Eric Doeringer
This week is going to be a little different, going to be discussing artist (scammer?? bootlegger??) Eric Doeringer. He isn’t in any trouble and hasn’t done anything wrong technically but his trade is copying art from other artists and selling those copies, as copies, for his own profit. Lots to unpack.
So I may have click-baited you a little with that intro because Doeringer is not really a scammer, I mean some people probably think that he is but it is more a conversation about art ownership and appropriation than scamming. Sorry about that but have to get you to click these links somehow.
Eric Doeringer
Customary introduction to the person in question, Eric Doeringer. He was born on July 1, 1974, and is working currently as an artist in Brooklyn, New York. He graduated from Brown University in 1996 with a BA, and got an MFA from The School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in 1999. Currently, he is on the faculty at Manhattan’s School of Visual Arts. So some people must think he’s doing something right.
The Controversy
So the controversy comes from Doeringer’s personal art practice. He creates what he calls “bootleg” paintings; copies of other artists’ work that he sells as copies (he’s not trying to pass them off as originals) for a fraction of the price of a real one. He says that his process is like an assembly line and he can pump out between 6 and 15 paintings per day. Then he sets up his booth on West 24th Street in Manhattan and sells these paintings for less than a couple hundred bucks to passers-by.
Those are the facts and of course there are two main camps in this discussion. Some people think he’s a genius (obviously that’s where the Manhattan School of Visual Arts falls) and some people think he’s appropriating other artists’ work for profit without their permission. Let’s talk about the appropriation side first.
I’m sure it’s not hard to believe that some of the artists’ whose work Doeringer has “bootlegged” are unhappy about this. Some of them, like Japanese artist Takashi Murakami sent him cease-and-desist letters and put a stop to him copying their work. When he receives letters like this he does stop. Honestly, I thought this section would be a lot larger but it is more common that artists are actually Doeringer’s fans and approach him to copy their work.
On to the other side of the debate, which has much more substance. I will be honest, when I first started researching this guy I was ready to be in the unsupportive camp but the more I read about his motivations and his artistic practice the more I was swayed. First of all, the legal copyright stuff: “In the case of Doeringer, by calling his pieces Bootlegs, he can argue that there is no chance of confusing his copies with the originals. Another factor in determining legal fair use is the effect of the use on the potential market for the copyrighted work. In other words, would Doeringer’s $100 copy of a John Currin painting affect the market for an original Currin painting, which sells for tens of thousands of dollars? One could argue that these are two different markets and that therefore, Doeringer’s use is fair” (Tam, 2006). Basically because he never tries to pass his paintings off as the real deal he is allowed to copy them.
Additionally, from all accounts, Doeringer seems like a guy who has a deep reverence for art and the art that he is emulating in his work. A curator that works with him had this to say, “His entire practice revolves around the notion of authorship and he painstakingly recreates iconic artworks, from works by Ed Ruscha to Rauschenberg to Warhol, which he terms as bootlegs” and “we work with 130 emerging artists and Eric is one of the kindest and most serious artists I work with and his integrity is irrefutable” (Twyla, 2018).
Doeringer’s practice is very conceptual, essentially arguing that the process of the creation of the art is the art more than the resulting image or painting is. “Conceptualism is, ultimately, art about art, a subversive movement meant as critique to a commercial ethos tethered to precious art object wrought by the hand of singular creative geniuses” (Whyte, 2013). By copying these famous works Doeringer is calling into question, and maybe poking fun at, traditionally held notions of art and what constitutes art. He demonstrates a different way to think about individual works as well as the industry as a whole through his pieces. He is also providing opportunities for art to be more accessible, of course, a very slim portion of the population can afford to have fine art in their home and an even slimmer portion can afford these famous artists who Doeringer is copying. By providing these bootleg versions for a few hundred dollars instead of hundreds of thousands or even millions these works are infinitely more accessible as is the world of fine art in general.
So, what do you think? Master rip-off artist profiting off someone else’s thought and work or creator and art lover trying to bring to light a new perspective?
Works Cited
Schira, Ron. “Art Commentary: At the Freedman, the Nature of Originality”. Reading Eagle. 2008. https://web.archive.org/web/20120923173318/http://readingeagle.com/article.aspx?id=87980
Tam, Herb. “Business of Art: Copyright, Fair Use, and the New Borrowers”. New York Foundation for the Arts. 2006. https://www.nyfa.org/fair-use-appropriation-67407870328
Twyla. “The Great Debate: Bootleg Art”. Twyla. 2018. https://blog.twyla.com/hope-helps-knockoffs/
Whyte, Matthew. “Eric Doeringer: The Rip-Off Artist”. The Toronto Star. 2013. https://www.thestar.com/entertainment/visualarts/2013/07/20/eric_doeringer_the_ripoff_artist.html