The Cranky Professor

Let's apply the same standard to Art History. No more proudly pointing out influences and inspirations, just copyright rants. I bet you'd hate to teach a class like that. :-

.....We even talk about influence in art theft - I kind of think that since Marcel Duchamp's Fountain (http://images.google.com/images?q=marcel+duchamp+fountain&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ei=JKvfSu-GGYbU8AbJ4rFx&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&ct=title&resnum=1&ved=0CBUQsAQwAA in case the title doesn't ring a bell) we've been repeating the 'end of originality' mantra over and over in art classes. But luckily in the period I teach there's so little surviving that we don't even KNOW what they were stealing! Another advantage folks in my period had when they lifted is that without photographs and prints, the artist with the good eye who traveled and saw stuff could copy anything without the locals ever figuring it out! Medievalists do love it when we find something copied closely enough to point to, though. One of my themes this semester is copies and knock off of Old St Peter's in Rome and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem. My students' favorite seems to be the Church of St. Boniface at Fulda, where the monks sent to Rome to copy St Peter's got the dimensions of the transept right, but hooked it to a wildly disproportionate nave they never bothered to remodel.

Fulda: http://books.google.com/books?id=QtvtHlkWLUAC&pg=PA105&lpg=PA105&dq=st+boniface+fulda+plan&source=bl&ots=1OdnWs-PFz&sig=wqlL6LDhBVNowKbFFtplu2O9OjY&hl=en&ei=y6zfStr0Fczd8Qb9mplf&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=9&ved=0CCcQ6AEwCA#v=onepage&q=st%20boniface%20fulda%20plan&f=false <--you may need to scroll a bit for this one.

Rome: http://saintpetersbasilica.org/Plans/oldbasilica-plan.jpg

Sorry for the un-embedded links, but I have them disallowed in the comments template. --MCT