Modblog has a history of calling bullshit on tattooist who blatantly rip off other peoples work and use it as their own. In fact lots of you guys probably remember the modblog post from 2005 where Amina Munster’s chest piece by Tim Kern that was ripped off by another artist.
That seemed like a pretty blatant rip off, even with the subtle changes that were made to the original design. However, it pales in comparison to this atrocity.
When Cat Spencer came up with a beautiful Mucha inspired back piece for his lovely wife, Carla, she insisted on keeping the two shoulder blade pieces from her youth. Well when a FAR less talented artist blatantly ripped off here design, he too incorporated Carla’s old shoulder pieces in his rendition!
This is the original rendition on Carla’s back…
…and this is the atrocious rip off of her same design, INCLUDING the old shoulder pieces.
Thanks to Lish for submitting this story to me. If you have news, stories, or photos you feel would make for a good modblog post. Please do not hesitate to email them to [email protected]
Comments
98 responses to “Another case of BLATANT tattoo thievery”
I am slightly torn in this situation. I would be rather bothered if someone copied a tattoo that I designed. But at the same time, if the person loved it that much that they also wanted it on their bodies for the rest of their life then that is a huge compliment to me. Think how many people have tattoos from wall art, or band stuff, or anything else that is designed by someone that other people might likely have. This is a similar situation. I think people should consider what I just said before the flame on this person so much.
I feel sorry for the chick with the dump art on her back, especially since she obviously wanted something as gorgeous as the original when she forked over her cash.
well, it sucks major that someone copied her tattoo, but thats what can happen, but if i was the girl who got it 1st, id just laugh, it dosnt take away from her because hers is the orginal, and thats all that matters, if someone wants to steal the idea and get the same thing by a shit artist (because i bet alot of good artists terned her away to do a cabon copy) let her be.
as for not up loading work onto BME incase someone steals it? well thats part of the risk, but i really wouldnt worry about it, like i said what matters is that you have the orginal one.
hahah its laughable, sucks for the blatant rip off, but the humiliation!
Epic wonkyness.
It doesn’t even look remotely good.
With the previous plagiarism post, I’m somewhat torn. It features reasonably standard motifs and has been reworked significantly.
This isn’t that. The piece of art is conceivably significant to both people and really, there’s nothing wrong with being inspired by a tattoo to get inked yourself with the same painting. However, this is three tattoos being copied. To look at it another way, it’s a sequence of events in someone’s life that they’ve chosen to commemorate and to have that imitated in it’s entirety I for one would find unsettling.
I feel especially strongly about this as I have a chestpiece composed of separate tattoos. The centre one is a lotus I had done in Japan recently, with waves as a background. If I saw this on someone else I would not be at all offended, obviously. However, if the tattoos at the top of the piece (done in a different country, by a different artist, with a different motivation) were *also* incorporated then I’d feel that my identity was being aped and that the custom tattoos I worked on developing for myself had been lifted without any regard for me or my artists.
Frankly I’m shocked that an artist would even do this, given how obvious it is that this is three distinct tattoos. Having said that, whoever this is is quite clearly not a master of their craft. The sizing, perspective and placement are all so very, very wrong.
I just really want to know why anyone thinks the fact that the second person is overweight has anything to do with it? Why are you judging her weight? are we really so immature as to be hurling fat jokes?
Well obviously some of you are, that’s just sad and I hope that some day you wont need to make fun of others to feel good about yourselves. I was under the impression that this community didn’t do that I guess I was mistaken.
And as far as a rip offs go let me see if I understand this right, this community as a whole (majority opinion and writers) feel it’s ok to “rip off” famous art but not ok to “rip off” art that has been turned into a tattoo and is itself already a rip off of famous art? Get off your high horses and realize that the artist that agreed to tattoo the famous art in the first place is just as guilty of ripping off someone elses work as the artist who did the bad copy.
@45
That’s not the case. The person who produced the original piece published it for the world to see. The likeness has no doubt been printed on postcards, posters and plenty of other merchandise with the artist’s consent.
The tattoo, on the other hand is much more personal. As I said before, none of us would have a problem with seeing two tattoos of the same painting. It’s the fact that the person’s other tattoos, part of her personal history, are incorporated which is frankly offensive.
There’s a line between an homage or tribute and straightforward copying and that is what has been crossed here.
Having said that, I agree that the fat jokes are unnecessary. There’s plenty to make fun of here without resorting to them.
