The Belgian artist Luc Tuymans has reached an out-of-court settlement with the photographer Katrijn Van Giel in a copyright dispute that raised questions about an artist’s right to use news pictures as the basis for art. The terms of the agreement are confidential but in a joint statement Tuymans and Van Giel described it as “amicable”.
At the centre of the case was a 2011 painting entitled A Belgian Politician by Tuymans, which was based on a photograph by Van Giel of Jean-Marie Dedecker, the leader of Belgium’s right-wing LDD political party. The painting used the same dramatic cropping of the face and emphasis on Dedecker’s sweaty brow as the photograph it was based on.
In January, a court in Antwerp ruled that the painting infringed Van Giel's copyright. The court barred Tuymans from making additional versions of the work and said it would impose a €500,000 penalty if he did not comply. The artist appealed.
In a joint statement, Van Giel and Tuymans said that they have decided “to settle their dispute, as artists and in an artistic way, rather than to allow it to be settled in a court of law”, and that the photographer “relinquishes her legal action”. Dieter Delarue, Van Giel’s lawyer, added that the painting, which belongs to Eric Paul Lefkofsky, the US entrepreneur and chief executive of Groupon, can now “be sold and traded on the market again”.