Chris from IDW contacted us today asking that we
please let people know that Alex, the writer of the Smoke series, has now
commented on the Banksy images and our comments on the Wooster site on her
website. He has asked that we let you know you can read her comments href="http://www.alexdecampi.com/">here.

Please also know that
everything we want to say on this issue was have already said yesterday. There’s
no need to extend a discussion of IDW any further. We made our points and IDW
has made theirs. It’s time to move on. We know that some of you may have felt
that we went too far. But our feeling is that if we don’t make this a public
issue, then who will? We don’t want to speak for all artists. We speak primarily
for ourselves and secondarily for our friends. We don’t think we speak for
everyone and if this was implied we are sorry.

Finally, a couple of
emails have asked us to address and respond to Alex and Chris’ assersion that we
are hypocrites because on the one hand we attack IDW from biting Banksy, but
then on the other hand we support the appropriation of other artists imagery on
the Wooster site, especially with projects like The Hollywood Remix.

/>Here’s our response to that accusation:

To us the difference is
very clear. The pieces done for the Hollywood Remix are done as art and the hand
of the artist as they appropriate pop culture imagery to express a new position
is extremely evident. These pieces of art are not being mass produced like a
book. There is only one of each of them. The Catwoman/Spiderman piece that Alex
refers to on her site is a single laser cut puzzle that appropriates two images
and cleverly remixes them to create something completely new. The hand of the
artist in creating the work as a new piece of art is very evident. The imagery
she is using is very well known. To us, the issue of giving the photographers
credit is a bit of a smoke screen (no pun intended) . While it may have been
nice to credit the source of the images in a brochure, because it is a piece of
art, we don’t feel that it was necessary to do so to justify the use of the
imagery. We know that others, including IDW, will disagree and we respect
that.

On the other hand, to us the Smoke covers are clearly theft.
Because the work is not original, to us it is not art, it’s deception. With the
Smoke covers there is no real effort to make something new. It’s clearly a
Banksy rip off. The goal is only to copy, not to express a new feeling or
emotion. The hand of the artist is only visible in the act of forgery not in
creating a new, original, work incorporating appropriated imagery.

So
that’s how we see it. We are well aware that some people may take issue with our
viewpoint. This is our response to Chris and Alex’s question. Others may indeed
have different views and we respect that.