Talk:Dalí Atomicus

Photo nominated for deletion at Commons

I've nominated the photograph for deletion at the commons because it is potentially still under copyright. It could likely be uploaded in a smaller version under fair use if the image is deleted from the Commons. voorts (talk/contributions) 01:00, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

voorts, i just wanted to check with you to see if you had any reason to believe, aside from the copyright notice found on the moma source, that the image may still be under copyright. the actual notice on that page says "© 2023 Halsman Estate", which makes me wonder if the notice is regarding the image in question, because the year mentioned in a copyright notice is typically the year of first publication, and this image was first published in 1948.

i did some research before including this image in the article, and believe that the copyright was not properly renewed. i could be wrong, and my search may not have been exhaustive enough, but i admittedly have yet to find the time to type up my reasoning, and wanted to see if you had anything that could prove dispositive first. dying (talk) 08:59, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

@Dying I have nothing else, so I nominated for deletion at Commons to get discussion going. voorts (talk/contributions) 14:28, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

• Voorts and Dying, hopefully it won't be deleted, but if so please move a copy to English Wikipedia before deleting. This image is the principal page image for this article and thus would be a fair use image. Thanks. Randy Kryn (talk) 14:54, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

  voorts, Randy Kryn, Schwede66, and BlueMoonset, below is my argument regarding why i think this photograph is currently in the public domain. i had been working on this intermittently before the deletion discussion closed, but figured that it would still be worth posting because the argument is somewhat different from those presented for the unretouched version of the photo.

  the image appears to have been first published by life in 1948, with the copyright notice "© 1948 PHILIPPE HALSMAN", as seen here. i believe this indicates that halsman allowed life to publish the photo under a license while still personally retaining copyright of the photo. however, i believe that this also means that halsman had the responsibility of renewing the copyright. life may also renew the copyright of the magazine in which the image was published, but i do not think that would extend the period of protection for halsman's image. (otherwise, it would seem that one could prevent an image from entering the public domain by simply republishing it in a periodical every time the copyright was about to expire.) the copyright alliance addresses a similar situation with images in books here, stating that "[i]f all of the exclusive rights in the image were not owned by the claimant of the book at the time of registration, the image must be registered separately", which strongly suggests that all such images must also be renewed separately.

  as explained here, because this image was published before 1964, its copyright should have been renewed during the 28th year of its protection to avoid entering the public domain. this would mean that, if the copyright for this image was renewed, it should have been done in 1976. i found pdf files containing all the renewals under the artwork category (which includes photographs) from 1975 to 1977 (here, here, here, and here), and was unable to find any instance of "halsman" or "atomicus" in any of them. in addition, project gutenberg has compiled all the copyright renewals of artwork from 1965 to 1977 into one file, available here, and neither "halsman" nor "atomicus" appears in there either.

  to me, it is a bit surprising that i could not find any mention at all of halsman in that last file. in fact, project gutenberg also has a compilation of the copyright renewals of artwork from 1960 to 1964 here, and one for those from 1951 to 1959 here, and halsman's name appears nowhere in those files either. (i eventually cast a fairly wide net in my search just in case i was missing something, and i did end up finding a renewal here filed in 1976 of a book by halsman published in 1949.)

  it seems quite possible to me that halsman may have simply not realized at the time that he needed to renew the copyrights of his photos if he wished to prevent them from entering the public domain after 28 years. (he may have thought that he only needed to renew the copyrights of his books.) this would explain why the library of congress mentioned here being unable to find a copyright renewal for the unretouched version of dalí atomicus. in addition, this search of the u.s. copyright office's online copyright catalog suggests that halsman (or his heirs) may have only realized in 1979, the year of his death, that many of his photos had to be registered with the copyright office in order to be protected for more than the standard 28 years. (notice that the only results of that search for renewals of his works published before 1960 are for two of his books.)

  if this is so, then it appears that none of halsman's photos that had to have their copyrights renewed separately under the artwork category (because he retained the copyrights to them) was properly renewed between 1951 and 1978, meaning that any such photos first published between 1923 and 1950 have fallen out of copyright. to be clear, any of halsman's images that were first published in one of his copyrighted books may still be under copyright, and there are plenty of his images published after 1950 that have had their copyrights renewed (see, e.g., this entry for an example of a renewal of such images), but i believe all of his photos first published in life between 1923 and 1950 that had a copyright notice stating that halsman remained the copyright owner, such as dalí atomicus, are now in the public domain in the u.s. due to failure to renew.

