Busted!

My friend and talented illustrator James Hungaski called over the holidays from his trip to see family in the Northeast to relate a little story about a visit to Times Square. He said he was walking along and spotted a street caricaturist trying to sell prints of one of my caricatures. Jim got in his face and made him take it down. I appreciate the effort, but he didn’t have to do that. The way I look at it, anyone misrepresenting another’s art for their own like that is not doing themselves any favors. If they have any illusions about moving up from selling street caricatures in December in New York, they are not going to do it by plagiarizing another artist’s work.

On my own trip to NYC this summer I spotted more than a few artists with stolen samples on their stands, and wrote a post about it. I mentioned having once seen a video by a fellow in London in which he busts a street artist using caricatures by French great Jean Mulatier, confronting him with a book full of the very drawings he has up on display. It’s pretty funny how the guy just stands there blinking and isn’t even embarrassed.

That London fellow, as it turns out, is Douglas Pledger, and the video I remembered is now on You Tube:

Douggy has several videos of a puppet show called Stronzo he’s worked on. They are quite entertaining, and the one called “London News” features a follow up to the caricature video in which he busts three more caricaturists with Mulatier’s work on display. The caricature portion of the show is about 10 minutes into the “London News” episode, but check out the whole thing if you can. Fun stuff.