Cartoonist Challenges Banksy's Intellectual Property Rights

After viewing the recent Toronto exhibition, The Art of Banksy, Cinders McLeod was surprised to discover that the British graffiti artist, Banksy, may have "pinched her ideas" in certain drawings published in The Glasgow Herald in the 1990s.

For instance, Banksy's Bomb Middle England (2003) bears an uncanny resemblance to McLeod's Anarchic Granny (1999) — both works feature crouching middle-aged ladies, on bended knees, bowling with a lit fuse bomb on a bright green lawn. And if you compare Banksy's Think Tank album cover for the English rock band Blur (2003), to McLeod's Deep Sea Lovers (published in 1997), you'll notice that both images feature a couple, wearing old-fashioned deep sea diving helmets, with their arms wrapped around each other in a loving embrace. The resemblance is striking. (To see a side-by-side comparison of McLeod's and Banksy's work, click here.)

Since then, McLeod, an ex-Globe and Mail art director and political cartoonist, has been debating the issue on social media with Banksy fans who argue that she should be flattered if her work was used and repurposed by Banksy, in much the same way that he used and repurposed the works of Andy Warhol (Kate Moss portrait), Jean-Michel Basquiat (distinctive crown motif), and French graffiti artist Blek Le Rat (stenciled rat symbol), among others, to create new...