Cheap Meridia

zvswgogna

Louis Vuitton has its unders in a wad
Louis Vuitton sues artist Nadia Plesner again for using handbag image in Darfur art
Darfurnica (detail), Nadia Plesner,[url=http://www.xantrex.cc]louis vuitton handbags[/url], 2010
Dutch artist Nadia Plesner got in hot water with Louis Vuitton in 2008 for depicting an African child with one of its highend bags on one arm and a chihuahua in the other (below) as part of her campaign urging divestment from Sudan over the conflict in Darfur. The company has been tallying her penalty since Jan. 28.
"The story about Darfur must be told, and I believe I should have my artistic freedom of speech to do so," Plesner writes on her website.
Whereas the first legal kerfuffle with Vuitton ended in mid2008 with Plesner agreeing to stop selling tshirts bearing the handbag image, this time Plesner art is not merchandise to be sold but a work of fine art. Created to the same dimensions as painter Pablo Picasso Guernica, a 1937 polemic against the carpetbombing of the Basque town of the same name, the idea for Plesner piece hinged on news that officials decided to shroud Picasso famed painting in blue cloth during a 2003 UN press conference on the Iraq War by John Negroponte and Colin Powell.
"It is amazing that an art work can be considered so powerful, that it has to be covered up while governments present their plans," Plesner writes. "It only proves that artists around the world must continue to work with the harsh issues to influence the people with power and to start important debates."
That same year 2003 the genocide in Darfur started, she writes. "Politicians come up with new ways to try to hide from us that things stay the same."
Despite a clearly artistic and not commercial intention behind the work, Louis Vuitton is seeking monetary penalties (220,000 Euros or roughly $307,000 and counting, with no ceiling on the penalty) and aims to prevent Plesner from exhibiting the painting either on her website or at venues in the European Union. (Here an unofficial English translation of the court order.)
Plesner, who now runs a foundation that raises funds for projects like sending medical equipment to Darfur or buying a vehicle for use at an orphanage in Tanzania, is lawyering up for her defense. Her opponents won need a fundraiser for its legal efforts: Louis Vuitton aka LVMH Mot Hennessy [url=http://www.xantrex.cc]Louis Vuitton[/url] had profits of $28.26 billion last year, and its chairman, Bernard Arnault, rose on Forbes billionaires list to world fourthrichest man, with a net worth of $41 billion.

xalanii