A King County resident on Friday sued Dale Chihuly, “the most successful Northwest artist in history,” for allegedly claiming sole credit for paintings that multiple artists created together.
Michael Moi claims that, for 15 years, he helped Chihuly create a “large volume of visual work,” but never got any credit. He also says he never received any compensation for his work despite repeated promises from Chihuly for payment. Moi is suing for “complete accounting and payment of proceeds rightly due to him” under copyright law, as well as proper attribution under the Visual Artists Rights Act.
Chihuly is best known for his glass art, and has acknowledged that he relies on a factory team to create his famed work, which often sells for small fortunes. Indeed, more than ten years ago, former Stranger arts writer Jen Graves once covered a lawsuit in which it was Chihuly who sued one of his workers for helping a different artist make glasswork.
Lesser known among Chihuly’s work are his paintings. The lawsuit claims that Moi and another worker created large-scale works during painting sessions for Chihuly, but he showed and sold the art as his alone.
A statement.pdf from Chihuly Studio denies the allegations, claiming that Moi never worked as painting assistant. The statement further claims that Moi threatened to release personal information about Chihuly, including information about his mental health, unless he paid a sum of $21 million. In the statement, Dale’s wife and CEO of Chihuly studios, Leslie Chihuly said about the allegations: “They are completely and absolutely false. But Mr. Moi apparently thought that we would agree to pay him just to prevent him from exposing information that he considers to be embarrassing and sensational. He was wrong.”
Moi’s complaint describes several painting processes over several years. In the late 90’s and early 2000’s, Moi and another man mopped background colors over “heavy stock French watercolor paper” as the artist would follow, making drips and lines. If he wasn’t satisfied, they would hold a second session.
Moi claims that, during this time, he conceived of some of the ideas behind Chihuly’s paintings, including these pumpkins:
The lawsuit also claims that Moi participated in painting Chihuly’s studio in 2007 and helped paint on large plexiglass canvasses from 2012 through 2016. This latter set of work had greater “size, scale, and complexity” than previous paintings, and demanded more out of his workers, the lawsuit claims. Still, Chihuly kept his workforce a secret.
“From the onset of Moi’s involvement in the creative process, Chihuly had said that the involvement of Moi and other people in the painting process had to be kept secret or the drawings would have no value,” the complaint states.
The lawsuit, which delves into tangents involving human growth hormone, alleged paranoid delusions and bathtub phone calls, is worth reading in its entirety.
UPDATE 6/5, 11:12: This post has been updated with additional comment from Chihuly Studios.
