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Sarah Urist Green: In 2022, social media was flooded with AI-generated photos. Suddenly, everyone you knew from the dog groomer to your 4th-grade teacher was a mermaid, a pirate, or a Renaissance painting. But beneath all that magic was a program trained on millions of images made by artists.

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So while some embraced this new tool, many others were outraged, claiming the program had stolen their style–that distinctive quality that sets you apart from everyone else.

Lawsuits quickly popped up against the creators of these AI programs. And just like that, an old debate was rebooted for the 21st century: what does it mean to create original art? Hi, I’m Sarah Urist Green, and  this is Crash Course Art History.

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(0:54) Sarah: Stealing an artist’s work  might seem straightforward, but the line between inspiration and  appropriation has always been fuzzy. Let’s throw it all the way back to 1506, and another art-related lawsuit, at the drawing board. The German Renaissance artist Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528) signed most of his work with his initials: AD. He loved to find clever ways to include it in the scene, like this quaint little hanging sign.

It was his special sauce, the thing that certified a print as an authentic Dürer creation. Until, that is, Italian print-maker, Marcantonio Raimondi (CA. 1480 - BEFORE 1534) entered the picture. As a big fan of Dürer, Raimondi began making perfect copies of his work – even down to that unique signature.

Naturally, Dürer wasn’t thrilled by this. He took Raimondi to court, demanding justice. But the Venetian Senate didn’t quite buy it.  While they did rule that only Dürer had the right to sign his prints with AD, Raimondi was allowed to keep making his copies.

Like this one, “The Expulsion from Paradise.” In Dürer’s version, his signature is clearly visible, and here’s Raimondi’s nearly identical  copy – with all the requisite nakedness and shame and expulsion, but minus one important detail. The reason we might be tempted to discount Raimondi as an artist is because our perception of authenticity is often tied to originality. 

(2:31-2:34) (Text box reads "AUTHENTIC" with it defined as "The physical product of an individual artist's hand is considered an 'authentic' work" below the term.)

Now, Raimondi was a copycat, so it would be easy to say his work wasn’t authentic because it wasn’t original. But it was authentic. Meaning, he really did make it. The print is an authentic Raimondi replica of an original Dürer.

It’s tricky, but we’re going to uncover the nuances together. See, museums have specific processes for figuring out whether an artwork was really made by who we think it was. Like, there’s a reason I can’t get away with buying a print of a Girl with a Pearl Earring and selling it as my own.

(3:05-3:15) (Text box reads "PROVENANCE" with it defined as "A record of the origin, history, and ownership of an object, often used to verify its authenticity and value" below the term.)

Before an artwork gets hung in a museum, it’s vetted and verified by experts that keep track of the provenance, or origins and track record, of every piece — who made it, when it was made, and where it came from, every step along the way of its existence.

(3:17-3:20) (Text box reads "AUTHENTICATION" with it defined as "The process scholars use to verify an artwork as authentic and genuine, rather than a copy or imitation" below the term.)

So, the process of authentication would confirm whether the work was made by Johannes Vermeer or famed art bandit Sarah Urist Green. But even that doesn’t always tell the whole story. Like, if we go to the Louvre and look at these Peter Paul Rubens paintings, we’re gonna assume they were made by Peter Paul Rubens.

And they probably were — at least, partially! They certainly came out of his studio. But artists’ studios throughout history have been collaborative spaces, full of apprentices and assistants and students.

So we can never be sure whether we’re looking at a portion of the painting actually made by Rubens’s hand. I mean, that’s a lot of work to do all on your own! And how else are you going to train the next generation?

Originality can be an even tougher nut to crack. Today, there are legal protections that governments give artists against plagiarism.

(4:07-) (Text box reads "COPYRIGHT" with it defined as "A legal right granted to the original creator of an original work" below the term.)

One of the most important is copyright, which legally determines ownership of original work. While the laws vary from country to country, in the United States a work of art is considered “copyrighted” to its creator the moment it’s made. You don’t have to file any forms or anything. In Dürer’s day, there was nothing like that. And with the invention of the printing press, it became even more common to replicate text and images willy-nilly.

Sometimes, an artist or author would be acknowledged in the replica, but they didn’t own the copyright — that is, until cases like Dürer’s began to receive attention. Still, even today, copyrights don’t provide full protection from copycats. In fact, most work is allowed to be re-used in  parody or commentary or for scholarly purposes.

Something that, in the U.S., we call fair use. Like, take this famous 1942 painting “Nighthawks,” by American artist Edward Hopper.

It’s been parodied and meme'd tons of times. We know these aren’t the real “Nighthawks,” partially because they feature Homer Simpson; in other words, the differences are stark enough that we don’t confuse  it with the original. But also because the original has been vetted, verified, and authenticated as a work by Hopper.

