Commercial Confusion

Carter Kustera has had some of the most interesting career moves of anyone I ever met. He was assistant for a while to a famous painter. They met when Carter bummed a cigarette off him, got the artist to autograph it, then lit up right in front of him and smoked it. He was hired. He's now doing custom portraits for Jonathan Adler along with his own practice. This blurring of the commercial and personal has been going on for a long time. The forerunner was probably Andy Warhol. Andy was forerunner in lot's of other ways too, including the cult of celebrity. With the blurring of all these arenas, an artist has to understand legal, licensing and contracts. Carter broke new ground suing, not on the slippery slope of ideas and copyright, but for" commercial confusion." He won. If Andy were alive, he'd have a field day!