Mijn Schatje – Art Thief
June 2nd, 2009 by cupcake17
It has come to my attention that Mijn Schatje may be reusing or editing photos of other people’s ball joint dolls in her work. Either by way of editing the pictures themselves, or vector tracing over existing images. I have included a few examples of what I find to be compelling evidence of art theft. These are copyrighted photographs from either doll owners, or official doll companies, that Mijn has copied or referenced without permission or credit.
Mijin Schatje - Unoa Lusis Copy
Mijin Schatje Leekeworld Copy
Here is a list of more examples that have been composed so far. Images were not edited in any way, simply moved, resized and superimposed onto Schatje’s pieces.
She has ripped BJD faces both from official company photos, and doll owner-photos alike. Many doll owners consider their photography an original form of art, which makes it especially galling to have a photo copied and resold. So far there is confirmation from three of the Ball-Jointed-Doll Companies that her use of their copyrighted images was without permission. This is the message from the company representative for Doll in Mind:
Thank you so much for letting me know about the illegal site using our doll images.
This is very unusual and I never know this.
I will check and do what I can do stop this.
Have a good weekend.
Best wishes,Denny
And this is the reply from PIPOS doll:
Hello^0^
This is intersting because we already met her last year at her homepage.
And we didn\’t give her a permission to use our Baha pictures.
We need to contact her again and make sure about these copies.
Thank you very much for letting us know this fact.Have a good day!
regards,
PIPOSDOLL
This is especially disturbing to me because Mijin Schatje never mentions she works from images of dolls at all. When she is asked where she gets her inspiration its always from her own imagination. Read a long article on her here in Juxtapoz Magazine, where her work is even called “doll-like.”
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YTWWN SAYS: Im in two minds about this post- I would say definetly a rip if she was making dolls herself, but she if is more referencing a sculpture to make paintings?- Admitedly she denies referencing the dolls which is suss…
(182 votes, average: 4.55 out of 5)
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Referencing the dolls isn’t really an issue, but I have one with artists that flat out trace and/or lie about how they come up with their art. If an artist is forthcoming about tracing, then a company would probably consider it tribute work and not copyright infringement. An artist that tries to cover up their methods is hurting more than just themselves as younger artists will try to duplicate something that was achieved falsely.
Yup… the issue isn’t that she’s working from dolls at all. Its that she’s tracing copyrighted photographs and selling them for profit. It would be the same as tracing and reselling a fashion photo. If she was doing freehand paintings from life, based on doll faces, the companies would think it was a tribute like erm said. But the images she is using are under copyright, and she is simply vecorizing them and claiming they are original art.
The jellyfish child pic is from Leekeworld, not Fairyland… still, it’s an official company photo.
Well, another thing to keep in mind is that when she was confronted on an art blog about her art being paintovers of dolls, she denied it completely, saying that she had never seen photographs of dolls that looked like her work.
After that she just seems to backpedal further and further, suddenly remembering “Ah yes, I got the pictures from my friends” which still doesn’t excuse the tracing. In any of her pieces, you can clearly see where the detail is and it’s all in the face, copying everything from shadows to wrong, wall-eyed eye positioning. Most everything else is flatly coloured, with little to no detail put in it at all.
Yeah good point about the photographs copyright.
The website is very convincing with the photos overlaid with the paintings. Absolutely traced and there are more than a dozen examples.
The dolls are works of art and the owners have a right to create derivative works, such as photographs of the dolls. The photos, using the dolls as models are also copyrighted.
The dolls are gorgeous, by the way. The faces are so expressive.
I think it should be mentioned that she sells prints for $1700, has several art galleries, and has a contract with a lindsey lohan clothing line… This isn’t some garage artist, it’s a famous one making bucko bucks off of art theft.
This really makes me ill. Reference is one thing, blatant copy of other people’s work in a different medium is just theft.
That’s pretty low-brow if you ask me. Not like her work isn’t already low-brow to begin with. This just puts the icing on the cake. I hope she gives some of her profits to the creators of those dolls.
See:
Art Rogers 1980 Photograph/Postcard “Puppies”
vs
Jeff Koons 1998 Wood painted sculpture “String of Puppies”
at
http://www.law.harvard.edu/faculty/martin/art_law/image_rights.htm
There’s a difference between admitting you used a photo as a fair-use basis for a transformative work (e.g. the Obama poster, which I believe will be determined to be fair-use if it is ever ruled on) and lying about using a photo for a not-very-transformative work (such as these doll images) or using a photo as the basis for your sculpture (String of Puppies) without permission or license.
