Jun 29, 2021
Topic 4: Authorship and Collaboration
‘Collaboration’ vs ‘Plagiarism’. Where do I see the line between these two?
Personally, (and I am sure there are many artists who agree with me) is that it is better to work alone rather than collaborating. However, if you are trying to create a project or building an installation that requires the help of others you’ve got nowhere to go but to collaborate.
Moreover, collaborating with other artists is never easy. However, when you are with people who you can trust, there is good communication skills and knows each other well, it is certain that both of the parties will produce good work. To get there, it takes a lot of time as much as anything else to have a good product of work.
On the other hand, reproducing the work of others may seem that is plagiarised but as I see it, doing something with good intentions I do not count as plagiarism.
An artist who collaborated with found images and manipulated them in his own way is Andy Warhol. “He preferred working with found images and searched through the public library of New York…” https://www.famousphotographers.net/andy-warhol
This artist worked with found images of celebrities to create on his famous and iconic screen-printing techniques. As I see it, this artist worked on a technique that led him to create another genre in art which nowadays is referred to as Pop Art. Having not been able nor allowed the idea of collaborating with others we would not have this genre in Art. It is important to collaborate and experiment — the end result might surprise you as it did to Andy Warhol.