40. Ryan
“But at the same time, if the person loved it that much that they also wanted it on their bodies for the rest of their life then that is a huge compliment to me.”
who says the person loved it? people get stupid tattoos for stupid reasons; not every tattoo is done because its owner LOVED the ART in it. people get tattooed for much more shallow reasons, e.g. TATTOOS ARE COOL (or haven’t you heard?)
regarding the whole situation, i think it’s laughable–the girl with the beautiful tattoo still has a beautiful tattoo and the person with the shitty version got what s/he deserved. it worked itself out pretty perfectly.
Admittedly, the second tattoo is a copy of the first; however, the first is a copy of Mucha. In this regard, who’s to say that the second is thievery of the first? Yes, the second tattoo is absolutely horrible, and yes the second has Carla’s tattoos from her youth. This could just mean that the person with the tattoo saw Carla’s loved the image (meaning Mucha’s), and brought the photo of Carla in saying “I want this image.” Of course this is speculation, but I don’t think it is fair to call the second person a thief of an image when, in this case, the design is over one hundred years old.
It’s interesting to see these two tattoos in line like this.
I put this original tattoo on my wife in 1992, and at that time tattoos inspired by the works of Alphonse Mucha were pretty darned scarce. I had seen a couple of art nouveau pieces that preceded the work I did on Carla, but certainly nothing of this scale. Carla chose this tattoo, Mucha’s “Dance”, because she had a long time love of Mucha’s work and this piece was very significant to her. I was fortunate to win quite a few awards for Carla’s “Dance” piece, and to have her back appear in multiple tattoo publications, including covers and centerfolds. I had only been tattooing for a couple of years, and really this was my first big splash in the business.
Now, as a tattoo artist of 20 years, I can’t even begin to estimate the number of times a customer has brought me a tattoo magazine and pointed at a tattoo on someone’s skin and said “I want THIS.”
It takes an artist with a work ethic and some sense of pride in what he or she is doing to turn down a customer’s request to reproduce someone else’s work. Obviously the artist who did this piece lacked both ethics and pride. I don’t blame the woman wearing the tattoo for wanting to wear the tattoo. I do however find it despicable on the tattooist’s part that he clearly took a magazine shot and put a piece of tracing paper over the piece, attempting to reproduce it “as is.” Sadly, that has always been the plight of the tattoo artist or enthusiast who sees their work published. Someone somewhere WILL reproduce it.
Thanks to the author of the article, Sean, for calling out the ripoff. Carla can feel just a wee bit “avenged” in seeing the comments responding to this. 😉
regards,
-Cat
sorry to my good friends cat and carla….thanks to this website for bringing this kind of bullshit to the community…
“…Modblog isn’t updating and I wanted to help, but without new submissions to BME there is little for me to choose from.”
no fucking wonder …
this joint is filled with bile and venom.
really? fat jokes?
i’d never submit a picture. y’all are mean.
Yeah its a rip off of the first girls tattoo, but no one here can act like it’s an original design. (except for the previous tattoo part) Its a piece of art that another artist already drew and the first girl put onto her back. The tattoo artist didn’t design it.
nojobody, when i submitted my pics (via sean’s email address) i joked about how funny id find it if everyone gave me shit about my body hair, and what do you know? no shit about my body hair, what i did get was from friends so i knew it was a joke
so if your that worried, dont send stuff in, failing that, invite the stupid comments and its no longer fun to the twits dishing out the stupid comments
Im not sure why everones getting their knickers in a twist. Tattoos and art dont exist in a vaccum, everything is influence or copied from something else (unless you’r the big man upstairs, no ones had a truely “original” idea. Ok takinga pic of someonelses tattoo and having it copied might not be the best way but for lots of people thats just the way they do it.
If you dont want people to see your tattoo and oh my God, maybe copy it,then dont take pics. better yet why not just tattoo a giant safe over the top of it. That way noone can get their grubby mitts on your precious design.
Couldn’t we relate this to the post made yesterday featuring a tattoo of a piece of Salvadore Dali’s art? People get artwork tattooed on them everyday, I see no difference in getting another’s tattoo replicated on yourself. Sure I’d hate to see someone steal my tattoos (and actually a coworker has done it to me once), but that’s art, once you put it out there it’s everyone’s to see, and everyone’s to steal. If you want it all to yourself, don’t post pictures of it online.
they’re both ripoffs and unoriginal, but what’s really funny is how much worse the second ripoff is. if it was as good as the first ripoff, it would be a good tattoo, despite being a ripoff of a ripoff. also, mucha is cliche (like something they have on posters in college book stores)
Oooooooooooooh my goodness.