Most photographers are happy to give permission if you ask, or ask for a very nominal fee to license the photo for a use like this. Using the photo without getting permission is really low, and shows disrespect for the rights of fellow artists.
The fact she asked for permission from some photographers and not others speaks volumes to the fact she knows it is polite and necessary to ask the original artist for permission to use their images.
As a graphic artist, she is not just using them as references… She is taking the original photo importing into a program and using the original phot o(which is stealing the photo itself) and then using the doll (which the doll is also an artwork of it’s own and stealing the look of the doll) She did not use parts, she did not trace, she used the same image and digitally rendered it into her color scheme and style. The photo is art, and so is the doll. Someone can’t take my work and go and make and oil painting of it on there style, nor can they use a picture of mine. This is stealing.She just paintovers of dolls images and calls then original works. She is making money of other peoples original idea. As an artist this sickens me!! For all of us that have original ideas and are authentic, we should have so much fame as a stealing copycat.
“littlerobot
This really makes me ill. Reference is one thing, blatant copy of other people’s work in a different medium is just theft.”
When I was younger and newer to graphic arts. I used to take photographs on Deviantart and vector them as practice pieces. Unfortunately, the photographer caught one vectored image on my blog and demanded an explanation. I promptly took down the vector image and deleted any copy of that work. Now, i’m a little more cautious so I use mostly my face in all my artworks… I’ve also had the misfortune of having someone claim one of my works as their own. So the bottomline is, just because its online, doesn’t make it free unless its stated. There’s still the matter of intellectual property rights which must always be respected.
When i made my mistake I took it down and sent the photographer my apologies and learned from it. another thing is i never made money out of my practice piece. however, this girl did which further complicates the situation even more. Its disgusting to have someone be in this situation and still continue doing it… its a bit unfair to all the artists out there who go to great lengths to get their own pictures, models and pay for them to use them in their art.
Someone should make a YouTube video, another way to spread the word.
Gotta love the fact that she signed a deal with Sony using on of her pictures but asked the original photographer for permission to use the picture 14 months after the fact…
Really says something about her integrity.
see:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/blastmilk/sets/72157619093901772/
I don’t really know about this. She clearly traced the photos (and yes, it *is* tracing in adobe illustrator as opposed to transforming the photo in photoshop) but somehow I feel they are also a whole new work on their own. It isn’t like she quickly made a copy of the pictures, I know that she works for weeks and weeks on one piece. When seen up close they are really really intricate and it would be very hard to reproduce for anyone, even when tracing a photo. I don’t feel like she is making money off other people’s work, or at least she has spent LOADS more work on them than the photographers.
Maybe it’s also that I have a little trouble seeing other people’s doll photos as ‘artworks’. But I guess my opinion of that doesn’t hold up to actual law hehe. My point is: even now I know that she traced them, I still think her work is of a completely different level than those photographs. Actual art as opposed to snapshots, and pretty impressive art as well.
Ofcourse she should have asked if she was going to use the photos for such an exact trace… most people probably would’ve happily agreed to her using them.
As for the denying part.. I think this email you have up as a reply explains it a little more: http://radiotrash.org/temp/t/MIJN2.jpg
I have met her once and when asked about her work she pretty much immediately told me that she used photos for reference. No denying or anything. In my own opinion she should have asked the photographer, and could have changed proportions and colors a little more instead of making exact copies, making exact traces without asking permission was pretty stupid.
I’m not saying it’s alright what she did and how she did it, but I don’t know.. ‘art thief’ seems a big word here for me.
Well, mostly in response to what S is saying… I think the copying of the photographs is only the second part of the copyright infringement.
The first is that she is copying these very distinct sculptures and passing them off as creations of her own imagination. If you really think the “time” she put into it is somehow proof of her drawings being legitimate art in their own right, then you should have even more respect for the people who originally sculpted the dolls.
That doesn’t take just hours, but weeks or *months*. Making sculptures, especially for something as complex as dolls, is incredibly time-consuming. Her drawings are almost entirely about the faces–without them, they would be nothing. In articles they go on and on about how captivating and beautiful these faces are. But they are lifted directly from another artist’s creation, with no attempt by her to credit the original artist.