  this admittedly seems like a startling conclusion, and i am surprised that i could not find anyone else that has followed this train of thought before on wikipedia or on commons, which makes me really wonder whether this conclusion is correct. i eventually realized, though, that these older copyright renewal records were only digitized and placed online recently, so it is possible that no one simply bothered to search for these renewals when they were not easily accessible. (for example, the project gutenberg compilation of renewals from 1965 to 1977 was only released earlier this year.) i would appreciate it, though, if someone more experienced than i am on copyright law could point out any flaws in my argument. the only issue i can think of offhand is the possibility that the copyrights were transferred temporarily to a third party who renewed the copyrights of these photos under alternative titles, but that possibility sounds really contrived. dying (talk) 04:59, 18 December 2023 (UTC)

  Thanks @Dying for your research into this. Your explanation makes sense, but I haven't dug into it at all. The fact that the Estate claims copyright and the MOMA recognizes that claim gives me pause. Given that the close at Commons tied this image to the unfinished photograph, I think the close rationale was incorrect, so perhaps you can share this with the closer and see if they're willing to reopen the discussion. voorts (talk/contributions) 15:25, 18 December 2023 (UTC)

did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by PrimalMustelid talk 16:50, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

(

• Comment or view
• Article history

)

Salvador Dalí jumping while three cats fly through the air

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Dalí Atomicus (1948)

Unretouched version of Dalí Atomicus, with wires visible

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Dalí Atomicus, unretouched

• ... that before photographer Philippe Halsman decided to photograph three cats flying through the air (pictured), surrealist artist Salvador Dalí had wanted to blow up a duck with dynamite?

  source:	https://archive.today/20231008234446/https://news.artnet.com/art-world/tiktok-cancel-salvador-dali-2313418
  	... a collaboration between Dalí and the photographer Phillippe [sic] Halsman, in which three cats are seen flying through the air .... "Dalí said, 'I have an idea. Let's take a duck and put some dynamite up his derriere and blow him up.' And my father said, 'Oh you can't do that. You're in America. You might get arrested,'" Irene Halsman recounted ....

  • reviewed: mourning stationery
  • comment:

    i declare that i am not aware of having any conflict of interest with dalí atomicus.

    i'm not sure if a descriptive caption would be better than one that simply stated the name of the work, so have provided a few alternatives for discussion.

    i did not provide links to the articles on the artists as that seems to be the current practice at dyk.

    the unretouched version appears to be in the public domain, as noted by the library of congress here. i believe the final version is too, as it was printed in life with a copyright notice ("© 1948 PHILIPPE HALSMAN"), and i found no evidence here that halsman renewed the copyright.

    i am admittedly still working on the article, but wanted to nominate it before the deadline passed.

created by dying (talk). self-nominated at 23:45, 15 October 2023 (UTC).

• I shall have a look. Schwede66 00:02, 16 October 2023 (UTC)
• Created seven days ago and nominated today, i.e. that's just on time. Neutral. Suitably referenced. Earwig is clean. The problem is that the article is a stub with hardly any prose (385 B) and a very long off the 1,500 B that is set as the minimum for DYK eligibility. Hence, short of a major expansion, this nomination will have to be rejected. The other problem is that the hook fact does not appear in the article! Schwede66 00:09, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

  apologies, Schwede66! i've already done the research to expand the article to the appropriate length, but am still typing it up. i just wanted to nominate the article before the deadline, as i mentioned above. (i admittedly ended up spending entirely too much time researching whether halsman renewed the copyright.) i should have the article properly expanded within a day, at which point it should include the hook fact. is that alright? dying (talk) 01:01, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

• Sure; that'll be fine. I suppose I reviewed it "as is". Schwede66 01:05, 16 October 2023 (UTC)
  • Schwede66, i have now expanded the article. please let me know if you encounter any issues. thanks for your patience! dying (talk) 23:57, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

• What a great article. Thoroughly enjoyed reading that one! Earwig appears to be down. Otherwise, the article now passes all the required checks. A minor content issue is that the two photos are described as being side-by-side, but on any of the three screens that I've checked (cellphone, laptop, big screen), they are on top of one another – please fix the caption. QPQ has been done. Hook is certainly interesting and the hook fact is referenced. The other snag is that the main photo is currently up for deletion; I suggest we park this until that issue has resolved itself as it's certainly a strong contender for a lead hook. Schwede66 02:29, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

  thanks, Schwede66! i'm glad you enjoyed reading it. yes, i agree that the nomination should be put on hold due to the deletion discussion.

