerted others to what Erro has been doing. This included Brian Bolland with his 1995 cover version of comic Tank Girl. As you discover later Brian took on Erro with regards to this and essentially he won. It does make you wonder if Mike McMahon hadn’t gone to this exhibition and noticed his copied work there, how long would Erro have gone on using iconic characters from old comic book strips.
The edition of Tank Girl in question was wrote by Peter Milligan, Pencilled and Inked by Jamie Hewlett and Brian Bolland produced the cover. The work of these was produced on the behalf of Vertigo who published the comic strip. Before the 1980's the cover produced by Brian Bolland would have been owned by Vertigo publishers and not Brian Bolland, but during this time comic illustrators were gradually treat a lot better by publishers with better wages as well as the artist owning the rights to the work they had produced. This obviously continues today and is the reason why Brian was able to write a letter to Erro trying to enforce his writes as the creator of the Tank Girl cover. As the Tank Girl comic was produced by Brian Bolland in 1995, I don't believe the copyright symbol was implemented on Brian Bolland's work. This may be why Erro (Guomundur Guomundsson) decided to use pieces of work like this. There is an argument for him that he has the right of use because it wasn't copyrighted. It doesn't matter whether the work has been copied or pieces have been abstracted, the work is still protected by copyright. I believe however that Brian did put his name and date on the original comic design of the Tank Girl cover, which could be argued in itself provides definite copyright privileges to Brian Bolland. As this was how copyright was implemented by artists before the introduction of the copyright symbol. In the eyes of the law this is a very complex matter. However in some people's mind it shouldn't be a matter of law anyway they say its very simple, I have seen on a couple of posts in forums which say that it is a matter of having morales. By the looks of it Erro doesn't have any morales. I can understand Erro's argument that he has changed the dynamic of the Tank Girl by enlarging it and changing the background. I can't help but think that if he went to the trouble of changing the size and background of Brian Bolland's version why didn't he then re-design Tank Girl himself. Laziness possibly I don't know, or maybe he thought he wouldn't be able to reproduce to magic with his own version of Tank Girl. I am not sure what the copyright laws are for using someone else's artwork as a base and then reproducing your own version of it. I would imagine copyright would still probably require permission from the original creator.
I believe I have tried to demonstrate both Erro's and Brian Bolland's points of view on this situation. I have even looked at a number of sites which set out copyright laws of Iceland which is where Erro (Guomundur Guomundsson) comes from. I thought maybe the reason he has used Brian's work the way he is was because the copyright laws in Iceland are different, which made him think that he wouldn't be infringing on the rights of Brian. However after looking at Iceland's copyright laws I cannot see any major differences that would allow Erro to produce this work in the way he has. And also the French copyright doesn’t greatly differ from our laws, so you have to wonder how the Centre Pompidou exhibition in Paris could allow this work to be displayed without even questioning it.
From what I can see of the research I have done into copyright I believe that Erro was in the wrong. This is reflected by the fact that when Brian Bolland challenged Erro about this on the 20th May, Brian received a very short statement from Erro's agent stating 'we have decided to no longer sell this edition "tank". We have made 20 copies, we sold three copies, we have given 5 copies to Mr ERRO. We'll give him the remaining 12 copies'. There is no mention that the proceeds of the work would be paid to Brian, as he had suggested in the letter he wrote to Erro. So whether they have agreed a settlement or Brain has accepted the withdrawal from sale to be enough, we probably will never know. To view the full letter wrote by Brian to Erro click on this link. If he and his agent truly thought that they hadn't done anything wrong surely they would have continued to have the canvas Tank Girl version on sale. However it is probably fair to say that the amount of money it would have cost to have a legal case would far outweigh the value of 20 canvas Tank Girl's. Erro and his agent would say they didn't want the expense of this so they thought it was easiest to just stop selling his canvas version. However I simply cannot believe the ignorance Erro must have to even use the same name as Brian's original comic version, if I was to copy or base my work on someone else's 'which I never have or will by the way' I would have the sense to give it a different name.
As I have demonstrated this isn't the first time Erro has done such a thing to a fellow artist. I have to say I hope that Erro learns his lesson from his encounter with Brian. I do actually like the work that he added to Tank Girl, so if he was to go about things properly by asking for permission and paying for copyright etc. I think he could become a much liked artist. Whether he does change the way he works or not we will just have to wait and see.
I hope I have managed to put across my views on this subject well and you enjoy reading them. I welcome your thoughts on this topic.
Matt
