There’s plenty worse than this in the American judiciary:
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I feel sorry for the guard in a way - he clearly has deluded himself into thinking that Doig is the artist, and feels betrayed by Doig for not acknowledging him after he helped who he thought was the artist all those decades ago. On the other hand, it’s his greed that is the cause of his delusion, and he’s forcing an unrelated artist to fight a legal battle in another country because he refuses to acknowledge the plain facts that are right in front of him. I just hope the artist doesn’t have to pay his own legal costs.
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Given the cost and hassle of a court appearance(and the fact that not showing up is a good way to get a default judgement), I’d want any judge who takes cases for the lulz to have their last interaction with the court be getting gavelled brutally, tossed down the steps, and disbarred. Arguing a hypothetical is good clean fun; but not when you conscript strangers to endure considerable cost and risk to do it for your amusement.
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Other artists have done that too. My parents once at a restaurant that had a framed bill signed by Salvador Dali. Of course Dali got up to all kinds of shenanigans. At one point signed prints of his paintings were quite valuable. He was supposed to sign them after the print had been made but a friend found him at home signing blank sheets of paper.
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Ah, my bad, as it were. Well, they both start with C. 
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Hah. That doesn’t surprise me, but I guess a signed print is a signed print. As long a he really signed them.
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It might be a toss-up: Canada strikes me as a less friendly venue for “the malefactor hath impinged upon my sacred right to profit!” type cases, which the US has a cultural fondness for; but if you can argue that what you did is ‘speech’(as long as it isn’t the copyright-infringing kind) the US really is an atypically favorable venue,
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FTA:
“The presence of the Lakehead and the Seafarers records for Doige, but not for Doig, certainly favors Doig,” Judge Feinerman said in his decision. “There is no doubt about that. But it’s not strong enough evidence, given all of the evidence in the record,” the judge said, to eliminate any chance that Doig “was not the person at Thunder Bay who was the author of the painting.”
IANAL, but as my understanding goes, if there’s basically any doubt, you’re going to see it go to trial. A request for summary judgement basically has the judge look at all the evidence presented so far and go, “Weighing all the evidence available at this stage is there still some dispute?” If the answer is yes, you have to go to trial. I don’t have in front of me what the judge has in front of her, but I can see how someone might say, “I have all this stuff that points to you.” and the response being, “No. That’s not true, I wasn’t there.” The response to that being, “Yes you were. You just don’t remember. Look, it’s your style and that’s your signature.”
What you have there is a dispute of key facts. As a judge you can’t take sides based on who you believe most. If judges did that, we wouldn’t have trials, just Deciders. The burden is still on the plaintiff and I think they’re going to have a rough time. I think it’s interesting in stories like this that it’s always the observers or the defendant/plaintiff’s lawyers that are incredulous. They never ask an independent lawyer, “Hey. What about this motion? Does this look right?”
Instead you get in another context,
A decision against Mr. Doig, and any costly award for damages, would nevertheless probably send a shock wave through the art world.
“It would,” said Nicholas M. O’Donnell, a Boston art lawyer who has no role in the case, “put all artists in the cross hairs.”
This does nothing to indicate if the trial going forward is significant, or if the process is being performed correctly, or if the process itself is broken. I’m willing to believe the latter, in which case I’m not sure a better system can be envisioned unless we publicly finance lawyers (which has its own problems). But I don’t see how the judge had much choice here.
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We’re really settlement driven up here.
And we don’t do punitive damages like ever.
But I think I found why its filed in the US and not Canada…
Lower Damage Awards
Another significant difference which clients might wish to consider prior to deciding to pursue litigation in Canada includes the fact that general damage awards are far lower in Canada. For instance, the Supreme Court of Canada has capped the general damages to which a party could reasonably expect to obtain on account of pain and suffering in a personal injury action to an amount less than CDN$300,000.
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I gotta go with the greed. It would be one thing if he thought all along this was a famous artist he helped get his life together, but, from the article, it sounds like had someone not [incorrectly] pointed out to him that the work was by a famous artist, he probably would have lived out the rest of his life thinking that it was just a neat painting by some kid he helped out in jail…
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That painting needs Wile E. Coyote wearing an Acme rocket pack.
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“Emperor” Norton would even draw paper money (in his own imperial currency) for his expenses. People at the time mostly accepted them out of pity, but they’ve become valuable since.
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*repeatedly hits self in head* Coke and hookers after you get the money…AFTER!
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It’s in the 'states…and that prison guard is “on the team”, so his opinion carries more weight than evidence, facts or eyewitness accounts.
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Sure, and the possibility that the painting was worth millions (despite the names not even matching up) was what caused him to decide that Doig was Doige. But once he (or someone on his behalf) reached out to the artist to verify the work and the artist said it wasn’t his, it became a personal rejection to the guy as well, so forcing the guy in court to “admit” to this narrative has a personal dimension. (Believing him to be the artist, he obviously felt like, “Hey, I helped you when you needed it, but you’re going out of your way to screw me! Well fuck you, I’ll force you to give me the money - and acknowledgement.”) But yeah, the money is causing him to ignore very clear evidence that he’s deluded in favor of what amounts to a weird art-interpretation conspiracy theory.
The sad bit is, at this point he’s spending money (and becoming beholden to others who are also giving him money) not on himself but just to “prove” (that is, to force the artist to claim) that the work is Doig’s. It could have been avoided when the artist rejected the idea of the work being his with a bit of research that would have shown the impossibility of it, but instead he doubled down on his misapprehension.
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And it will create a trap because if an artist can’t afford to fight the lawsuit and says the art is theirs, suddenly the real artist can show up with a lawyer working on contingency to sue them for falsely claiming the art was theirs.
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Affiliation is not an art form, because happening to have a special “identity” is not really doing anything. Many people’s critical faculties fail with this sort of thing, positing that fame has value for its own sake. It’s why Hollywood pushes stars instead of actors, who are simply famous for being recognizable as themselves. Many artists and entertainers only complicate the situation by being motivated by the stroking of their ego.
When they have asked me for my opinion, my advice is usually to release works anonymously. This is the best way for them to be critiqued upon their own merits. Everything else is a mire of personal problems.
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It’ll create a situation where artists simply will be afraid to contradict collectors who claim an art work is theirs - neither confirming, nor, more importantly (to the people who want to create the association) denying it. The real artist (assuming the collector isn’t just pulling a scam) would then have to take some sort of action to publicly claim it - but since they’re going to be the artist whose work has lesser worth, it’s more likely the painting owner would be threatening them with legal action to keep quiet (assuming they have enough of a profile that anyone even pays attention to them). It’s just forced speech - and silence - all around.
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It doesn’t even look anything like Doig’s work.
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It does show a little how assigning a value on art solely because of who created it rather than any artistic or aesthetic worth (which is admittedly highly subjective) can be a bit of a pitfall.
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