Art cut up into panels and sold on Ebay

[Andrei M.-migration]

Hello everybody--

 

I just found this on Ebay:

 

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=6532784476

 

The guy also has another panel for sale, and offers with each item

a "full size copy of the page from which it came." He clearly had the entire page, cut it up (or is planning to), and is selling the individual panels. I emailed him to ask him, in the slim chance he hasn't cut up the page yet, to stop and offer the entire page for sale.

 

I might have bid on the entire page, but I have no interest in the single panels.

To do what this guy is doing is basically to destroy a beautiful piece of art, and I find it unscrupulous,

unethical as well as destructive of the historical record. It also seems to me misguided from a business point of view, as no art collector I know would be interested in individual panels, except in *very* special cases.

 

Any opinions?

[Aces]

[Mithril Man]

Hello everybody--

 

I just found this on Ebay:

 

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=6532784476

 

The guy also has another panel for sale, and offers with each item

a "full size copy of the page from which it came." He clearly had the entire page, cut it up (or is planning to), and is selling the individual panels. I emailed him to ask him, in the slim chance he hasn't cut up the page yet, to stop and offer the entire page for sale.

 

I might have bid on the entire page, but I have no interest in the single panels.

To do what this guy is doing is basically to destroy a beautiful piece of art, and I find it unscrupulous,

unethical as well as destructive of the historical record. It also seems to me misguided from a business point of view, as no art collector I know would be interested in individual panels, except in *very* special cases.

 

Any opinions?

 

If it is true that he is doing that - it is despicable. But there is a precedent. Baseball card companies in the past have shredded uniforms as historical as Babe Ruth's from the twenties. They put a little sliver in a "windowed" card and use it to entice collectors to buy their packs. Should be illegal.....

[spider9698]

People who have been collecting original comic art longer than I may verify this but when Frazetta did the art for "Came the Dawn" for EC the story was never published. The pages were eventually cut into panels and sold separately. There is one panel up at Heritage this week.

[Andrei M.-migration]

People who have been collecting original comic art longer than I may verify this but when Frazetta did the art for "Came the Dawn" for EC the story was never published. The pages were eventually cut into panels and sold separately. There is one panel up at Heritage this week.

Well, that might be one of those "very special cases" I mentioned, but in general wouldn't you agree that it's despicable for a dealer to cut up a page with the sole intention of maximizing profits? Wouldn't you also agree that it's probably misguided, even as a business decision?

 

A comparable situation is that of medieval manuscripts that unscrupulous dealers take apart and sell page by page. Those pages are occasionally bought by amateurs who want something pretty to frame, but no respectable dealers, no serious collectors and definitely no museums would buy them.

[rjpb]

To play devil's advocate for a moment - one could argue that to sell pages seperately from a complete story is a similar dismembering of a larger work of art. I realize that seperating pages entails no physical act of destruction, and that there is a long tradition in the original art market of buying and displaying single pages - but perhaps splash pages aside, they were designed as part of continous piece, as much as individual panels are part of the whole page.

[mica]

To play devil's advocate for a moment - one could argue that to sell pages seperately from a complete story is a similar dismembering of a larger work of art. I realize that seperating pages entails no physical act of destruction, and that there is a long tradition in the original art market of buying and displaying single pages - but perhaps splash pages aside, they were designed as part of continous piece, as much as individual panels are part of the whole page.

At first I didn't like your post rjpb, but fortunately before I responded, I read it three times, and must admit you may have a point. Yeah.... if you buy one page you have technically broken the entire comic. I suppose I could own 19 out of 20 pages of a book but somebody in another country has the page 3 .

 

I guess it doesn't take anything away from the huge accomplishment of 19 pages, but if you had more than 10 pages I could see where you might want all of them.

What the seller is doing by CUTTING up the panels is probably not illegal, but boy it sure seems wrong. RJPB has made me think. But still, on this subject I'm going to listen to Nancy Reagan and just say no.

[Mushroom]

In my opinion......this should not be supported or tolerated. What if we started destroying comic books so that they would make others worth more (i.e. someone owns the only three known copies of a gerber 9 and then destroys two).

 

Original art should be left intact......................

