I’ve spoken at length about artistic theft, its effects on an individual’s career trajectory. At the time I had done many hard things; I survived a divorce, multiple family deaths, a near-death experience during a vacation, but speaking about creative theft was the hardest. Doing so affected my sense of safety in a professional space, and I risked my integrity to bring it to light. Dr. King once said “The moral arc of the universe bends towards justice,” and I wanted to believe my industry would rally around my call for accountability and change of practice. It was not ready.
But the digital landscape is changing so fast that I need to try again. I thought a long time about why this happened to me, an innovator and a generous teacher. The manipulation tactics of the thief reminded me of high school, but that didn’t cover everything. The wave of internet bullying and vitriol that followed the unveiling resembled the conservative Christian culture I’d departed half a decade earlier, but there was still deeper to dig. Simultaneously I was diving into social justice and anti-racism within my work when I made a connection: artistic theft is diet appropriation.
A lack of citation is whiteness at work.
Copying is a teaching tool, an integral one. This series is called The Case for Copying, after all. We learn through imitation from a young age; it is hardwired into our development and helps us physically mature, discover a sense of self and fit into society at large. I’ve written extensively on its use as a stepping stool to inspiration, never the origin or destination. Copying is the path to innovation, and like a highway we all drive upon it, but nobody wants to linger on the side of the road. The destination is far more interesting. You can read about this here. But how we use unhealthy copying is rooted in whiteness. Anyone subscribing to white capitalism can perpetuate this harm. Conversely, everyone is equally equipped to help eradicate this problem. Artists can actively divest from white supremacy by learning how to properly copy and cite their sources.
Turning On a Dime
Selma Burke had done the impossible by 1943. Sculpture was a childhood hobby she refined in her spare time as a private nurse. Burke eventually gained notoriety during the Harlem Renaissance which helped her pivot into a full-time artistic pursuit. Her skills won her a chance to sculpt President FDR, but she struggled with the provided photo references. When she wrote to the White House and requested to work from life, she didn’t imagine that she, a Black woman, would be warmly invited to hold a sitting with the aging President. She completed the side profile bas relief plaque, which was installed shortly after his death in 1945 in the DC Recorder of Deeds Building.
It is here that the story ironically turns on a dime.
When the US Mint decided to memorialize Roosevelt on the dime face, they hired artist John Sinnock, who was reported to have visited her finished bas relief and taken one of her sketches back to the mint. What transpired next is the subject of speculation, but as time passes historians confidently claim the chief engraver of the mint stole Selma Burke’s sketches. An article in Our State shares her unfiltered thoughts.
Burke, however, stated adamantly, from then until her death in 1995, that the design was hers. “I’m so mad at that man,” she said of Sinnock during an interview in 1994. “This has happened to so many black people.” The U.S. Mint has said that the historical record supports Sinnock’s claim, and that anyone who might be able to say otherwise has long since died. Still, Burke remained adamant: “Everybody knows I did it.”
This is why I am still adding to The Case for Copying. This is a case for industry-wide change for professionals perpetuating crimes against other professionals. As the internet democratizes history, we learn about brilliant minds like Burke, it also enables others like Sinnock to abscond with something they did not build, think, or dream. Social media platforms know they are running on the fuel of independent creatives, and they pressure us to share technique. Process sharing is critical to democratizing skill, but without philosophy, history, or personal perspective, we’re producing artists that build without thinking. Technique is replicable but concept is still king in our digital world. If we teach someone “why” rather than “how,” we give them a runway to build indefinitely from their own experiences. Even in the portrait world, Burke explains her choices to render FDR as a younger, neoclassical icon. She chose to capture him as a timeless leader. History didn’t need to recollect the physical effects of public service written on his face. Sinnock never met Roosevelt, so how can he explain this aspect of his final portrait, other than stealing Burke’s firsthand account?
The Big Business of IP
We artists grapple with the ethics around citation and copying, not because they aren’t clear, but because of the complexity surrounding a system we benefit from and helped build. We have been exploited and still perpetuate these wrongs because “It’s an industry standard.” Curation in part got us here. If we needed an image to fill holes in our engagement schedule, we could say “unidentified source” or “credit to the artist.” Simply, that’s a cop-out, but it trickled down from the internet celebs and brands. Plugging other artists alleviated the burden of constant creation, but it accelerated vitality to an unsustainable pace. It became exploitation, which sounds a lot like the human labor atrocities that built our country. Despite writing the rules of Internet engagement, they still fail us. Some of these chaotic practices are only ballooning as we warily gaze into Web 3.0. For my part, a taste of internet notoriety and dangling financial stability isn’t enough to keep me quiet. I want better for those coming behind me.