If she told S in person she used photos, that’s fine, but why not tell the interviewers? Half the time she just goes off about how it’s all part of her incredible imagination. I know a lot of artists like to build themselves up like that, but c’mon, there’s gotta be a limit to your bull.
As far as I can tell, she’s ripping off every minute of these peoples’ hard work. The sculptor’s work, in every line, shape, and form of the face, and then the painter’s work, down to the colors of the lips, the shapes of the eyebrows, the color of the eye (and even the angle the eyes are looking!!)
If this woman was really so creative, why did she need to rip off SO much of everyone else’s work? Start with a photograph, sure, but warp it–change it into something unique and distinctly yours. She’s taking a shortcut here, and not even attempting to cover it up.
If she really saw nothing wrong with it, she could’ve gotten permission from the photographers and the sculptors, and proudly credited them wherever the works were shown. They are really more of ‘collaborations’ than anything else and claiming full credit (and full profits) on them is sleazy.
I feel like people are REALLY not getting that the original ART photographs have the same feel as her art.
This (an original photo, she copied from this shoot) is actually prettier and more creative than her drawings: http://www.blastmilk.com/archives/babyhead12.jpg
Someone set up a photo the same way one would with a human model – painted the makeup/eyebrows/etc, picked out the colors, SEWED THE CLOTHES by hand, and set up lighting. THIS is what was ripped off entirely.
Also, people are not getting that the dolls come blank – they are hairless eyeless heads and the doll owner creates the personality/look/colorscheme from scratch as an art. She’s ripping this off entirely as well.
Hm.. as for what Ally says.. if you think she is ripping off the doll producers, then the same can be said for the people photographing said dolls ofcourse. Or for, say, Warhol making a print of a Campbell’s soup can.
I don’t think she ever hid the fact that she’s depicting the dolls.. and it’s also pretty obvious that’s what they are to anyone that has seen a doll before.
But yeah, I agree that she at least should’ve been more open about using the pictures from the start. Or she just could’ve bought a doll herself and trace pictures of it if that’s what she wants to do.
And verhext, what is prettier or more creative is subjective ofcourse, the picture you link to does nothing for me while I really like the way Mijn Schatjes work looks.
That’s the thing. If these where models shot by a photographer and a crew of stylists and an artist so completely used the figure in their own work it might be a bit clearer to some readers. And I can’t help but wonder about the comic artists who trace buildings and architectural elements from photos to use as backgrounds in their work.
I do believe that some of these are at least cases of photographs being used without proper permission. But in others it does appear that she simply was not clear on HOW the photos would be used when asking for permission. That said, I do wonder how this would swing it it was to go to court: original derivative work or copy vio. Legally it might be a much thinner line between the two.
Tracing over company pictures without asking the companies themselves is what may put her in hot water, since some of them are pretty vocal about copyright infringement (and have the money to sue if needed).
Sadly, ripping off small artists or private owners isn’t going to have that big of a backlash for her.
S: The point is, it has a style/lighting/palette/etc. It’s not just a manufacturer catalog shot or something. It’s work that someone put time and creativity is as their art.
real artists can create something from nothing…this person chose to take her ’something’ from someone else.
therefore: her credibility as a real artist is null.
Maria: regarding comics using building in background thought, that’s completely different issue. those buildings are generally not very detailed and definitely not the main focus or selling point of comics, and it’s generally easier to draw simple items such as background buildings using a reference pic vs. tracing them. Mijn is using the allegedly stolen works as the main focus and selling point. If she said “I created a picture of x, based on y” that would be acceptable. She is not being honest and implying or saying “I created x. Here is a picture of it.” Subtle yet very critical differences. Another example: Here is a picture of the Eiffel Tower I created. vs Here is a picture I created of the Eiffel Tower. There are any number of suitable responses Mijn could have given to graciously diffuse this issue, none of them were used.
S > I would agree with that if the photographers of these dolls were passing off the sculptures as their own, but they’re not. If you look at the “Original source” links, none of them claim to have made the dolls, and usually credit the company who made the doll. They’re also not selling their photographs for profit.
It wouldn’t be such a big deal if her drawings were ‘just for fun’ or whatever, but it takes it to a whole other level when she’s selling $1000 prints and making clothing deals with Fornarina and selling adverts to Sony with these dolls’ likenesses.