[shadroch]

I don't have a problem with it. In fact I've been expecting this as most artwork has gotten beyond the reach of an average collector.I'm not sure how much I would buy,and I certainly won't be the first to start selling art by panels,but I can see a niche market for it.

As has been quite correctly pointed out,a page is part of a story and a panel is part of a page,so the story is incomplete wether its missing a page or a panel.In almost any action sequence,the sequence will not be contained to one page so its incomplete anyway.

I own a fragment of the old Boston Gardens parquet floor.I'd never have been abe to afford an entire panel,so in this case I'm glad they subdivided it.I'm not sure how I feel about cards containig a splinter of a bat or a uniform,but evidently they have been quite successful as marketing items.

[Darthdiesel]

I don't collect OA but here are some concerns I would have:

 

1) Increased opportunity for fraud - isn't it easier to forge a panel and pass it off as authentic than an entire page with the context of artist notes or taped in edits?

 

I've seen splash pages as t-shirts or tatoos of panels - this, as shadroch pointed out, is a logical extension of the collector mentality - picture gold plated panels worn as pendants

[Mushroom]

I don't have a problem with it. In fact I've been expecting this as most artwork has gotten beyond the reach of an average collector.I'm not sure how much I would buy,and I certainly won't be the first to start selling art by panels,but I can see a niche market for it.

As has been quite correctly pointed out,a page is part of a story and a panel is part of a page,so the story is incomplete wether its missing a page or a panel.In almost any action sequence,the sequence will not be contained to one page so its incomplete anyway.

I own a fragment of the old Boston Gardens parquet floor.I'd never have been abe to afford an entire panel,so in this case I'm glad they subdivided it.I'm not sure how I feel about cards containig a splinter of a bat or a uniform,but evidently they have been quite successful as marketing items.

 

Sorry shad...I don't buy it. I can't afford the Mona Lisa so should we cut it up into little squares so that I can have a piece? As for comparison to Boston Gardens (even though I am a Celtics fan), the parquet floor is not a work of art......

[shadroch]

Thats okay,this is a matter of opinion,not fact. I am sure there will be many purist who will hate the idea,but if enough others support it,it will get done.

I don't think your Mona Lisa comparison is valid,as each panel would be a self contained snapshot,not just an unreconizable blotch of art.

Outside of splash and cover pages,each page is really just four to eight panels of individual art that in sequence tell a story.

I see it more like people selling individual cells from a cartoon,rather than splintering a historic bat into a million pieces.

[Andrei M.-migration]

No, no: artists lay out each page as a unit, and the interplay of panel with panel matters--a lot. Besides, what would you do with, say, Neil Adams panels that are in weird shapes and make up a single pattern on a page (say, the shape of the Batman)? Would it not be ok to cut up one of those, but ok to cut up a page with rectangular panels?

 

I agree that it's a shame that stories get broken up into individual pages, but at least that way no physical object is destroyed. I find the cutting-up of a page truly unexcusable, and I certainly hope that as few people as possible support it. It really shouldn't become acceptable.

 

As for original art becoming so expensive--that's really not true, except in the case of superstar artists (and would you really support cutting up a Kirby page?). For most comics drawn by excellent, but second-tier, bronze-age artists, an individual page is way cheaper than a HG copy of a key issue of the same series. As for recent stuff, you can get tons of it for $50 or less on Ebay.

[shadroch]

While there are some pages that the artist does in some irregular pattern,the vast majority are not.Obviously there are pages that this method works with,and some it doesn't.

[wrightsoncollect-migration]

I was looking at past auctions from Heritage. In 2002 the "entire" H.O.S. #92 Swamp Thing story was sold as a set for $31,000. I couldn't afford it then, now and probably not in the future. I think if the pages were sold seperate it wouldn't be a travesty. Cutting it up into frames though sort of sends a chill up my spine. I think I'd rather pay the owner to keep it intact and get nothing rather than let him even sell it as frames! You're altering the original state by "cutting" it. I think it'd be interesting to see how some of the original artists feel about this.

[chrisco37]

I'm with the majority on this one. I cannot think of any situation/circumstance where cutting out and selling individual panels would be acceptable.