Said the Kunsten Museum's exhibition guide, about the 2 completely blank canvases it chose to display, quoted in "A Danish artist has been ordered to repay a museum after delivering blank canvases" (NPR).
The museum had advanced Jens Haaning over $75,000 so that he could recreate an earlier work of his in which he attached actual cash to the canvas. In that earlier work, the money was supposed to represent the wage gap between Danish workers and Austrian workers. Haaning is considered a "conceptual artist," and the new work expresses a concept that the museum made a show of understanding (or pretending to understand).
Should the artist have to pay back the money? I'm inclined to say no, not after the museum displayed the work — especially along with what it wrote in the exhibition guide. Was it just bullshitting to the public? What hypocrisy!
That said, I haven't seen the contract, and, now that the court sided with the museum, I'm going to assume there was precision about the requirement to make the money part of the art work. But didn't the museum implicitly agree to amend the contract when it accepted the work, displayed it, and wrote publicly and asserted that "the missing money" is equivalent to money "when it is called art"?
And yet, both the artist and the museum agreed that they are trapped within this nefarious capitalist system, so, to me, the only interesting question is whether the court rigorously played out its role in capitalism by siding with the museum.
But wait. More information. This is from The Guardian, 2 years ago — "Danish artist delivers empty frames for $84k as low pay protest/Denmark museum of modern art says Jens Haaning’s Take the Money and Run violates legal agreement." Here's some information about the contract:
“We are not a wealthy museum,” [said Lasse Andersson, the museum’s director]. The money came from modest reserves earmarked for the upkeep of the building. “We have to think carefully about how we spend our funds, and we don’t spend more than we can afford.”
Andersson said the museum’s contract with Haaning required him to return the money by 16 January. “I believe he will give it back to us. He is a well-regarded artist. But if we don’t get it back, we will have to file charges against the artist.”
So the money wasn't going to be permanently attached to the canvas. The museum bargained for a temporary work of art and the return of the money.
Haaning, 56, said he had no intention of complying with his contract. “The work is that I have taken their money,” he told Danish radio. “It’s not theft. It is breach of contract, and breach of contract is part of the work.”
Ha ha ha. I don't know Danish law, but you don't get out of a contract by secretly withholding your agreement. But Haaning admits it's a breach of contract. That the concept, and he's a conceptual artist.
“I encourage other people who have working conditions as miserable as mine to do the same. If they’re sitting in some shitty job and not getting paid, and are actually being asked to pay money to go to work, then grab what you can and beat it,” he told the Danish national broadcaster DR.
If I'd read this older article and didn't know how the legal action played out, I would scoff and suspect the museum and the artist were colluding for publicity, but that was asked about and answered at the time:
The museum, which decided to display Haaning’s new work despite its loss of thousands of dollars, insisted that the missing money was not a stunt to promote the exhibition. “We are a platform for art, we do not create performative art. I’m just as puzzled as everyone else,” said Andersson.
ADDED: The idea of offering a blank canvas as art is not a new idea. It's been kicking around since 1915.
Here's a MOMA piece about Robert Rauschenberg's "White Painting" (from 1951):
Leah Dickerman: These "White Paintings" may not be prepossessing, but they're among the most radical statements about painting made in the middle of the 20th century. They are blank canvases stretched in units of various combinations. And the paint is basic house paint applied with a roller...
Rauschenberg: I called them clocks. If one were sensitive enough that you could read it, that you would know how many people were in the room, what time it was, and what the weather was like outside.
Leah Dickerman: When the White Paintings were shown at the Stable Gallery in 1953, Rauschenberg's friend, the composer John Cage wrote a statement accompanying them. And the statement went, in part, "To whom: no subject, no image, no taste, no object, no beauty, no message, no talent, no technique, no why, no idea, no intention, no art, no object, no feeling, no black, no white, no and."...
I don't need to get out my sledgehammer to remind you of what John Cage is most famous for composing.
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58 comments:
I don't know Danish law, but you don't get out of a contract by secretly withholding your agreement. But Haaning admits it's a breach of contract. That the concept, and he's a conceptual artist.
i'll Have To Remember this concept next time i'm out to scam someone.
i USUALLY just cross my fingers and use a fake name.
Life imitates art, per Kurt Vonnegut's Bluebeard (1987):
"His most famous, which once hung in the lobby of GEFFCo headquarters on Park Avenue, is titled "Windsor Blue Number Seventeen." The entire painting consisting of eight 8×8 panels hung side by side displays nothing but the paint by Sateen Dura-Luxe in the shade of the title of the work. However, the painting literally fell apart when the Sateen Dura-Luxe began to shred itself from the canvas upon which it was painted becoming Rabo Karabekian's biggest embarrassment as an abstract expressionist."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluebeard_(Vonnegut_novel)
"Conceptual artist" = someone with no talent.
