Also, seeing that Mr. Miyamoto turns 60 this year, shouldn't he reflect the "old Japanese artistic values"?

Well said. I too can't agree with that guff about the supposed gulf between the east and west when it comes to theories of acceptability of misapropriation/plagarism/theft in art.
People seem to forget that many ‘western’ (‘non-asian’ is perhaps better) schools of art relied on copying the style of the master too. That’s why it can be so hard to tell, for example, a Rembrandt work from those of his students.

Copyright and protection of artistic works are relatively new legal concepts even in the west and its just that the east has been relatively slow to adopt them. They’ve pretty much fully adopted the concepts in business and law in Japan now though.

Copyright dates back hundreds of years in English law, to the Statute of Anne. It's also specifically mentioned in the US Constitution. Article 1, section 8
"To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."

allow me to pick a nit: I believe it was the person who did the shot for the package cover, not the band which perfomed said pakuri.

Didn't New Order also steal that track "Blue Monday" from Orgy?!?

Don't tell me that New Order has yet another best-of collection coming out... at this point they're pakuriing themselves.

it's a cool cover though.
better then the original.. but, yeah.
i think this type of thing is even more rampant around the world then people even sort of think they realise.. based on what i see from my work..
i'm just saying..

1. 'pakuri' from art to design (or anything interdisciplinary) is just too wide and too common to be taken seriously really (unless you're willing to trace bottles of shampoo to mondrian)

2. miyamoto's photographed hundreds of homeless boxes and as we know japan offers a rather limited range of urban backgrounds so whatever picture mr. saville (i'm guessing) would have used would have looked pretty close to if not this one then another miyamoto picture. (i have btw myself done a series of some 50 pictures like these in 99 , which is i believe before he made these pictures public :-) , that look pretty close to both of these - hell, it would be hard not to.) and there was yet another book that came out at about the same time as miyamoto's 0yen house or something that obviously has similar pictures.

3. look at the new order pic in the context of the other pictures in the package - all dealing with a kind of poverty chic(?) - and it's clear that the package has at least as much artistic integrity as miyamoto's stuff, yet going in a totally different direction.

{ the position miyamoto's in here is fussing over a DESIGNER using a horizontal line according to the golden ratio upon which the pyramids were built - which he himself doesn't because he believes there's truth in a photograph. and marxy trying some reverse strategy in his quixotic project}

4. miyamoto's book is , or at least claims to be, quite shakai-mondai humanist so i suspect seeing a similar image so decontextualized would have ticked him off , the response too is typical of a modernist-like humanist. what's the social issue and poverty compared to the Artist's genius. - The men who put together 'the Family of Man' would have done the same.

5. mixing modern/post-modern with east/west rethoric is very sloppy.

"Now with the internet, not only can Western artists find where they have been copied and Japanese audiences can complain about theft, but now Japanese artists can see exactly where they have also been pakuri'd."

nice and patronising.

"nice and patronising."

Do you think Miyamoto listens to New Order?

Ahhhh,New Order....
Back in 1988 "Rockin'on"magazine was making issues through out the year by almost recycling interviews from NME on four Brit bands and almost nothing else.
The Smiths,Echo and the Bunnymen,The Cure and ofcourse, New Order.There was even a term,"Manche-Kun"whose body may still exist in Koenji,but his soul is way over there in Manchester......

The newest of their "best" can always count on consumer such like myself.

"mixing modern/post-modern with east/west rethoric is very sloppy."

Hey, I think it adds a lot to the conversation to finally admit that Japan is not automatically post-modern by default.

Note though that Miyamoto is not 100% against this borrowing as much as he just wanted some level of recognition. You know, you can be a "polite" post-modern borrower or an "asshole" borrower. All New Order had to do is say "Art inspired by Miyamoto" and case closed.

"unless you're willing to trace bottles of shampoo to mondrian"

Mondrian is "masterworks" at this point, and most pakuri (as I am defining it and as what tends to upset people) is basically artists borrowing for other contemporaries in the same field or obscure old material that no one knows.

Nice observations, Joe. I agree the Ridgeline looks kind of silly, but I'm not a truck guy at heart so it doesn't get my blood boiling.

Woopsies, wrong blog!

Again?!

Uncanny, isn't it?

Carry on your good work,Duffy.

A few points worth noting.

The New Order dvd in question has been out for quite some time now. At least a year, if not 2.

Peter Saville did not take the shot, but did art direct.

The cover is actually a still from a video clip that was done just for this release, for the song 'Ceremony'.

> finally admit that Japan is not automatically post-modern by default.

i think you've got the wrong guy though i don't remember anyone saying it quite like that.

> Miyamoto is not 100% against this borrowing as much as he just wanted some level of recognition.

like i said i'm inclined to think Miyamoto would have to sort of claim ownership over the very act of photographing those boxes.

"i think you've got the wrong guy though i don't remember anyone saying it quite like that."

True, true.

Copyright dates back hundreds of years in English law, to the Statute of Anne. It's also specifically mentioned in the US Constitution. Article 1, section 8
"To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."

--Yes, as I said, relatively new.

Laws on theft (which is what we are told to believe copyright infringement is) on the other hand, have been around at least since pre-sumerian times, according to archaeological records.

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/04/19/europe/EU-GEN-France-Designer-Plagiarism.php

"A Paris judge has ordered fashion designer John Galliano to pay American photographer William Klein €200,000 in damages for copying Klein's work in a recent ad campaign...Klein said he was "hurt" by Galliano's appropriation of his style...'I am bitter because this glaring plagiarism represents an inexplicable slap in the face to my work,' he said."

When asked if he might consider the work a tribute, Klein compared it with someone sleeping with another man's wife: "Is that paying homage to your wife?"