I wouldn’t call getting a piece of famous art tattooed on you as being a rip-off, but obviously this 2nd picture IS a blatant rip off of the first picture’s pieces. If it didn’t include the 2 pieces she originally had on her shoulder blades it wouldn’t be as big a deal. But seriously. That is fucking awfulsauce.
Dude, isn’t emulation the highest form of flattering??
While taking Art History in college I thought it would be really cool to get an art nouveau style peice, and why not, art nouveau was the proliferation of the pin up girl. Only since then have I noticed how many other art nouveau inspired tattoos there are out there.
And as much as it might suck and as much as I love Mucha’s work, if I were to see Carla’s tattoo online somewhere, even under different circumstances, I would never get the exact same painting with the exact same placement, it would feel weird.
Just as an FYI, there was an update last night and updates will continue regularly now.
People will forever find tattoos they want in tattoo magazines and take them in to a shop to have them done. Sadly, too many people view tattoo magazines as books of flash for their free use. There’s nothing to be done about that. All I can do is be one of those artists who refuse to do like this guy did – to take someone’s money and put a piece of tracing paper over a magazine photo.
Some of the comments cited that the original work was from a Mucha poster print, and that nobody owns the right to that. I agree completely, however in this case the individual who did the tattoo didn’t even bother to go back to the original source, since they also reproduced Carla’s old black and gray shoulder blade tattoos along with the Mucha piece. They clearly reproduced not one but three of her tattoos in this work. And badly.
One funny note.. the picture that they used to steal the design from was a picture of Carla’s back when she was sitting down. Because of the nature of the skin on the small of the back, when someone sits the area stretches out, so the lower legs and feet on Carla’s Mucha girl were elongated, and the tattooist who reproduced it did it just like that… so his piece has big long stretchy feet even when the girl is standing. ;-)… See More
For the record, back in 1992 when I did this tattoo, it was pretty new stuff. Sure, the Mucha piece had been around for 90 years or something, but very few tattooists had delved into Art Nouveau at that time, I think I had only ever seen a couple of small Art Nouvea pieces done before this, nothing of this scale and accuracy. Nowadays you can search for Mucha tattoos and find thousands. The reason Carla’s back got so much attention and won awards and got magazine publication was because few artists had ever done large scale Art Nouveau work before this.
Do I care that someone ripped off this tattoo? No. I’ve come to expect it. I honestly just laugh.
The only thing that sort of bothers me is in reading the comments, some of the people irk me because they’re quick to call Carla’s tattoo a rip off of a Mucha piece, when in reality it’s more of a *tribute* piece – I never claimed this design as my original work – but as for big beautiful color art nouvea tattoos – I did it first. 😉
I remember this first tattoo quite well. Cat is right to say he was among the first to do a large Art Nouveau tribute tattoo of Mucha’s original work entitled ‘Dance’ . At least it was the first (and in my opinion — THE BEST) I had seen then or since.
I took the photograph the same month it was completed and if it is distorted by Carla sitting I may be the cause. I have been in a wheelchair for 40+ years and Carla sat down for me so I could get an eye level view of the piece. We did that to limit the distortion caused by a camera lens.
Rip-off? Well, yes. I’d have to say this is total rip-off because it shows that whoever did it was not interested in doing another version of Mucha’s piece, They were apparently only interested in doing a quick copy of Cat’s rendition. Certainly it is not sized to fit the space as Carla’s is and copying the two Black and Grey pieces shows how little the tattooist or the client knew about the original work.
So, hats off to Cat. You made the effort to do a work of art and not a cheap copy of this work. You and Carla should be proud. And the second tat—well, keep your shirt on is my recommendation. For all our sakes—yeah?
Terrysan.
25 year member of the National Tattoo Association
One of the reasons why I wouldn’t show off my tatts online if I had them.
What’s creepier is when people get tattoo’s…of people they don’t know and the person is unsuspecting. lol
Re: fat comments (ex.: #57). Actually weight is a significant factor here. In the first image, the work is scaled so that it is the length of the back along the spine, and extends across both shoulderblades. The scale of the second piece is significantly smaller, extending across neither the width of the back nor along the entire length. It also appears to be off-center. The scale is inappropriate for the size of the customer; it’s an awkward size. It should either be larger so as to cover the entire back, or it should be smaller and probably located in a different area.
