"This is a great day for art." And for Danish artist Nadia Plesner, a student at the Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam, who has won a lawsuit filed against her by fashion house Louis Vuitton. 

"I am absolutely overwhelmed with joy, and I cried when I heard the great news," she said in an email.

Plesner came under fire for using an impression of the Louis Vuitton brand in her art - both on her website and in exhibitions - without the company’s permission.

Most significantly, she used the image in her painting Darfurnica, based on Picasso’s Guernica, in which she draws attention to humanitarian atrocities in Darfur. Within the painting, an image of the iconic starving African child is seen carrying a designer (Louis Vuitton lookalike) bag on his arm. According to Plesner, this is meant to highlight the extensive media reporting about “meaningless celebrities” and the almost complete lack of coverange of Darfur.

The court in The Hague ruled Wednesday that the importance of freedom of expression in Plesner's art outweighed the importance of Louis Vuitton’s intellectual property rights. Plesner’s use of their design was ruled functional and proportional by the court.

Earlier, Plesner was faced with a fine of 5,000 euros payable to Louis Vuitton for each day the bag’s image had been displayed. The fashion label was seeking to increase the penalty to 200,000 euros. 

(lo/ae)

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