The Art of the Knock Off

I'm a sucker for a rehash. I'm intrigued by any cover song, no matter how suspect the original; just recognizing a melody or lyric re-imagined is exciting to me. 

I love the feeling of confused familiarity that creeps over me when I begin to realize the movie I'm watching is a re-vamped version of a classic.

It's a puzzle that's been set forth, and an inside joke between me and it's creator if I get it. It's like I'm one of the cool kids, in with the "in" crowd, more pop or literarily cultured than the next guy.

There is a science to theft in the design world. There are not just guidelines but LAWS, dictating the degree to which one can steal. In the fashion industry a "knock-off" is a copy, and it's industry standard to steal every season from the runway in order to make a piece for the masses.
You can steal whole-hog a silhouette (the shape of a garment) and not get sued. Prints and other artwork (like screen-printed tees) required you change them 30% in order to sell them and not get pinched for copyright infringement. How one determines that 30% can be mind-numbingly subjective. It's the old quandary of translating beauty into math, and back again; what percentage of this piece of art does the rose in the middle constitute? What about each petal? Leaf?


Here's a compilation of graphic knock-offs, homages and outright thefts of one of the greatest movie posters of all time (including my own flier made recently to promote recruits for my Roller Derby team The Boulder County Bombers):

Turn of the Century: The Golden Era of Magic

As a little girl I had very few heroes, but one of them was Harry Houdini. I remember reading a book about him and his life in middle school,and then spending a summer attempting to "train" my esophagus to operate in reverse, the way he did to reproduce keys he'd swallowed (after being locked in various boxes). I won't go into specifics of how that's done. Sadly, stage fright nixed any of my plans as a performer (of which magician was only one of many; tightrope walker, actress, ballerina, gymnast).

I bring up Houdini as a segue to feature highly collectible, and uniquely beautiful, vintage magic posters. In the 1870's Jules Cheret mastered the technique of stone lithography and is credited with being the “father" of the process. His three stone lithographic process allowed every color in the rainbow to be printed with as little as three stones – usually red, yellow and blue – printed in careful registration.

The peak of lithographic popularity coincided with the Golden Era of Magic, from 1890 to 1930.  Thousands of colorful lithographs, advertising impossible feats of famous magicians like Houdini, as well as Kellar and Carter the Great, were generated during these years. They often featured devils and demons helping to perform the illusions, as if magic were Satan's work.

Oh...and if you haven't seen Christopher Nolan's "The Prestige", I highly recommend it.  It's set during this golden age, and (for you Coloradans) features David Bowie as Tesla holed up in Colorado Springs experimenting (which really happened!).