Today I received what appeared to be a legitimate email notifying me that a digital drawing I created of Frank Sinatra for sale was being taken down from my website. The reason involved legal rights surrounding the image of a famous person.
I strongly disagree with restrictions that prevent artists from creating original artwork about public figures.
To me, this is not merely about one drawing of Frank Sinatra. It raises a much larger question about freedom of speech, freedom of expression, and freedom of the arts.
Artists have drawn, painted, sculpted, written about, celebrated, mocked, and criticized famous people for centuries. Portraiture itself has a long history of documenting the people who shape our culture. In my case, I wasn't attacking Sinatra. I was honoring him. I like Frank Sinatra and his music, and my drawing expressed what he and his music mean to me.
I understand the need to protect an artist's original work from being stolen. The internet, social media, and now artificial intelligence have made that problem much more complicated. Someone can download another person's artwork and reproduce, alter, or distribute it. Artists deserve protection from people taking their work and passing it off as their own.
But protecting artists should not mean restricting artists.
I believe strongly in the First Amendment principles of freedom of speech and expression, and I oppose most practices that unnecessarily restrict the arts. I believe painters should be able to paint famous people. Writers should be able to write about them. Cartoonists should be able to caricature them. Comedians should be able to joke about them. Musicians should be able to sing about them.
That freedom becomes especially important when the subject is a public figure.
I realize there is an important legal distinction here. The First Amendment limits government restrictions on speech, while private companies generally have greater freedom to decide what they will allow on their own platforms. Copyright, trademark, and publicity rights are also separate areas of law. Nevertheless, I worry about the broader culture that develops when corporations become increasingly restrictive about what artists can display, publish, or sell.
As a portrait artist, that concerns me personally. I love drawing and painting famous people. My website is full of them and so I may lose it. I don't want artists becoming afraid to paint someone because they are worried that a corporation, platform, gallery, or institution might discipline them or prevent exposure of their work.
I have experienced another side of this issue myself.
In 2014, I spent three months in jail on a separate charge. During that time, I wrote a book about my experiences in the institution and why I was there. I knew people would naturally wonder what had happened and why I had been sentenced.
Afterward, galleries, newspapers, and bookstores in my county rejected the book because of things I had posted on Facebook criticizing curators and critics whom I found unfair to me and other artists. Eventually, I felt as though I had been pushed out of the community.
One phrase I heard was:
“Freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences.”
I understand the reasoning behind that statement. Other people have freedom of speech too. They can criticize us, disagree with us, refuse to publish us, or decide not to buy our work.
But I also think we should question what happens when the consequences for expression become so severe that artists become afraid to speak, write, paint, joke, or experiment.
I recently turned sixty-one, and I remember a culture in which artists, writers, comedians, and performers were expected to push boundaries. John Belushi pushed boundaries. Richard Pryor pushed boundaries. George Carlin pushed boundaries. Hunter S. Thompson pushed boundaries.
Sometimes their work offended people. That was part of the point.
Today, what is commonly called “cancel culture” can create enormous pressure to remain inside acceptable boundaries. And I don't believe this comes exclusively from one side of the political spectrum. Conservatives can try to restrict expression they find offensive. Liberals can do it too. Churches, corporations, activist groups, governments, cultural institutions, and individuals can all exert pressure on artists. I firmly believe we have more restrictions on our freedom of speech than on guns.
Freedom of expression should not depend upon whether we agree with the person speaking.
That principle also shapes how I now view Donald Trump. At one time, I thought Trump was a strong advocate for freedom of speech. I no longer see it that way. In my view, Trump does not consistently respect freedom of speech and freedom of the press when the speech or reporting strongly disagrees with or criticizes him.
That troubles me because freedom of speech isn't much of a principle if we only defend the speech we like.
A president should be free to criticize a newspaper, television network, comedian, artist, or political opponent. They should be equally free to criticize him. Government power should not be used to punish people simply because their speech is unfavorable to whoever holds political power.
And that principle shouldn't change when another party takes control of the government.
George Orwell imagined the terrifying extreme of controlling expression in 1984, where even forbidden thoughts become “thoughtcrime.” I am not saying that America today is Orwell's Oceania. I am saying that Orwell gave us a warning worth remembering.
Freedom can disappear by degrees.
For me, freedom of the arts belongs in the larger American conversation about the First Amendment. The law may draw distinctions between government censorship, private businesses, copyright, publicity rights, and artistic expression, but culturally I want us to lean toward more artistic freedom, not less.Â
Let artists paint.
Let writers write.
Let comedians joke.
Let musicians sing.
Let journalists investigate.
Let people disagree.
by Dan and Bonkers
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