Not Quite Painting By Numbers

When is plagiarism not plagiarism? When you're Jack Vetttriano it seems. It was revealed today in The Scotsman that the top Scottish 'artist' copied some of his famous paintings directly from a 'How to do it' painting manual. We're not talking style or nuance here we're talking copying that is so blatant he probably used tracing paper! If this was in the literary domain he would be black balled with no court of appeal, but we're in the 'art world' here and the fact that these 'colouring in' masterpieces have sold for upwards of 700,000 pounds probably says as much about the denizens of that airy-fairy world as it does about Vettrianno himself. Then there's his agent," Vettriano's skill lies in his ability to create narrative paintings with which the viwer becomes involved.He is a master of generating atmosphere in his paintings---------" blah de blah de blah.What a load of crap. If he were a genuine wide boy who had fooled those poncy 'collectors' with too much disposable income then I would be the first to applaud him but I'm afraid that's not the case. He is a man who got lucky and came to believe his own publicity. I always thought his work was like the product of some sort of sausage machine where the handle was turned and out popped another of the same but I thought that at least he was using his own recipe!