Image title
| La trahison des images |
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| René Magritte , 1929 |
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Link to the picture |
Image title ( image title ) is the reproduction of the actual, intended or alleged image content in linguistic form. In copyright law, the picture title (or caption ) is the title of a picture or a sculpture given by the author .
General
Images in the sense of copyright are photographs ( photos , digital images ), paintings , sculptures or drawings . If a concise and exhaustive title can be found for a picture, then one can speak of a syntagmatic closed picture . On the other hand, it is a syntagmatic open picture if the picture title does not cover all picture elements. Ideally, the picture title consists of just one word and represents all picture elements in full.
history
The older art history did not yet have a picture title. Instead, works of art before the modern age had an image designation that mostly referred to the content-related aspects of the visual representation. The difference between the picture title and the picture description can be seen in the fact that the picture description, in contrast to the picture title, can always be renamed. Some of the paintings to which the painters had given a title were only subsequently given new titles by the specialist literature (for example da Vinci's Mona Lisa from 1503–1506 or Rembrandt's Die Nachtwache from 1642). In the avant-garde art of the first half of the 20th century, picture titles are no longer simply an accessory to the painting, but are conceptually integrated into the picture as an essential part of the picture. If the title is refused ("Untitled Picture"), as for example with Pablo Picasso ("Untitled", 1953), this can be interpreted as a dissolution of the dialectical interaction between the work of art, the picture title and the viewer.
The most common title used in painting is still life . Many picture titles have become independent in general education and are representative of the work, such as Leonardo da Vinci's “The Last Supper” (1498), Dürer's “ Praying Hands ” (around 1508) or Auguste Rodin's “ The Thinker ” (1882). In the fine arts , the process of detachment from the object is signaled in image titles such as “Composition in Green”.
Functions
The picture title serves as a descriptive description of the work and is often a brief description of the work's content. A picture title concisely describes the content of a work and distinguishes it from other works in order to avoid confusion or abuse. It represents the work content reduced to a minimum. In connection with the image design, it allows the viewer to have a wide variety of associations . Last but not least, the function of the picture titles in surrealist painting is to relate what is depicted - albeit mostly in an ironic way - to reality outside the art. In the case of picture titles of surrealist works, the pictorial representation - as in the case of Joan Miró , for example - deviates very far from conventional conceptions of objects, so that the picture title ensures that the work is linked to areas of experience of external reality. Max Ernst provided his collages with detailed texts that are more than just a picture title. Image titles can also cause confusion: Contrary to the image title "The Birth of Venus" by Sandro Botticelli, it is not the birth of Venus , but actually the subsequent landing of Venus on the beach of Cyprus that is shown.
Image titles appear in catalogs or other reference works as a proxy for the image; interested parties can also search for them in search engines (see also: Metadata ). Finally, the image title can support image viewing or image interpretation .
Legal issues
The protected works containing a picture title are mentioned in § 2 Paragraph 1 No. 4 (fine arts) and No. 5 (photo works) UrhG . Not only the works themselves, but also picture titles, book titles , film titles or music titles can exceptionally enjoy copyright protection. A title protection can be guaranteed in four ways, namely by the Trademark Law , the Competition Law , the general civil law ( § 12 BGB), but also by the copyright law . A prerequisite for protection by copyright is that the title of a work is a partial service that can generally be protected by copyright. The established case law considers the possibility of copyright protection of titles to be generally permissible, but restricts the fact that the necessary individuality and originality are normally not given in a picture title, since it usually consists of only a few words and is a short symbol for the work itself. Copyright is therefore usually unsuitable for protecting a picture title, so that title protection under trademark law is more effective, especially in commercial transactions. In the case of unwelcome competition that can competition law serve as a means of defense.