When you look at Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Cans, you can say, “Oh, Campbell’s Soup Cans.” The credit for the original imagery is right there, written on the prints (that series is more about the idea of making art out of non-art anyway, so it strikes me as an odd example.) If you had never heard of these dolls before, and looked at her drawings, would you be able to say, “Oh, a Luts doll”? No. If it was a Barbie doll, you probably could–but if she had used Barbie dolls, I can guarantee you Mattel would already be taking legal action against her.
Most viewers of her art probably assume that she came up with these faces all by herself, because that’s how she presents them. The only defining feature of her art is the distinctness of the girls’ expressions. Which were sculpted by the dolls’ creators and painted by the artists who painted the dolls. If you take that away, what’s left? She had no part in creating the focal point of her drawings (unless you think tracing is creating…?), so why is she reaping the benefits and credit for it?
From Juxtapoz:
“Mijn is forever drawing girls—porcelain skinned dolls with huge end-of-the-world eyes and lush, gaping lips.”
How rich. Should be more like:
“Mijn is forever copying and incorporating, often without permission or acknowledgement,the porcelain skinned dolls with huge end-of-the-world eyes and lush, gaping lips that other artist have constructed and photographed.”
Let’s not get all this confused with Warhol or anyone else of that matter as I see very little hope of her works ever being on the walls of MOMA or the TATE, they are more design than art.
YES; she should be honest with where her inspiration comes from. I’ve a bit of an issue with how close to the original they are.
NO; I don’t consider it a RIP, in some ways yes, but the more I think about it I lean more towards no. If your calling it a rip then you had best tell every stencil artist, all those who do illustrations based on glossy magazine pictures, anyone who ever copied a photo they did not take and anyone who didn’t create something from their mind without some form of influence from the world outside, which means everyone. Mother nature must be owed a stack of money!
In the end though if your going to be inspired by something, be honest and if possible let the person whose image/words/thoughts made it happen know as I’m sure most of the time they’ll be happy to check it out.
Though in saying that I’ve had people ask to use my images for a piece they were working on and I didn’t like their technique or style and thought it more they were being lazy than offering any further growth to the work.
Who buys $1000 dolls anyways? and who wastes their time making dolls?
Mijn actually gives these people more credibility by incorporating their
work into hers. Talent borrows, but a genius steals and makes it theirs.
You’d be surprised if you bothered to learn about it, Mike
there’s a big lot of artists, designers, fiction writers and other creators (some of them pretty succesful and famous) involved in the doll hobby.
Newsflash about Mijn is that she traced other people’s artwork too, even from well known illustrations. Now people is trying to determine if there’s any original content at all in her artwork.
Its not all about the dolls anymore, she now steals from artist Audrey Kawasaki (www.audrey-kawasaki.com)
See the image comparrision here
http://radiotrash.org/temp/t/kawa.JPG
Read all the up to date information here:
http://radiotrash.org/mijn/
This is a legal issue, that’s all. Legally, if taken to court, she would likely lose her case. If someone makes a sculpture or an artistic creation (like a doll) and somebody else uses that image in artwork of their own and you can clearly see where it came from, then she would likely lose. There are many websites about copyright issues that prove my point. She needs to create her own vector faces out of her imagination and stop tracing from dolls and photos of dolls. Then she could continue what she’s doing. As it is, she’s setting herself up for a lawsuit.
As an artist myself, I only use reference photos of people that I have permission to draw or paint. Or I make images up myself. She obviously has talent and imagination, she’s just not going about it in the right way. Sad really. She needs to buck up and do things right.
Mike: What’s more stupid… paying $1000 for a doll that’s a tangible, one-of-a-kind piece of art… or paying $1000 for a tracing of that doll, that only costs a couple of bucks to print potentially unlimited copies of?
Mike, that’s an incredibly insensitive and stupid remark.
It is or It is not (plagiarism)
“This is probably one of the worst nightmare that can happen to an editor, someone reporting that one of your covered artist may be a fraud. This is worst than navigating a perilous sea. Worst than breaking into personal perceptions instead of objectivity. Worst that can happen to someone’s reputation. Threading with circumspection and for the sake of justice or at least wanting to offer room for debate, shown are samples of the so called copycats.”
http://netdiver.net/it-is-or-it-is-not-plagiarism
Mijn Schatje is dutch voor my tresure of my honey or something. Mijn is not the first name of the person. It’s a brand.