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So, where’s the line between an original work that parodies or builds on another, and outright stealing? After all, AI art generators rely on original text prompts from users. So while the program can’t pick up a  paintbrush, I could prompt it to create an image of a painting of a three-toed sloth doing a kick-flip over the Eiffel Tower in the style of Van Gogh.

So, am I the artist here, having transformed the original work sufficiently, or am I stealing someone’s style? You gonna come for me, Van Gogh? Or, consider the way the American artist Sol LeWitt (1928-2007) created his “Wall Drawings.” Here’s Number 142, devised in 1972 and shown here on a wall at the Yale University Art Gallery.

But this piece was actually drawn by another artist. The first time it was executed by Jo Watanabe. And it’s been drawn by others since then.

(6:21-6:27) (Text box reads "CONCEPTUAL ART" with it defined as "Art that emphasizes the value of an idea or concept rather than the physical properties of the object itself" below the term.)

And yet, it’s still considered to be an original work by LeWitt because he came up with the idea for it. LeWitt was a pioneer of conceptual art, which considers an artwork’s meaning and motive — its intellectual properties — to be more important than how it’s actually made. So, LeWitt created really specific directions and passed them to someone else to draw.

In this case, there’s to be a grid of increasing vertical and horizontal not straight lines, where the size of the wall determines  the number of lines. In LeWitt’s words, “the idea becomes a machine that makes the art.” So when a museum or buyer purchases a LeWitt, what they get is not a completed artwork but a set of instructions with a certificate of authenticity, declaring the as-yet unmade work an original LeWitt. The work’s  owner can then create the drawing according to specifications in one location, and then paint over it and make it again somewhere else.

LeWitt passed away in 2007, but his authentic art continues to be made and remade around the world. To LeWitt and other conceptual artists, the artist  doesn’t need to physically make their own work in order for it to belong to them. So LeWitt might have supported my authorship of that AI-generated Van Gogh-sloth art because it was my instruction that fed the machine that made the art.

And there have been plenty of other artists who’ve played with the boundaries of originality by centering  the idea rather than the art itself. Like French artist Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968), who, in 1917, took a porcelain urinal, tipped it on its side, and declared it a sculpture titled “Fountain.” He even signed a fake artist’s name on it, prompting us to imagine that someone named “R. Mutt” had constructed it.

Duchamp submitted the work to a show put on by the Society of Independent Artists. Who rejected it, calling it not only vulgar but also plagiarism, because Duchamp didn’t create it. But his defenders argued it was Duchamp’s work because he came up with the idea to reorient and re-imagine the urinal as an original sculpture.

(8:18-8:23) (Excerpt from article reads "Whether Mr. Mutt with his own hands made the fountain or not has no importance. He CHOSE it. He took an ordinary article of life, placed it so that its useful significance disappeared under the new title and point of view -- created a new thought for that object.")

But what happens when an artist re-purposes something more recognizably  artistic, like a photograph? There’s a good chance you’ve seen this image, especially if you live in the United States. It’s Shepard Fairey’s famous “Hope” poster, which became one of the cornerstones of Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign.

Fairey put a lot of thought into his portrayal of Obama, saying that he chose the angle because it’s the most common in political portraits, and a red, white, and blue color palette to shift the conversation away from race and on to Obama’s potential as an American leader. Today, the image is widely recognized as one of the most  effective pieces of political art in history. But the Hope poster design was actually based on an existing photo, taken by Mannie Garcia and owned by the Associated  Press.

The AP threatened to sue Fairey, claiming copyright infringement. Sound familiar? The AP claimed that Garcia brought his technique  and skill to bear in a careful composition, choosing the exact right moment and angle for his original photo of Obama, and that Fairey hadn’t altered it enough to claim fair use.

Fairey, who made nearly half a million dollars off  the sales of merchandise bearing the image, argued that he had merely used the photo as a reference and that the Hope poster was his original work. Eventually, the two sides agreed to share rights  to the “Hope” artwork. That settled the lawsuit, but it also underscored how unsettled discussions of originality are in the art world, and beyond.

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Which brings us back to the current moment. AI image generators add yet another wrinkle to the centuries-long debate around what  counts as original art. If a program creates something new, but it relies on the work of millions of artists to create it, is the work truly original?

And if it wasn’t created by a human, can it be authentic? These questions are swirling in high-profile court cases today, and it’s not all that different from that old Dürer vs. Raimondi showdown.

It goes to show that questions of originality are never really resolved. They shift and evolve as people, cultures, and technologies do. And we can expect legal cases on AI to impact how we think about  originality in art for generations to come.

In our next episode, we’ll dive into the wild and winding history of buying and selling art. I’ll see you then. Thanks for watching this episode of Crash Course Art History which was filmed at the Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields and was made with the  help of all these truly original people.

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