Secondly, the theft issue: People don’t complain about a book being adapted to film, and they shouldn’t; the written word and films are completely different narrative media. Adapting a painting to tattoo is the same; the story/image may be similar or substantially identical, but the art and craft involved are completely different. Someone re-tattooing a previous tattoo is like filming a remake (ex.: Halloween, The Pink Panther, Psycho); artistically, nothing new can be brought to the subject. Personally, I think that’s the major problem.
The first one is a copy of a different work of art. If you’re going to accuse people of stealing, might as well be fair about it. Both stole.
i tend to agree with post #21
inkfaery 67 I agree with you completely
i think it’s fuckin hilarious.
Cat,
I’m sorry if I offended you by saying that you “ripped off” the mucha design, I was trying to prove a point, I don’t think you or the artist that copied you are claiming your tattoos as the original art therefore neither of you is ripping off anyone, you copied Mucha onto your wife’s back, the “artist” ( I use that word loosely) then copied your copy all be it badly onto that other woman’s back. That’s all I was trying to say.
I have a tattoo of a sugar skull that I found on line, it was a photo of someone else’s tattoo, I loved the design so I asked my best friend to tattoo it on my arm so she did, I don’t feel bad about it at all if they never wanted anyone to reproduce it they could have refrained from letting it be photographed. I don’t see it as any different then getting a piece of flash. My copy came out just fine even though it was done smaller so some detail had to be removed, it’s still a copy of a tattoo someone else has and I love it.
and btw Cat your work is gorgeous!
now maybe in the second picture she is older and gained more weight and the tattoo just faded and shrunk a lot lol.
iam so tired of cheap copies and all these high street tattooists who use google for every bastard tattoo a tattooer is as gd as their art because without their own art they have nothing to tattoo just bad photos ppls brought in off google and copy and pasted on their skin and crap like that
like some stuff has to remain the same like if someone wants an army logo u cant change the army logo otherwise it wont be the army logo no more etc but like stealing other ppls work famous or not is just bad and its destroying the meaning of buying great tattoos off great artists etc
aside from being a completely sad a pathetic story, it also saddens me at how people have a lost all sense creativity and individualism.
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=home#!/group.php?v=wall&gid=280649057917
The original is beautiful. But then again Mucha is beautiful.
This comment is not directed at any of the previous responders:
“Opinions are like assholes, everybody has one”, and yes, I’ve been called an asshole.
It always saddens me to see things like this. What bothers me most about blatant rip-offs such as this is the fact that while the original tattoo was obviously inspired by a personal connection to the artist/painting, which is demonstrated by the inclusion of her older, also personal tattoos, the second version of it has no consideration for the individual they copied it from! The second person had obviously no idea what the other two smaller tattoos were when they took the picture in to their “artist”.
Carla was inspired by Mucha’s work, so she had it customized to fit her. Her tattoo artist never claimed it as his own artwork. There is nothing wrong with that.
The second person liked Carla’s tattoo, so they had it copied (horribly), with no regard to the original inspiration or even to their own body! To me that is completely unacceptable.
Boy, if this is srs copying bznz i bet all those people with tribal bands are pissed at eachother. It’s just a tattoo and both are pretty shitty.
I’m with #60… They both are “ripoffs”… one’s just much better.
Does it suck that a professional tattooer took someone’s money and tattooed the exact picture that person brought in? Absolutely. but it did happen in both cases.
The lack of professionalism in the second artist seeing the picture of the first tattoo with CLEARLY two different tattoos under the design is pretty laughable.
happened to me quite a few times.
here is my tattoo that was featured on here – http://news.bmezine.com/2007/09/04/artificial-leg-tattoo/
example 1. https://www.bmezine.com/tattoo/A81211/high/owll-peg-leg.jpg
example 2. http://www.collegehumor.com/picture:1725467
example 3. well i can’t find the picture anymore, but derek noble also tattooed a peg leg on someone, there was a picture of him in progress of tattooing it that used to be fairly easy to search up on google but i guess its not there anymore because i can’t find it.
Hahahahahahahahahahaha…
I am thoroughly amused by how shit the rip-off is, especially the wolf and moon part, wtf IS that, looks like a dalek snowman… :p
@91 – those don’t look like copies of your tattoo. Granted, yours is certainly the best of the bunch, but they’re not exact replicas. They all just look like people who wanted a leg tattooed to look wooden.