What a sorry excuse for an artist…she’s a liar and a thief – look at her pathetic myspace page that attempts to remove any fault from her based upon her “poor English” and some “misunderstandings.” I hope she gets taken to court and I really hope people find out that she’s a fraud. She’s making LOTS of money off of other people’s hard work and not giving them proper credit. So tacky! Did she really think people wouldn’t catch on in this day and age? And whomever “S” is and the like, they are prob. her minions trying to do damage control and make her seem less of a deceptive slag. Those artists should really get their share of her profits.
she is having a lovely hugbox going on on her myspace and facebook, its annoying really…I think she did this to herself and is not a victim at all. Her English looks fine to me
You guys NEED to post up those new Audrey Kawasaki traces from the radio site.. its infuriating. After seeing that on top of all the traces over doll photos that do not belong to her (don’t forget, many of those doll photos art art pieces themselves AND the dolls can come blank and much have faces painted on them!) I hope she gets everything that’s coming to her for being so foolish. Her faces are the focus of her pieces and really…well they are the best drawn and rendered area of the piece, know we know why.
I don’t know if anything can be done legally, but what she has done is in extremely bad taste for an artist as high profile as herself. I hope galleries, clients, and buyers of her $1000 prints take note of this.
I’ve been seeing more and more of this process by which people trace photos and go on to call it “original art”. It’s frustrating b/c I’ve never been one who can sit down and draw whatever comes to mind, but I would never dream of tracing. I’ll reference photos from time to time (and by reference I mean “look at” – not “trace”), and I’ll develop numerous sketches, I’ll completely erase and start over or I’ll toil over something for days before I’m happy with the result. And then, I get on here and see shit like this and it’s frustrating that people are so lazy as to trace other people’s photos. I’m not even comfortable tracing my own photos, but if I did, at least that wouldn’t be stealing. This is an example of what YTWWN is for. Great post. Juxtapoz needs to step it up with their research. To the responsible biting party: Start over and this time come original. You’ll find the reward is much greater when it comes from you and only you. Plus, you’ll have “artistic integrity” which goes a long way in my mind. Anyone on here defending the biter must have questionable creative ethics as well.
I stumbled upon this post on My Modern Metropolis blog yesterday, and wondered if this would be the same thing, since it looks a lot like this artist traces photos of models and celebrities (does anyone recognise a photo maybe?).
http://www.mymodernmet.com/profiles/blogs/provocative-beauty-2h-9
Is this artist allowed to do that or is he breaking copyright laws as well? He also sells shoes, mucks and other stuff with his paintings on them. I’m really on the fence about where copyright stops.
And yeah, Mijn Schatje is dutch and means something like ‘my darling’, ‘my cutie’
‘Mijn Schatje’ are dutch WORDS I mean
I don’t understand the excuse, “Somebody else did it and got away with it, that means it’s OK.” I thought most of us learned that was wrong back in preschool.
Her “art” is mediocre at best, and all of the parts that took real skill to create belong to other artists.
to Maaike, YES i have seen a photograph that 2H used to paint. The chick pushing her tits togetehr with the tats on her arms. I saw it the other day ffffound.com you can email me if you need it.
This ‘Mijn Schatje’ is a total thief. How lame. Fry her.
Argh, no, I am not Mijn Schatjes ‘minion’. I am just giving my opinion. I am posting here under the letter S instead of my full name because friends of mine who have written on their blogs about Mijn Schatje (before all this was known) are now getting harassing comments on these posts from anti-Mijn Schatje crusaders. I have some pictures taken of her work online as well, and I would rather not have people spamming on them.
With the new Audrey Kawasaki traces coming up the credibility of Mijn Schatjes work seems to be a lost cause though. It was so, so, so stupid of her to trace it. I still have some respect for the technical aspect of the illustrations she makes though, even with tracing it’s quite an achievement, like I said before.
But I do not condone the mindless tracing going on in about every aspect of her illustrations.
I’m really curious how this will work out in the future. Some (silly?) part of me hopes she’ll overcome and starts afresh, with truly original and untraced work.
It;s not tracing people. She is taking these people images and using them. She is taking the doll face image and painting over them, and as for the body of Audrey Kawasaki work it is not tracing either, she is importing and extracting what she wants and coloring over them them – tracing is bad, but that is worse.
There is not credit to her work, coping peoples work is not skill – just because it looks good does not mean that it is good. She had to use parts of others work.
Also being someone who creates art on the computer I KNOW that there is a lot more that is stolen, but she altered it just a smidge that she cant get into too much trouble for. Most everything!