There are many precedents for IP enforcement. Look at the fashion industry, especially abroad, where it is illegal to purchase knock-offs in some countries. Yes, you can go to jail for purchasing a fake LV bag. You can also wind up in a lawsuit for repurposing old hardware like Chanel buttons into jewelry. Why? Because these are multi-billion dollar, government regulated industries. France has a branch of government dedicated to fashion. Germany has dedicated tax codes and relief aid for artists. Protections are built into their economies because they recognize the economic value and cultural power of creative expression.
Stateside creatives do not have federal backing, but look at the infringement cases going to court, such as this series of battles between Nike and Sketchers. The courts recognize these side by side photos as substantial evidence. While Sketchers fails to cleanly replicate Nike’s shoes, they are definitely trying. And the pursuit of theft is punishable.
Tech and other big businesses can file advanced trademarks on platform features and lets them stipulate derivative use because they hold buying power. The government protects these rights but not those of individuals. And we cannot wait for legislation to catch up; American law could never. As we move into NFTs and DeFi blockchain, we can train programmers who write AI and code machine learning. We can take responsibility while we morph into a decentralized internet. Instead of acting like helpless victims, we could recognize our own power. Are we simply not taking ourselves seriously enough?
Ideas are Not Free
Why is it so important that we fill this gap? Because most of the world is still trapped inside with nothing but a shoddy internet connection to the outside world. Pro creatives are hungry for inspiration and growing desperate for work. Art students are lost in the education gap produced by COVID-19. They’re scared and pressured to hit vitality to escape their bills. Giant brands take advantage of peak traffic and churn through trends to make their estimates. The algorithm-driven internet is creating accelerated trend cycles and creatives are burning out while trying to stay afloat. Everyone is desperate and exhausted.
Most importantly, when we steal from each other in the short term, we are likely contributing to broader erasure of marginalized groups— Black and Indigenous artists, the queer community, the Latine and Asian communities, women, and those with overlapping identities listed here —in the long term. Why normalize discussion of theft? Because I want a better world where everyone profits handsomely from their ideas.
We rob these groups of credit in real time and write them out of history. Recently I had to rethink my love of F Scott Fitzgerald when I learned he plagiarized his wife’s letters and personal journals. He also thwarted her writing career out of jealousy, not once but twice. History wonders why she spent her last years in a mental hospital. My own story of artistic theft left me raw and without language to define my own experience. My exploration led me to whiteness. I am a white woman writing about my theft, and I was exploited by those who believe ideas are free and floating in the ether, waiting to be capitalized upon. Based on my privilege, I can surmise this happens to vulnerable people more frequently and with greater consequences.
What is Enough?
When we pluck an idea from somewhere, there is usually a root; that root is often a marginalized person. One of the fastest ways to escape poverty and create wealth is through creative innovation. Whiteness-driven capitalism likes to whittle down ideas and repackage them into consumable nuggets. This usually means stripping away culture, identity, and other signifiers of origin so consumers who have never experienced a concept can do so without barriers. We’ve all seen examples: yoga, protective hairstyles, streetwear, voguing, Tiktok dances, ethnic foods. Don’t know anything about Desi culture? Okay but have you tried Moon Milk/Tumeric Lattes? Within those origins are a purpose. A history. A rich context for being. Citation matters because it gives us access to the whole story. The best creative work weaves a story from seemingly unrelated source points, and it is a gift to make those connections. Pleasure activist Adrienne Marée Brown said it best in Jocelyn Glei’s Hurry Slowly podcast,
“Whiteness does not see and uplift the lineage of ideas. Where did something come from, and who taught it to you? Where did you receive the gift from?... I think about that for privileged people. You receive a lot of guidance and gifts from people without thinking ‘How do I support this?’ ... If you like my work, you need to know it comes from Audre Lorde… Octavia Butler. There are modern ways to support this lineage. Are you in touch with what it is to have enough?”
If we don’t have enough, we consume to fill a void. Our voids look like many things: a lack of cultural identity, striving for perfection, searching for safety in conformity. These are markers of whiteness that create a culture of fear rather than competence. It’s much easier to digest a sweet new concept when we’ve filled ourselves with introspection. We’re not starving for new ideas. Anything added is a benefit.
Innovation theory, the concept that free ideas create innovation in the free market, this implies equal treatment, which is non-existent. “Innovation requires equality,” says historian Dr Lisa Cook. Her Planet Money episode on patent history discusses how Black inventors patented most of America’s modern conveniences over the course of a decade. The patent economy flourished until Plessy vs Furguson, the “Separate But Equal Americas” court case. Dr. Cook argues that violence impacts innovation and cripples our ability to create.