  also, thanks for pointing out the caption issue! i completely forgot about the possibility that one photo could appear above the other instead of next to it. i was trying to figure out if replacing "(left)" with "(left or top)" would be appropriate when i realized that there was actually no need to state that the photos were juxtaposed to allow for easy comparison, as this should be self-evident.

  i believe i've now reformatted the gallery so that it is platform independent. please let me know if this is not the case. dying (talk) 15:59, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

• @Schwede66: Comments on the above? Z1720 (talk) 17:38, 29 October 2023 (UTC)

• Earwig is clean. Caption is resolved. Dying, could you please keep an eye on the deletion discussion and give me a ping when that's been resolved? Schwede66 17:47, 29 October 2023 (UTC)

  of course, Schwede66. dying (talk) 17:59, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

  Schwede66, i'm just letting you know that the discussion has now been closed. the file was kept. dying (talk) 10:59, 17 December 2023 (UTC)

Schwede66, Dying: Commons deletion discussions routinely take several months. Given that fact and that there's a definitely-PD image, is there a preference to run the PD version or to wait it out? Vaticidalprophet 06:15, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

Halsman took the photo in 1948, so what's a few more months? It's such an incredible photo; in my view, this should definitely be the lead hook. Hence my preference is to wait it out. Schwede66 07:19, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

To be clear, the former version of the photo is unambiguously in the public domain (and is a featured picture on Commons). The retouched version with the brighter tones is the one to which the DR applies. This can be approved now and run as an image hook. Vaticidalprophet 16:07, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

i'm in no rush, and don't mind waiting it out. also, as the unretouched version has previously appeared on the main page, i think it would be nice to give the final version a chance to be featured on the main page as well. dying (talk) 17:59, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

• Given the lack of progress with the nomination, would anyone here be open to the hook running without an image? Narutolovehinata5 (talk · contributions) 05:10, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

• I'd rather wait. Schwede66 07:41, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
  • There's a limit to how long we can or should wait at DYK. If this hasn't been settled by the end of the year, it should run regardless, though the copyright notice referred to in the deletion discussion should be enough to keep this from the main page, as even if the image is moved to Wikipedia, it isn't free and thus can't be used on the main page. Further, if it seems unlikely at the present time that it will be settled by the end of the year, I think we should run it now. BlueMoonset (talk) 16:55, 16 December 2023 (UTC)

• Fair enough. I've asked on the administrators' noticeboard whether someone could please close the deletion request. Schwede66 01:12, 17 December 2023 (UTC)

• A Commons admin has closed the deletion discussion as "keep". That clears the final hurdle. I recommend that this be considered for the lead hook. Schwede66 12:48, 17 December 2023 (UTC)
  • Note that this will be challenged at Errors if it is placed as a lead hook: the Museum of Modern Art's web page lists its copyright as "© 2023 Halsman Estate"; as the current owners of the work, they should know this. It is puzzling in the extreme that this was close "Keep" when both comments suggested that it be moved to Wikipedia, since there's probably a case to be made for non-free display in articles and the like. However, don't expect to get the image on the main page when a major museum says it's currently under copyright; doing so would put Wikipedia at risk of a copyright violation. BlueMoonset (talk) 18:01, 17 December 2023 (UTC)
    • i have written my reasoning behind why i think dalí atomicus is in the public domain here. it is admittedly somewhat lengthy, so i did not think it was appropriate to reproduce in full in this nomination. dying (talk) 04:59, 18 December 2023 (UTC)
      • That's a stunning piece of work, dying. Well done. Schwede66 08:33, 18 December 2023 (UTC)
        • It is, and having now read the 2008 Commons deletion discussion (it was kept) as well as dying's reasoning, it appears that there was no copyright renewal in 1976 or thereabouts according to the Library of Congress. This seems to be the case of the Halsman estate (and MOMA) asserting a copyright that is not, in fact, valid. It's a shame that so many copyrights lapsed through failure to renew, but there you are. BlueMoonset (talk) 15:33, 19 December 2023 (UTC)