Parody, or being lazy?

Someone in class commented the other day that under the fair use doctrine, in the context of parody, an artist can simply be lazy, copy the work of someone else, and change it a little to call it a parody. I found this article in the Wall Street Journal today that speaks directly to that. The article describes two works of one man. The man had created the works by downloading someone else's photographs, printing them directly onto his canvases, then adding to or detracting from them. In one case, a court found that the work was a parody, and had been transformative enough to constitute fair use. In the other case, it was merely copying, and was infringement because there was no parody involved. His work directly implicates the distinction between parody, or critique of art, and simple laziness.

It also suggests that an artists view of what is "transformative" might be different from a court's view of what is "transformative." The copying artist's claim is that in the art world, if there is both a change in medium, and a "re-presentation" of the work, then it is transformative. Some of this artist's work makes one question whether he was, in good faith, adhering to these claimed beliefs of what is transformative, but it nonetheless raises the issue that an artist may be unaware that s/he is infringing because the definition of "transformative" can easily be lost in translation from law to art.

Here is a link to the article: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123319795753727521.html