COPYCATTING, ONE MORE TIME

When the newspaper of record frontpages a story headlined "Copycats, or Inspired by Nature? Glass Artists Face Off in Court," I'm reminded once again of Norman O. Mustill, the "original cat" whose art was copycatted with impunity in the pages of the very same newspaper, as detailed in THE COPYCAT AND THE ORIGINAL CAT.

The New York Times story, which appears on the NYT Web site with the partial headline "Glass Artists Face Off in Court," quotes Dale Chihuly, who is suing two glass blowers, as saying, "Look, all I'm trying to do is to prevent somebody from copying me directly."

That's pretty much what Mustill said when he objected to having "my work morphed, reinterpreted, redeployed, and included (anonymously) among the famous" by an artworld darling who has boasted in print, "Copying has been an extensive part of my work as an artist ..."

Chihuly's complaint and Mustill's sound comparable to me in broad outline, even if the artists themselves and the particulars of the issue are not. Chihuly has made millions of dollars from his work. He is "perhaps the world's most successful glass artist," The Times reports. He employs a factory of craftsmen to make his pieces, and his natural forms are "inspired by the sea."

I don't know how much Mustill has earned from his work, but I don't think he's become a millionaire. He is known only among the cognoscenti of what was once regarded as the avant-garde. Everything he creates is made with his own hands. And his forms, natural and unnatural, are inspired by nothing more than his own eye and a mind cognizant of reality and art, history and politics.

With the money and resources and the determination to sue, Chihuly rates the front page. Without those, Mustill can't even get a letter stating his objection into The Times.