This is being cross posted, please excuse any duplications.

I received an interesting "business proposal" today via
e-mail (I also check the web site to see if it was as bad as
it sounded). Parts of it strike me as being possibly
illegal, or at least on very shaky ground. I was wondering
what you all thought of it.

The company, located in Germany, paints pictures, in oil,
and sells them to individuals and businesses. Fine. They
will take commissions. Fine.
However, they will paint ANY picture. They specialize in
reproductions. They claim that a "perfect reproduction is
guaranteed," and can do Old Masters as well as contemporary
modern art. This is the part that strikes me as not so fine.
For the Old Masters I am not too worried if they are using
modern paints and canvases since there is no longer any
copyright on such paintings and even if they are as good as
they claim, a simple check of materials would stop any
passing off as originals. However, don't modern paintings
still have a copyright? "A perfect reproduction" would be as
much of a copy as a xerox is of a journal article. Much more
work goes into the painting, but it is not intended to be a
creative exercise or another artist's interpretation of a
painting. This strikes me as being a possible source of
modern forgeries as well.


                                                Angela
Putney, Ph.D.
                                                Physics
Management Fellow
                                                American
Institute of Physics
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