Intellectual property paragraph

[Cynthia Garett]

Hello,

I would like to know the meaning of the last sentence in this paragraph. Does it say that although the artist world still cares about intellectual property theft, they prefer not to make too much of a fuss about it in public because they care about their public image?


Thank you.

Less interesting is the claim that Hirst's famous 1991 piece "The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living" was inspired by a stuffed shark that hung on the wall of an electrical supply store. Last we checked, there was no law against locating one’s muse in a stuffed fishing trophy. Plus, while issues of intellectual property theft still have some weight in the art world when it comes to profiting from the ideas of working fellow artists, the general acceptance of appropriation and a mutual image culture tempers the zing of such allegations.

 

[Barb_D]

No, it means that among artists, it's not uncommon for one to be inspired by the work of someone else and create new art based on someone else's ideas.

Compared this to the written word: If I write a very specific paragraph and you use that same paragraph, it's clearly plagiarism.
However, if I paint a picture of a tree on a hill, and you then sculpt a tree on a hill, it's not at all clear that you "stole" my idea.

 

[Cynthia Garett]

Oh, I got confused by "the general acceptance" part. I thought "acceptance" meant "meaning".
Ok. I understand the sentence a bit more, bot not entirely. In my head now it sounds something like "Plus, while they still care for intellectual property theft to some extent, they all accept appropriation thus they don't really rush to call something a plagiarism".

But I still don't get what do they mean by "mutual image culture". What would a mutual image culture be? A culture based on accepting working with the same kinds of images?

 

[Barb_D]

One of our moderators has a spouse who is an artist. Perhaps that moderator will comment. I am not part of the art world and don't want to guess what the common culture among artists is.

 

[Roman55]

I am not a teacher.

This use of 'mutual' is yet another example of good words becoming mediocre words. I think Barb_D, by saying 'common culture', has correctly expressed what the original should have been.

I know that language evolves, and I certainly don't want to come across as a fuddy-duddy (which I'm not by the way), but what could possibly be 'mutual' about an 'image culture'?