Freelance critic's work pulled from P-I Web site over questions of authenticity

Work in the Seattle P-I by Nate Lippens, a freelance critic, is being examined after one of his art reviews was discovered to have striking similarities to criticism published two years earlier in Art in America magazine.

The P-I is looking at dozens of pieces written by Lippens for the newspaper between July 2006 and April 2008. All links to his articles through the P-I's Web site have been withdrawn until they have been thoroughly examined and cleared to return to the site.

David McCumber, P-I managing editor, was disturbed by the similarities.

"Obviously," he said, "content that co-opts others' material without credit does not meet our standards, and it's distressing under any circumstances. It's a sharp reminder to our editors -- really, to everyone in the profession -- just how vulnerable we are, and how vigilant we must be."

The alternative weekly The Stranger also has found similarities between work by Lippens and criticism in Art Forum magazine. Lippens freelanced for The Stranger starting in 2000, and was on the staff from 2004 to 2005. The Stranger is examining all of Lippens' pieces published in its pages and has withdrawn links to them on its Web site, editor Christopher Frizzelle announced on thestranger.com Wednesday.

In an e-mail to the P-I on Wednesday, Lippens said: "I never knowingly plagiarized material. ... I'm completely mortified and ashamed for betraying the implicit trust of my colleagues, friends and readers. I know that I can't undo it or regain that trust but I do offer my sincerest apologies to everyone involved."

There were striking similarities between Lippens' P-I review of the Canadian artists known as General Idea (published on June 15, 2007) with a piece written by Peter Gallo on the same group for Art in America (March 2005 issue).

Lippens wrote: "They used the colors of the 'AIDS' logo in many works of appropriation, altering them through 'infection.' The signature red, green and blue replace the primary colors of a classic Rietveld chair in 'Infe(c)ted Rietveld' (1994). General Idea altered Duchamp's own alterations of a found chromolithograph landscape, 'Pharmacie' (1914), inserting three hovering red, green and blue capsule forms and retitled it 'Infe(c)ted Phannacie.' "

Gallo wrote, "... they altered them through 'infection.' The signature red, green and blue of the LOVE/AIDS logo were used to chromatically replace the primary colors of a classic Rietveld chair (Infe(c)ted Rietveld, 1994). ...General Idea altered Duchamp's own alterations of a found chromolithograph landscape, Pharmacie (1914), by inserting three hovering red, green and blue capsule forms (called 'placebos' by the artists), and retitled it Infe(c)ted Phannacie."

In the same P-I review, Lippens wrote: "Their production of multiples borrowed from William S. Burroughs' concept of 'viral logic.' It was mass-produced and distributed on posters, billboards, tchotchkes, electronic images, lottery tickets and stamps. Alongside Gran Fury and Donald Moffett's chilling Silence = Death campaign, General Idea created one of the era's most memorable and meaningful images by reinventing Robert Indiana's '60s 'LOVE' logo as 'AIDS' (1987)."

Gallo wrote in Art in America: "Their meaningfully transgressive reinscription of Robert Indiana's ubiquitous 'LOVE' logo as 'AIDS' (1987), mass-produced and distributed on posters, billboards, tchotchkes, electronic images, lottery tickets and stamps (it even made the cover of the Journal of the American Medical Association) became -- with Gran Fury and Donald Moffett's brilliant Silence = Death campaign and 1989's landmark exhibition 'Witnessing: Against Our Disappearance,' curated by Nan Golden -- among the most effective works."

Besides the P-I and The Stranger, Lippens' work has been published locally in Seattle Metropolitan and Seattle Weekly.