Todd Goldman Is a Plagiarist, Art Thief and Hack

Perhaps you've seen Todd Goldman's "Boys are stupid, throw rocks at them" t-shirts marketed by his company David and Goliath. He's also sold pop culture paintings for thousands of dollars.

I've never been fond of his work. I felt it wasn't particularly original. Now I know exactly how unoriginal.

The guy has blatantly ripped off artists like Dave Kelly and Jim Benton. More examples keep popping up.

A lot of examples are here:

His publicist has released this message:
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CLEARWATER, FL, April 11, 2007- Popular post pop-artist, Todd Goldman who has made a career of making fun of the world with his sarcastic commentary and cartoon icons, has mistakenly used the design of an another artist in two of his recent paintings. Todd’s painting, “Dear God, Please Make Everyone Die”, was inspired from a drawing he received unbeknownst to him belonging to an underground web comic artist David “Shmorky” Kelly.

In addition to painting, Todd designs t-shirts for his clothing company, David & Goliath. Todd and his design team create and receive thousands of design ideas every month. It’s no secret that Goldman creates a lot of his painting ideas from his t-shirt designs. Goldman says “I made a judgment error and didn’t research the background of this particular submission. “My intention was not to copy Mr. Kelly. I have never seen his work before and would never intentionally knock-off someone else’s idea.”

Goldman has issued a formal apology to Mr. Kelly and has stated that he will not be using his design again in the future. As a gesture of good faith, Goldman has pledged not profit from his mistake. He will instead donate his proceeds from the painting directly to Mr. Kelly or his charity of choice.

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I don't buy the "I didn't know" excuse. Roman Dirge, another artist he ripped off, sent him cease and desist notices a while back and was basically told "yeah whatever."

The statement doesn't address all the other artists whose work was stolen.

Besides, even if Todd Goldman really was unaware of where his underlings got the artwork from, he's still guilty of ripping of his underlings.

Todd Goldman, you're a fraud. I hope people stop buying your garbage.