Violence looks like many innocuous things, like barring Black inventors from research libraries or changing the expiration dates on their IP without notifying the filers. Violence also looks like the Tulsa Riots, after which patent filings completely dropped off around the country because there was no promise of legal or physical protections. Not even for the rich, especially if they were Black. According to Dr. Cook’s calculations, the United States lost out on 100,100 inventions from Black inventors. “The number of patents that were lost would be equivalent to a midsized European country… a Netherlands.”
Innovation occurs only when those innovating feel safe to publish, protected within the bounds of society or the law. If we are sniping ideas, nobody is safe. One of the questions Dr. Cook received from scholars reviewing her paper was “Why would someone care about a lynching across the country and why would that affect innovation?” This question was posed pre-internet, and it feels ridiculous now. We can’t handle being confronted over twitter. Why would anyone risk innovating when their actual lives were endangered by being too brilliant? Dr. Cook asks “Why risk innovation when the system proved it would not protect you?” The statement burned my ears and ran like oil down my body because I had asked myself the same question.
Ethical Carbon Footprints
I’m thinking about my ethical carbon footprint a lot these days. As I write this, Texas has in fact frozen over. It is easy to draw parallels between grabbing obvious source material from google and buying a single use plastic bottle. So much of “culture”, what we describe as edgy or cool, comes from resourceful people. You cannot buy resourcefulness; it is learned through curiosity or struggle. Resourceful people possess a critical eye for their environment, knowing every item has many uses. They are curious humans by default, willing to connect ideas that might not go together at first glance. Past experiences are teaching moments no matter how painful and creativity is the output. Innovation does not blossom from comfort, rather it is formed like a raw diamond under the pressures of life. Burning through ideas doesn’t pay respect to these origins. I have doubled down on citing my sources in the last three years because I recognize the power of stating someone’s name or citing their influence. Citation is gratitude for the creative soil that fertilized my ideas. Sometimes my memory fails me in the same way I occasionally forget to decline a straw. It is okay to be human; the point is to create long term help vs harm, to lessen my ethical carbon footprint.
Some may say it is impossible to catalog where we find concepts. If you find yourself in this camp, I would suggest you have a consumption problem. We can feel overwhelmed by the scale of media we take in, which is fair. We are being sold to more than any generation before us. However we are responsible for what and how much we allow into our path. We are what we eat with our eyes. We could start with recycling some of our own work. There are good ideas hiding in everyone’s personal experiences. Some of my best projects are up-cycled. I don’t always have the skills I need to execute the best version of an image, so I’ll try again when I’ve improved myself. Until we learn how to mine our own experiences or refine our ideas, we cannot responsibly use someone else’s resources.
Innovation Moving Forward
In the behind the scenes of Ma Rainey’s Big Black Bottom, the August Wilson play turned movie, Viola Davis mulls over the plight of artists everywhere as she reflects on her character, Ma Rainey, a Black jazz musician navigating her worth at the end of her career. She leans forward in her crisp white suit and muses,
“You have to protect your work with everything you have. And you can’t be so enthusiastic to hand it over to someone because you can’t predict where it’s gonna go, where it’s gonna lead. It’s a slippery slope because you have a deficit in a business so you need the opportunity, but at the same time, you also have to have the autonomy.”
For many creatives from marginalized groups, there’s never a moment where notoriety shields them from theft or exploitation. We owe these groups a revision of creative culture, and we owe it to ourselves, the cis-het white creatives responsible for most of this churn. Whiteness can adversely impact us all while we perpetuate its cycle. Copying is inherently a historic act, because to do so means looking backwards. We can copy in a way that gives back and pays homage to those who came distantly or closely before us. Looking back responsibly also makes us look smarter. Our takes are more pointed, our references, fuller. It takes time to turn the ship around, but we can and must as we move into a decentralized digital world. In many ways, artists can make huge strides towards eradicating white supremacy tactics and making the art world more equitable by investigating and changing our attitudes towards artistic theft. Our best hope is to challenge these practices by demanding better from ourselves and our colleagues.
“If something impedes the rate of arrival of ideas, you’re going to slow down the economy. It’s not just for that period, and it’s not just for Black people. This is a cautionary tale for all economies.” - Dr. Lisa Cook
To catch the full conversation around the Case for Copying, see Part One, Ideas to Beg, Borrow, and Steal. To see my personal experience as an object of theft, see Part Two, Say My Name. Stay tuned for Part Four, the practical steps to changing a broken system.
Once again, your voice speaks clearly and correctly! I am so proud of this work you are doing to help us all understand our connections. I have, quite literally, said the same thing you have about what stealing work does to marginalized groups. I would like to hand this article to every person connected with the group that took my work, the research, the design, my words verbatim... and shopped them to the public. I know however they would fall squarely on deaf ears. This article gave me new strength, and reminded me why I do the work I do. I cannot thank you enough for helping to give your community words and wings to literally help fly us past the bs and keep doing the work.