She also stole a VERY WELL KNOWN characters! TOtoro
http://images.google.com/images?q=totoro&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ei=c2YoSpv-B9mblQfm1YniBQ&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&resnum=1&ct=title
By tracing I mean drawing exactly over the original images, however the original works themselves are then removed from her illustration.
Mijn Schatjes images are *not* reworked original photos, but exact copies done in Adobe Illustrator. Which is pretty clear if you are familiar with the program itself.
I’m not sure if you understood what I meant by tracing, since what you describe would be called tracing in my book as well.
S, what Minny is describing is called a paint over or an overpaint. It is when an artist paints directly on an image, leaving it incorporated into the work instead of removing the original when the work is complete. It would be akin to paint directly on a photo, instead of drawing on a sheet of paper atop of the photo. Some of her works appear to be traced as you described, but some of them really do look like paintovers.Some of this work does not in fact look like Illustrator at all (like she used both Photoshop and Illustrator which is quite possible), which are the ones that look like paintovers instead of traces.
I personally do not believe she has any skill. The “good parts” of her imagery that people describe are the ones that were traced/painted over. You look at the areas where she fabricated from her own mind…they are lifeless, flat with no sense of volume or value. It does look exactly like she ripped a piece out of a photo, collaged it in, and attempted to paint on it to make it match. And it doesn’t even match…lighting is improper, value is wrong, all sorts of things.
The worst fact is that she sold these pieces. Maybe, MAYBE, she could make right on this if she hadn’t…but look at the Kallisti fiasco. She copied Kallisti’s work and sold it for profit over a year before ever asking Kallisti for any sort of permission and never credited her either. Not to mention the Kawasaki and Totoro rips. Copying this sort of art and also licensed characters is less of a gray area than copying photographs of dolls. It was a very stupid move of her to do, let alone do it in images she is making money off of.
Riss – I totally agree with you. The “art” in her stolen work is the photographs used. Everything else is dull in comparison (and some of her added pieces even seem like clip art!). What a fraud she is an how anyone can suggest otherwise is beyond me.
I showed some of her “work” and comparisons to the BJD’s photos to another professor and he stated he would fail any student who attempted to pass such a thing.
Of course the masses seem pleased enough and whether they are stolen just isn’t of interest to her “buyers”. No accounting for taste.
My god! Damien Hurst must also be a thief because he uses animals in his art!
So many people gossip and argue – I find it very sad. We are all becoming very bitter and love to pass judgement these days.
‘thats art? one man said to a friend. ‘but I could do that’
The friend replied ‘The fact is you didn’t’
Jay-
No, Damien Hurst is a thief bc he steals other people’s ideas and he is an unoriginal hack. he has assistants do the work for him and then collects all the money. So you’re saying more people should trace others’ work and pass it off as their own? Nice.
Every artist is expected to be original. If referencing is necessary for tribute purposes, then it must be done. If denial over credit is being overlooked, then it’s an issue of integrity. And we all know that an artist without originality, worse someone who doesn’t have it plus there’s no integrity is frowned upon in the art community. It’s like lip-synching in a program filled with live performers. You can get away with it, but with shame inside.
FLF-
Exactly.
No, what you are also saying is that DH is a very clever man!! Art has changed so much over the years. you talk as if we are still living in the 1700’s By making that statement you are also accusing the whole of the art, interior, music, etc… please tell me of one original artist from the 1990’s to present date? And just out of interest how are you qualified to make such a statement?
Jay –
Are you even aware of the topic at hand and the extent of Mijn Schatje’s art theft? I would suggest you check out some of her “work” and the originals, before making any sweeping remarks about how the people here aren’t qualified to make statements or pass judgements.
Reviving this thread, I just wanted to inform everyone that Juxtapoz Magazine has removed Mijn Schatje’s long article as linked from the beginning of this thread (http://www.juxtapoz.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=6151&Itemid=121). Clearly, they are now well aware of the extent of her plagiarized works and had taken the necessary action.
Good job, Juxtapoz Magazine.
This ‘Mijn Schatje’ is a total thief. How lame. Fry her.
Berry -
I totally understand. Do you think we should bring back the good old burning at the stake?
but seriously I do agree she is at fault due to the fact she says her work is original when it’s clearly not. I just find it a shame that her career will most likely come to an end because of this. I think as much as she was wrong to use the dolls and pass them off as original everyone’s also wrong to bring her down like this and publicly humiliate her worldwide.
