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Recently the idea that someone other than an artist can decide this was again brought up by a dispute between the artist Christoph Büchel and Mass Museum of Contemporary Art. The dispute went to court after the artist left the incomplete project and the museum announced it would open the exhibit anyway.
Briefly and ironically, it is the story of an installation exhibit called “Training Ground for Democracy” gone awry. The museum sought to encourage artists to create on its large galleries, which are suitable for Buchel's immense installations where viewers walk, climb and crawl through the work.
However, expenses soared past the budget, each side blamed the others and finally Mr. Buchel walked away while the Mass. MoCA prepared to open the exhibit, with or without his blessing. Mr. Buchel sued claiming as an artist the determination of whether art was complete and whether to show it was his alone and the whole thing ended up in court where the judge ruled that the museum had the right to display the art as an unfinished work.
During the past weeks the artist's right to decide whether a work is complete and can be reveled has been championed by various influential and compelling voices within the art community.
Roberta Smith in an article for the New York Times's Sunday September 16, 2007 edition wrote, “ By opening this show without his assent, the museum has broken faith with the artist, the public and art itself.”
Rebecca Smith's article, inspired this one. I urge you to read it, as it is available for free at the time of this posting and should appear as an archived article through the New York Times site later.
Since my previous weekly blog had been scheduled and was expected by some, this one had to wait a week. During that time further events unfolded.
According to the Boston Globe, Robert Storr wrote an affidavit filed in the case, “In my view, under no circumstances should a work of art be shown to the public until the artist has determined that it is finished.”
The sentiment of the art world lined up with Mr. Buchel, as to who has the right to determine if a work is complete. Whether the artist or the museum was at fault over the project's failure to be completed was not being addressed in the lawsuit at hand – that is an entirely different issue.
Despite the outcry from art critics and historians, on September 21, 2207 Michael A. Ponsor Federal District Court in Springfield, Mass ruled that that the museum's display of the work would not, as Mr. Büchel argued, violate the Visual Artists Rights Act of 1990, which provides that an artist has the right to “prevent the use of his or her name as the author of the work of visual art in the event of a distortion, mutilation, or other modification of the work.” Judge Ponsor said that the artist rights act did not apply, in essence because it has no provision to prohibit showing an unfinished work of art simply because it is unfinished.
As long as the museum, known as Mass MoCA, made clear to visitors that the work was not completely realized, there was no reason the installation could not be shown, according to the judge.
In response Buchel's attorneys filed an appeal and in a separate law suit they are seeking damages from the museum.
Despite the federal court's favorable ruling, the museum kept the exhibit under wraps as it debated the consequences of showing the incomplete exhibit or dismantling it. The option of having completed it was removed when Mr. Buchel walked away as the dispute over seemingly out of control costs and problems he alleged over the museum staff's failure to follow his instructions.
During the whole sequence of events, few people had actually seen the exhibit, which remained closed to the public. Roberta Smith, did view the unfinished work. In her article she reported, “ The shrouded non-Büchel is a kind of museological car crash. You can't stop looking, but tarps or no tarps, you also want to avert your eyes, especially if you are familiar with his previous work. “
Of course, legally the artist and the museum should have had contracts that specified costs, deadlines, responsibilities of each party and more. Such contracts can act as a kind of plan to insure against future problems. However, when creating a work of art, things always tend to change and one expects the unexpected.
Writers, especially book writers and script writers have contracts. So do directors, cinematographers, some photographers, composers and musicians. These creative people are used to working in groups and together. Plus, galleries and museums have formed their own associations such as ADAA and NADA to promote and insure the ethical behavior of its members to collectors and artists. These are all creative people in the arts who are used to working together to make art or sell and promote art with other people.
Visual artists generally work alone while making art. Although fiction and dramatic writers can work alone, their stories focus on people as does their research. Composers need musicians. Only a visual artist can quietly spend days and weeks working on a project that does not depict a human being. Visual artists generally are unprotected except by individual contracts with galleries, commissioning bodies and museums, etc. There is no regulatory guild to protect them– just the sway of public opinion and laws that effect all types of artists.
Visual Artists have many associations that promote the artists and/or guarantee collectors that the artists are accomplished within their genre or medium. However, artists themselves have yet to organize and form a guild to protect the rights of their members. Following the examples set by associations such as they WGA, DGA, SAG, etc., one can only imagine the repercussions for galleries and museums when and if this occurs.
Assuming the standard for membership in such an artist's association would be professional and limited to artists represented by major galleries (members of ADAA, NADA for example) or participating in curated museum shows, with points assigned for professional achievements similar to the aforementioned guilds. In other words, the best artist that the museums and collectors want would all be members of this guild (just think of the collective health care and other benefits!) as well as other deserving artists. Guidelines would be set for contracts between artists and galleries, museums, public art, etc.
If a director or scriptwriter objects to the final cut version of a work, he or she can elect to not be publicly credited (while remaining paid) for the project. For famous directors this adds a lot of clout, since disputed projects tend to die at the box office. This helped bring about the law that Mr. Buchel thought would cover his unfinished project.
What would have occurred had Buchel been allowed to publicly remove his name from the project, making it not an incomplete work – but kind of non-artist's work? We have all seen incomplete and revered works by famous artists, such as Da Vinci proudly displayed in museums. When a work once thought to be created by a famous artist is critically dismissed as the artist's work, the value of the work plummets, although the work itself remains the same. Would Mass MoCA, or any institution, seriously show a contemporary incomplete work attributed to no one? What would be its monetary value, if any?
As strikes and walk-offs have proven, when an artistic group sticks together a whole industry, such as the Hollywood film industry will close down until the artists are treated fairly. The museum must have taken its reputation and the trust it would lose with contemporary artists into consideration, but the certainty that all major artists would definitely cancel all future shows until the dispute was satisfactorily resolved was not a fact. If any Hollywood studio had treated the work of a WGA director as Mr. Buchel was treated (i.e. not allowed to remove his name from the work publicly) the guild members – would walk off their jobs and effectively halt all production at the studio.
In this case the regulation and arbitration of an artists' guild would have worked in favor of the museum from the beginning as part of the dispute seems to be over the budget set by the museum, which Buchel claims to have been ignorant of – any good guild would have insisted on an initial contract with a specified budget as minimums of artistic payment are established based upon the budget. Of course, established professionals receive payment far above the minimums, and undoubtedly this would have been the case for Buchel, but still, the budget would have been clear.
On Tuesday, September 25, the museum issued a statement. which is also available on their web site that begins, ” MASS MoCA announced today that it has begun removing materials gathered for Training Ground for Democracy and will not permit the public to enter the planned installation which was cancelled on May 21, 2007.”
The museum took the high road. The reported costs to the museum for the show that never happened and the dismantling of that show are said to be over $400, 000. Although Mr. Buchel's attorney issued a statement indicating the artist's pleasure at this final decision by the museum, so far there is no report of the artist dropping his lawsuit that includes damages to his reputation.
So who won? Who decides if an artist's work is complete or fit to show – especially when the artist is living? Seems as if it remains a stand-off, which is still to be determined on a case by case or contract by contract basis by good will or law suits.
In a way, Marcel Duchamp gloriously challenged the whole notion of what is art and who gets to decide with his work, Fountain, a manufactured urinal that he signed, “R. Mutt”. The point being that people only cared about the work because they knew it was Duchamp's and that the artist gets to decide and declare what is art.
September 26, 2007 |
