If you think I was being too tough on artist Sharon Moody in my two recent posts, what Brian Bolland had to say about a similar situation—one during which he was the victim—makes anything I had to say look like a Valentine!

Bolland, who is perhaps most well-known for having drawn Batman: The Killing Joke and who created my favorite Batman: Black and White story, the chilling “An Innocent Guy,” was stunned when he visit the Pompidou Centre gift shop in 2010 and found “a large poster of MY ‘Tank Girl’ signed by you [Icelandic artist Erró] and on sale for 600 Eu. It consisted of a badly copied version of my work and, where the original logo had been, a group of figures presumably taken from Maoist Social Realism.”

To the left is a photo of Bolland with his original piece, and to the right is a photo of Bolland in front of that gift shop and the poster by Erró.

Here’s a small part of Bolland’s open letter to the artist who used his work without attribution:

What this is is a kind of colonialism. You, Erró, have found a place for yourself in the land of the Fine Art Elite, in “Gallery-land”, and you have gone out and discovered a dark continent inhabited by pygmies—barely more than savages really—people with a colourful but primitive culture. Like the Victorian explorers you find what they do ghastly but somehow alluring so you steal from them, give them nothing in return and dismiss them. You display bits of their infantile and garish nonsense in what you call a “synthesis” on a gallery wall in the civilised world, something which has nothing whatsoever to do with giving a full and accurate “report” on the stuff you steal or the people you steal it from. It’s more to do with the titillation of your peers. You’d like them to be shocked by the vulgarity of the artefacts you’re bringing back from whatever nasty place you’ve been to but appreciate them (and you, of course) in that post-modern kind of way. One reviewer of your work said “I don’t know where Erró finds all that stuff”. Luckily for you she and other inhabitants of the galleries don’t know the names of the people you steal from and you’re not in a hurry to list them. You’re exploiting people like me, not because you’re a “witness to our time” but because you want to turn the base metal of comics into art gold—and you’d like to have a lucrative career in Gallery-land.

Back in the early ‘70s, when I started doing what I do, comic artists were treated pretty badly. They had to turn out many pages very quickly and had to accept whatever terms their publishers dictated. They signed away any right to be repaid if their work was used again. Their artwork was not returned and they were not allowed to sign their name or have their readers know who they were. In 1977, for the first time, we were given credits. The names of the writers and artists were listed on the title pages. I and a huge population of people who know about comics, BD, manga or whatever you’d like to call it, know the names of the artists. All of them work hard. Many of them are technically brilliant and/or display a unique form of self expression. They are Artists in every sense. Artists in my field have achieved a high degree of control over what their work looks like, how and where it’s printed and published. I, personally, don’t like another person to ink over my pencils or colour my work. I’m a control freak! So, in the light of all this, it’s particularly infuriating for me to see an image I created coloured and inked in a line that is not mine, with my name removed, in a place that is not of my choosing, signed by someone else—and that’s all before we get onto to the matter of the 600 Eu price tag. We’re used to being shafted by publishers—but by a fellow artist?

I always did my work with a clear conscience. It pleases me (and it seems ideologically sound to me) that if anyone wanted to see my work they could do so for the price of $1—or at least at a price they could afford. I could never be comfortable with the idea of producing a piece of art merely to sell it to one wealthy person who then had the exclusive right to view it. My only reason for working—and the thing that gives me as much pleasure as being paid for it—is when the work is printed and distributed and the printed version is in my hands. I know that I and anyone else who wants to see my work is holding the very same thing. “Gallery-land” is not for me.

I’m glad Steve Lieber pointed this out to me—and I’m a little stunned I hadn’t heard of it before—but let this be a partial answer to those few who responded over the past couple of days by saying that the artists themselves would have no objection or that they would feel complimented by the attention. Here’s someone who obviously didn’t feel that way at all, and who expressed that displeasure brilliantly.

For more of Bolland’s letter and to see additional photos, visit Bolland’s site and scroll down.