She should shame :< she should be banned from internet and dolls for the rest of her life :<<
Its sad, the dishonest and disloyal seem to prosper while the good watch.
To put it bluntly Jay, She brought it all the humiliation on her self by not crediting/permission the any of the original doll owners and companies in the first place.
What she did was wrong, she stole the images, traced over them and called them her original “art” (I’m put the word art in ” here because I don’t recognize her work as art) not only did she display them in fine art gallerys in around the world she sold said images as Prints for thousands of dollars.
I hope that she gets what she deserves.
I find the whole topic disappointing. As a graphic designer, post-production photo editor and artist I go out of my way to ensure correct licenses are purchase for any photo’s I use whether it be for a magazine spread, vector image or art piece. I also make sure to mention copyrights of any fan-art I draw of existing characters or mention that that the character is not mine. I would never steal someone’s vision and rebrand it as my own.
Some comments found above are terrible misinformed. To dismiss a photograph as being just a base for any if any artwork just because it exists is stupid. Photography may at first seem like a point and click issue but real photography is an art in itself for lighting adjustment, colour, choice of subject matter, composition, the choice in lens for focal point and so on. Even so, in main stream media and graphic design we spend hundreds of dollar to use stock images that the photographer is happy to give the rights up to without credit in commercial. The term is “intellectual property” for those who don’t understand why designers just don’t steal random photo’s other people take without permission.
Even ignoring the above, the photo’s used in mijn’s work are of hand painted dolls that are unique one of a kind visions made by the doll makers. They are artwork in themselves and to trace them without proper credit and for profit off is stealing. She is not a hobby artist, she commercially sells herself and her artwork. And commercially nothing photo based should be used without permission from the owner/photographer, not just copyrighted items. Otherwise why does copyright exist?
At >S
[By tracing I mean drawing exactly over the original images, however the original works themselves are then removed from her illustration.
Mijn Schatjes images are *not* reworked original photos, but exact copies done in Adobe Illustrator. Which is pretty clear if you are familiar with the program itself.
I’m not sure if you understood what I meant by tracing, since what you describe would be called tracing in my book as well.]
So by making a complete remake of an existing photo this make it mijn’s “art” so long as she removes the original before saving? So people can vector trace the adobe illustrator logo and claim it as their artwork/design? I can go out and trace the mona lisa exactly and the say the artwork is mine? No, the subject is copyrighted and the “piece” is not for the original subjects owners promotion or profit. The photo’s she uses is someone else’s intellectual property. Her final item is just a trace nothing more and nothing less. Good for her, spending so much time on a tracing!
At>Jay
[but seriously I do agree she is at fault due to the fact she says her work is original when it’s clearly not. I just find it a shame that her career will most likely come to an end because of this. I think as much as she was wrong to use the dolls and pass them off as original everyone’s also wrong to bring her down like this and publicly humiliate her worldwide.]
She sold herself to the world as an “artist” and “this is my art”. It is her own fault for launching herself commercially without doing her research or not caring about the penalties. Stupidity, or lack of knowledge is no excuse in court. Her humiliations has only spreads as far as she has allowed herself to rise. If you truly like her art maybe instead of trying to defend her, you should privately email her and ask her start afresh and apologies to affected parties and move past this embarrassing part of her career. Which she still has no conscience to do…
At> Mike
“Talent borrows, but a genius steals and makes it theirs.”
You are using that quote out of context. It refers to the stage and that talent only borrows the limelight briefly but a genius creates an lasting effect even after they have exited, thus stealing the show.
The ‘Is Mijn Schatje An Art Thief?’ site has been moved:
http://everytomorrow.net/mijn/
[...] got me thinking about Mijn Schatje and the whole furore over her artwork ( http://youthoughtwewouldntnotice.com/blog3/?p=3253 ). There is very little room for doubting that Miss Schatje (I forget her real name) used a lot of [...]
[...] In 2009, a group of ball-jointed doll aficionados noticed the striking resemblance of the women in Mijn’s artworks to their dolls. Side by side comparisons of Mijn’s works and the dolls was enough to have Mijn [...]
I know a girl who’s making the same than this and it’s also harrasing me by mail. I might let you know bout her eventually for sure. It’s outrageous
yskw2K http://djb3jDdmjckow30cnjcmd61l0dy.com