Beyoncé’s Lemonade has an endlessly long list of collaborators—other artists that Queen Bey thinks have contributed to her work. In fact, the ‘thanks to’ credits run to some 3,000 words. But the one credit that seemed to have vanished in this otherwise exhaustive list is the video work of a Swiss artist—Pipilotti Rist.
One of the most celebrated parts of Lemonade’s video “Hold Up”—in which Beyoncé is smashing car windows—is remarkably similar to the video installation “Ever is Over All” (1997) by Rist, an avant-garde video artist.
Even though Rist doesn’t reach an audience as vast as Beyoncé, many online have noticed what seem to be clear parallels between “Hold Up” and Rist’s ’90s video installation.
Uh Oh… Does a key scene from @Beyonce’s #Lemonade borrow a little too much from visual artist Pipilotti Rist? https://t.co/3gbKaokQXf
— The New 923 AMPRadio (@923amp) May 2, 2016
Just imagining the outrage if Pipilotti Rist had copied a Beyoncé video rather than the other way around. #blessed
— Julien Devereux (@jndevereux) May 3, 2016
Wow I'm 5 minutes into Lemonade- will @Beyonce give credit to Pipilotti Rist??
— Emily Counihan (@emjcounihan) April 30, 2016
I hope Beyoncé says she got her inspiration from Pipilotti Rist and doesn't take credit for all of it pic.twitter.com/pyB7IRHTLH
— O l i v i a (@Livvv__itUP) April 26, 2016
Does Beyoncé's new video look like Pipilotti Rist's old video? When life gives you art history, make Lemonade. pic.twitter.com/KLJb3uaATJ
— Cody Lee (@codylee) April 26, 2016
I actually give Beyonce a lot of credit for ripping off Pipilotti Rist. It's a smart reference.
— Kevin Buist (@KevinBuist) April 27, 2016
Of course, while we are waiting for Beyoncé to give credit to Pipilotti Rist—we can in fact give credit to Beyonce for a smart reference and treading into video art history.
The two videos side by side:
Copyright law does not protect an artist’s idea, only the expression of an idea. The line between infringement and inspiration, especially when it comes to performance art, is not well defined.
Beyoncé has a history of “being inspired” and boldly “referencing” other artists’ works. Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, for example, is an avant-garde Belgian choreographer who claimed Beyoncé plagiarized a couple of her experimental ballets in Bey’s clip “Countdown”.
At that time, Beyoncé released a statement that she was simply “inspired” by De Keersmaeker’s “Rosas danst Rosas.”
Let’s see:
Maybe Beyoncé is simply a bona fide postmodernist artist who creates an original by sampling, quoting, borrowing, referencing what has been already done—and then recycling and recontextualizing it?
But for many the question is—how much is too much?
As De Keersmaeker said: “There are protocols and consequences to such actions, and I can’t imagine that Beyoncé and her team are not aware of it.”
Rist was unavailable for comment.
