Tony Futura and Five Other Visual Artists Are Sour with Chris Brown

Chris Brown has come under fire, again. The hip-hop singer and dancer released a video on Monday for his song “Wobble Up,” featuring Nicki Minaj and G-Eazy, that is not sitting well with several visual artists. In it, all three musicians perform in front of brightly-colored, campy sets: enlarged sandcastles, a neon-lit club, and a small island that unabashedly looks like a woman’s plump posterior. They are interjected with snippets of other racy visuals that allude to other parts of the female figure.

That said, these overtly sexualized scenes is not the reason for the uproar. (Although, the persistent objectification of women in music, where Brown is a certainly a poster child, is a topic worth discussing.) The cause célèbre is the appropriation of artworks by six creatives—Tony Futura, Marius Sperlich, Catherine Losing, Paul Fuentes, Vanessa Mckeown, Jamie Calderón—all of whom have taken to social media to express their ire with Brown and the video’s co-director Arrad. Even the Instagram account Diet Prada, the purported watchdog of the fashion industry has chimed in. Its post reads: “Planning to credit them sometime in the near future? Or did their checks get lost in the mail?”

Indeed, the flagrant copying of works is common across all artistic mediums. From Zara ripping off the work of Tuesday Bassen, to Lady Gaga being called out by Grace Jones for mimicking her visual style, to James Turrell’s lighting installations being replicated in a Drake music video, giving proper citations (and, at times, compensation) to the originators has become an epidemic of sorts. And though there are platforms like Diet Prada and the Artist Rights Society that either protect or challenge this convention, many less-established artists don’t have the resources to litigate. But what can be done, according to Futura, is using whatever podium one has to enact change. We chatted further with him about the controversy.

[Photograph at top by Tony Futura]

How did you first hear of the music video?
My friend and fellow visual artist Marius Sperlich told me about it, and sent me screenshots of the copied artworks from the music video.

How did the video appropriate your work exactly? And why do think you the video’s creators did so?
My work and the works of the other artists apparently copied in the video are about playful visualizations of very diverse topics. We see them as visual statements referring to pop culture, society and much more. I don’t feel like the video creators understands their [true] meanings. Most likely, the creators wanted to display some visually-pleasing content that adds something special to the video. In my opinion, the rest is nothing more than a standard rap video.

How would you describe the difference between an homage and outright copying?
To me—and I’m speaking for the other artists, too—an homage or reference would be existent if they had taken our genuine ideas to another level and developed something new from it. But we think that’s not the case. [The video] just plainly copied the whole visual concept and executed them in the same way. There’s nothing added to it; there was nothing given into our ideas. This is exactly what I think outright copying is.

Your work likes to poke fun at materialism. Do you think the video that’s the reason why they chose to reference your work?
No, not in any way. The song as much as the video is just looks like any other rap video out there. You don’t even have the feeling that our work plays a deeper role in it. It was just used to simply display the topic of sex in an inelegant way. I’d expected more from a high-class production with three giant celebrities in the music industry.

Do you think appropriating artists’ work has become more pervasive?
Yes. In the last two days since the video was released, we got hundreds of messages from artists worldwide that are suffering from the exact same problem. Marius, me and the others don’t have a single week when we don’t get informed that our work has been copied somewhere else. From an Instagram ad to a stolen album cover, this happens everywhere around the world. And the worst thing is that you don’t really have a chance to get reparations for your losses. Brands and companies don’t fear small artists since they know that most of us can’t afford to file a lawsuit against them. I really have the impression, that all this happens on purpose. Having six completely identical artworks in a single video can’t be a coincidence.

Do you know the other artists that had their work copied? If so, how do they feel about it?
Yes, I know Marius Sperlich personally. We have been friends for years now and built our reputation as artists together. The others are fellow artists I know through the Instagram community, and all of us are well connected to each other. All of us are furious that this has happened and shake our heads at the director of the video, who is probably responsible for this. That’s why we are speaking up together and trying to initiate a change. We think that we should not shut up about copyright infringement. There must be a way for artists and creatives of all kinds to protect their intellectual property.

How are you going to move forward with this?
We are in contact with the production company, and we’re currently contacting all the other artists to find out what’s the best way to deal with our situation. Something needs to be done. We want to encourage fellow artists and creatives to share their stories using the hashtag #change industry. Let’s bring about some justice and change together.