International
If a title is sufficiently individual, it enjoys copyright protection in Switzerland as an independent work in accordance with Art. 2 Para. 4 of the Swiss Copyright Act (URG). Titles must have an original character, an expression of a creative activity and be different from what already exists. This is the individual character that jurisprudence presupposes. In one of the few relevant decisions of the Swiss Federal Supreme Court (BG) on this subject, it is made clear that a title "on its own" is rarely allowed to claim copyright protection and specifies that a title must deserve "the elevation to the rank of a literary work of art". In 1951 the federal court had to deal with the Mickey Mouse . It also required an individual character: “To call a mouse Mickey (English form for Michael), how one attaches human first names to animals, especially in pet form, and how in animal stories human first names are also connected with animal generic names is all too obvious and usually […]. If the foreign language of the name Mickey Mouse should appear somehow original, this impression immediately gives way to the literal translation into German, which would have to be 'Michael Mäuserich'. Hardly any intellectual effort is required to choose a common first name as a work title. And the individualization of an animal figure by means of an (already existing) first name is as little creative here as anywhere else. "
In Switzerland, image titles enjoy neither competition nor trademark protection. Art. 3 lit. D UWG forbids all measures as unfair which, along with others, are likely to cause confusion with goods, works or services of others. However, competition law requires that the title must have an operational function of origin. Image titles fail because they usually do not disclose any company origin (such as a book publisher or record label ).
In Austria, title protection is essentially anchored in two provisions, on the one hand in Section 80 of the Copyright Act (UrhG) and on the other hand in Section 9 of the Act against Unfair Competition (UWG). According to this, neither the title or other designation of a protected work of literature or art nor the external equipment of workpieces for another work may be used in a way that is likely to cause confusion. This requires that the title be distinctive. The name of the work must have something special and individual about it. In Austria, too, an otherwise non-distinctive picture title can enjoy protection when it has achieved traffic recognition. The title protection arises when the title is used, provided that the title is distinguishable. A register entry or the publication of a title protection notice is not required for the protection of a title. With the publication of a title protection advertisement, the protection of the title can be secured before it is published. Title protection advertisements can be published in the media commonly used. For book titles this is the indicator of the main association of the Austrian book trade , there are also advertising papers such as B. the title protection journal , or the title protection magazine . Title protection can also be asserted across media. There could be a risk of confusion between the book title and the title of a film.
literature
- Literature on picture titles in the catalog of the German National Library
- Nelson Goodman : Languages of Art. Draft of a symbol theory . 2nd Edition. Translation by Bernd Philippi. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp 1995 ISBN 3-518-28904-7
- Natalie Bruch: The title of the picture: Structure, meaning, reference, effect and function; a typology . Frankfurt am Main: Lang 2005
- Gudrun Leffin: Title and captions for Max Ernst: an interdisciplinary contribution to the art of the 20th century . European University Theses: Series 28; 80. Frankfurt am Main: Lang 1988
- Christina Kröll: The title of Klees. A study of the relationship between image and language in 20th century art . Diss. Bonn 1967
- Wolfgang Preisendanz: Prescribed perception. The relationship between photo and accompanying text . In: Language in the technical age , 37, 1971, pp. 1–8.
- John C. Welchman: Invisible colors: a visual history of titles . New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1997 ISBN 0-300-06530-2
- Lambert Wiesing : The visibility of the picture. History and Perspectives of Formal Aesthetics . Reinbek near Hamburg: Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag 1997. ISBN 978-3-59338636-2
Web links
- Image title , in the Lexicon of Film Terms, Kiel University
- Image and language , in the glossary of image philosophy, University of Tübingen
Individual evidence
- ↑ Burkard Michel: Image and habitus: processes of meaning formation in the reception of photographs. 2006, p. 208 ( books.google.de ).
- ↑ a b Sukmo Kim: Title : An art history of the title. 2015, ISBN 978-3-8300-8663-5 .
- ^ Ulrich Halfmann, Kurt Müller, Klaus Weiss: Reality and Poetry. 1984, p. 434.
- ^ Elisabeth Hirschberger: Poetry and painting in dialogue. 1993, p. 107 ( books.google.de ).
- ↑ Klaus Sachs-Hombach , Klaus Rehkämper (ed.): Image - image perception - image processing. 2004, p. 20 f. ( books.google.de ).
- ^ Federal court decision (BGE 64 II 109).
- ↑ Federal court decision (BGE 77 II 383).
- ↑ BGE of December 4, 1951, 77 II 377 (PDF; 505 kB), full text.
- ↑ Leaflet on title protection (PDF; 111 kB) from the Main Association of the Austrian Book Trade, accessed June 15, 2012.