This tattoo, however, is clearly COPIED (and badly at that). The “original” one isn’t Muncha “inspired”, it’s practically an exact replica of a Muncha work. What obviously makes this copied of course, are the inclusions of the two shoulder blade tattoos that were already there. Looks like she took a photo of the other girl’s tattoo into a bad tattoo shop and asked him to copy it, BADLY. The only good thing is that it looks like the ink didn’t get in too deep and is already faded, so maybe it would be better to laser off, because that tattoo is downright embarrassing.
What’s really unfair is that the thinner girl has the much better tattoo and the heavier girl has the bad one :-/
Wow, all of this is quite interesting to read. Yes, that is my back, my tattoo. And it’s a *bear*, people, not a wolf. Just ’cause there’s a moon behind it….. 🙂
It’s a pity that this woman had such a poor tattooist that s/he couldn’t say ‘okay, yeah, i like that, too, let’s look up the original art and work to make this fit you….’
The image as done by Mucha is amazing, but it’s not 100% what I have. We modified it a little, because his art is full of tiny details and ‘extras’ that not only wouldn’t really fit, but wouldn’t work as a tattoo, and Cat and I together decided what details to keep and what to leave out.
And…comment number 93 – you’re saying, basically, that because I’m smaller/thinner than the other woman, I don’t deserve to have a nice tattoo? How very…eh of you.
this is so lame… if an artist has to get not ideas but whole sketches from someone else (and doing a VERY poor job at that…) he shouldnt be called an artist at all.
I love the (lack of) thought process behind this. “Oh, wow, this person has a tattoo of an nouveau-looking pretty lady, a dangly sort of thing, and a howling wolf! I LOVE NOUVEAU PRETTY LADIES, DANGLY SORTS OF THINGS, AND HOWLING WOLVES! LET ME CALL MY TATTOO ARTIST RIGHT NOW!
#91
are you saying that all peg leg tattoos are a rip-off of you/yours?
what if someone did it before you?
does that make you the copy-cat?
Sailor Jerry must be pissed!
#91 AJ…. only one of your “ripped off” tattoo images worked for me… and honestly i think you’re being ridiculous. they didn’t copy YOUR TATTOO. they copied your IDEA which are two very different things. and if you can prove that they copied YOUR idea, i’d be surprised.
I think people need to chill the eff out. We, as tattoo consumers, at one point or another copy something else and put it into our skin. i’d be hard pressed to believe that there is a person who has ONLY completely original designs (barring those who only have a small handfull of tattoos). I have a tattoo of a joel peter witkin photograph. i’ve never seen another tattoo of this image. but if i did, and even if that person got the idea from me, it’s not my art, so what the hell gives me the right to be upset? i own my shoulder, not the art.
there have been plenty of beautiful tattoos that i’ve seen where i have thought to myself “wow, that is gorgeous. i totally want that on me.” i wouldn’t copy another person’s design because i personally require my tattoos to have a deeper meaning to me in my life. but i don’t think there is anything wrong AT ALL with getting a piece of work SIMPLY because you think it’s beautiful, which is clearly what the second person in this case was doing. this person is a victim of their own ignorance; they didn’t know enough about tattoos to be able to find a respectable artist, so they ended up with a “rip off” tattoo that was executed very poorly. is this a shitty situation for the second person? absolutely. does that make them a despicable person for wanting a beautiful tattoo? how can we as appreciators of excellent work even think something like that?
another things: people have said that it wouldn’t be so bad if they hadn’t stolen “three” tattoos… so if the three tattoos were stolen separately by three different people, it’s “eh not that cool but whatever” according to a lot of you, but because on person “stole” three tattoos at once it’s a heinous crime? so WHAT if that person “clearly didn’t have an appreciation for the artist of the original work”? so, because they weren’t familiar with the artist or the work previous to seeing this tattoo, that means what, exactly? that they somehow aren’t allowed to think it’s beautiful?
like, its awesome that a huge number of respectable artists have a mutual understanding that they won’t copy or “rip off” each other’s work… but as with any profession and especially creative ones, not everybody is, nor NEEDS to be a part of that understanding. if you don’t want to run the risk of your original work to ever be copied, don’t do original work. period.
the tragedy here is not that carla’s tattoo was the victim of an attempted copy. the tragedy is that the second person sat down expecting a beautiful tattoo, and walked away with a huge, permanent reminder of which tattoo artist to never go to again.