> an artist should be able to enjoy the fruits of his work in his lifetime if he wants to
Not if you're an illustrator doing work for hire. It's not unreasonable or unusual for the company who commissioned the art to own the copyright. It doesn't always work that way, but there's no reason to think Kastel was robbed without us knowing the actual terms of his contract with Universal. I assume he sold the copyright to Universal, and Universal fumbled the copyright after that, but that doesn't mean it reverts back to Kastel.
What a great story. Going from "it's a vagina with teeth, that's bad" to "it's a penis with teeth, that's good" made me chuckle... just sounds so typical of creatives.
Some might point and say sexism, but I think it's consistent with established tropes. There are piles of analogies between sex and aggression (the Latin word for “sheath” is vagina). An image of a penis-like shark attacking a nude woman is another to throw on the pile.
Interactive Jaws poster from Back to the Future is here, just click on it -> https://floor796.com/#b3l3,84,583
> He went to the Museum of Natural History to study sharks, and he had a model pose across a couple of stools for reference of what someone looks like swimming.
That explains why the swimmer, at least, looks a bit fake.
> He went to the Museum of Natural History to study sharks...
At last, one person who did his homework!
That's what I thought after seeing the first image, the "vagina with teeth" which in my eyes just look like a weird woman's mouth with just some teeth added around... what a terrible work, probably the authour hadn't seen a shark in his life? nor he researched then even a bit, to get some references.
Final Jeopardy June 16, 2025...
>In 1974 Allison Maher Stern posed horizontally on stools & pretended to swim for a cover of this book
It feels to me that even ignoring copyright law, Kastel has a limited claim to the credit here.
Art director Alex Gotfryd came up with the concept of the Shark and the Swimmer, while Paul Bacon did the original drawing.
At this point what’s to distinguish Kastel’s painting of a shark and a swimmer from anyone else making a painting of a shark and a swimmer?
> ”… Kastel realized that there was something fishy about the painting’s copyright situation.”
I see what you did there.
God, I love pre-1976 copyright. So many formalities and intricacies. I’m kind of amazed that there’s so much from that era that remains in copyright.
tldr; the famous art from the Jaws movie poster was originally a book cover. When first published it lacked the required attribution of the time to get enforceable copyright.
IIRC, there are some films in public domain for having "failed" to do this as well.
There's a reasonable chance someone has the painting on their wall. I know people in Hollywood who have some incredible items on displays they only show to trusted friends.
There was a time when Universal and others would put the primary hero props from their movies straight into their prop warehouses to get rental income from them for other productions. Some clever chap realized there was only a $300 damage/loss fee on each item, and word spread throughout the production personnel in Hollywood. Lots of irreplaceable props were suddenly "stolen" from productions.
I was involved in tracking one down to return to Universal (now in a museum) and the guy who had it made a fatal mistake of boasting about it one time in a forum. He wouldn't give it up, even with a letter from their lawyers, but we realized the writer of the movie lived nearby, so we had him go knock on the guy's door and it was handed over then.
I don't know what the value of the original painting would be. I got to see the BTTF posters before the painter, Drew Struzan, shipped them out to the buyer. I was surprised how cheap they were, I think he sold the three of them for $90K/piece. Mary Steenburgen was glued onto the third poster since they cast her late, after the painting was finished.