The cynical art critic in me: It’s been done…
I always have a problem with artists conceptual work surrounding money and economics. They don’t understand the basics, like the way golden retrievers don’t understand. Silly, most of it. JSG Boggs was pretty good with the fiat money thing. Banksy has had a few good riffs though ‘he’ claims otherwise…
I suppose this one could be kind of fun if the artist was more interested in tweaking the museum’s participation instead of of the capitalist system…
"about the 2 completely blank canvases it [the museum] chose to display"
Value give, value received.
First conceptual artist who is open about the "concept" behind conceptual art - it's a cash grab.
He's an artist, all right. A con artist.
I have a white 5x5 piece that used to hang in my bedroom. More off white and the medium is plaster on canvas, so there’s texture, so maybe not the same as this artist fellow. I paid a Boston gallery for it and do not feel ripped off..
Blank canvas is interesting if the wall behind it has lots of texture and color…
The lobby of our office building has two giant mosaic works made from hundreds of origami butterflies folded from colorful foreign currency. That’s an artistic use of money…
"The Art of the Deal."
“The court's judgment deducted roughly $5,700 from the full loan amount to serve as Haaning's artist's fee and viewing fee, since the museum nonetheless exhibited the blank canvases in its "Work It Out" show.“
So it was a loan, but the artist may have that covered too:
“Haaning now appears to be in a bit of a pickle, as he says that he doesn't have the money to repay the museum.“
the painting literally fell apart when the Sateen Dura-Luxe began to shred itself from the canvas upon which it was painted becoming Rabo Karabekian's biggest embarrassment as an abstract expressionist
See that’s the thing! Some clever conceptual artist could mint money by doing a series of mandala-type works in media that slowly destroys itself: Water, Methanol, Acetone at Eden Gallery November 4th…
Conceptual artist, confidence artist, whatever...
It's all about the ART? Right? (ART CARNEY! SHEILA MACRAE!)
This is what happens when you act as if you have too much money when you don't AKTUALLY have too much money. That's when the lawyers get involved, and is one of many reasons why lawyers will always be with us.
“The money came from modest reserves earmarked for the upkeep of the building.”
That makes it sound like someone at the museum misappropriated the funds that were given to the artist.
If he created a new artwork incorporating the legal documents from this lawsuit, he could probably sell it for more than $75,000. Maybe even to the same museum.
I was hoping this was about Steve Miller.
Another question here: Who owns the two blank canvases and what price would they fetch if sold as Take the Money and Run works of art? Of course, there would be a potential for the artist to sell many more than two.
What a scam.
Flim flammers got flim flamed
I encourage other people who have working conditions as miserable as mine to do the same.
Ok, for real? He's complaining that his chosen field requires that he buy (or in some way acquire) canvases (but apparently no paint) instead of having them provided to him? And then he takes as little or as much time as he decides he needs to complete his work (in this case, just enough to tape some bills - an advance from the museum? I didn't really get this part - to the otherwise blank canvas)? And then a museum pays him tens of thousands of dollars? And these are "miserable" working conditions?
I am not a fan of very much abstract impressionism as art, though it's often fine as decor for me. But I can at least respect the process, when there is one. My church brought in an iconographer to run week-long icon painting workshops several years in a row, and I got so hooked on that process that for some years thereafter, I would paint (or "write," as our temporarily resident iconographer said) an icon for Advent and for Lent every year.
I loved it: we started with a gessoed board, pure utterly smooth white. Then we entirely blanked it out with muddy, dark colors in paint-by-number blocks, applied in dozens of translucent layers - that alone took a day. Then we began reintroducing light, stroke by stroke, and the image began to emerge from the darkness - first fabric and background details, then - and this part really was like magic - hands and faces.
The background color for flesh was called "sankir" and looked like olive brown; then you slowly and incrementally added more warmth and light, and painted first the bones of the hands and face, and then worked out from the bones, and suddenly you'd move back from bending over the board and there would be Jesus, or St. Francis, or whoever.
Finally you did the detail work and gold leaf, and the border. The entire process was one long prayer in the Benedictine fashion - orare est laborare, laborare est orare.
This guy taped bills to a canvas.
Ah yes, now I see that the museum did indeed advance him the money he took and ran with.
The museum overpaid. I would have given them even blanker canvases for half the price.
Displayed blank canvasses exhibit the culture of museum visits and display. There's no need to pay for them, though. The museum can do it on its own.
Left Bank, great point - how will these works be authenticated? Forgers rejoice!
And these are "miserable" working conditions
This is why 50 percent of my nieces and nephews are art majors, innit?
a capitalist system that values a work based on some arbitrary conditions.
As opposed to a socialist system that values a work based on how well it serves the state.
Next time just Xerox some pretend cash to staple to the canvas.
I read once that over time, Samuel Beckett's works had fewer and fewer words. The ultimate Beckett work might have only a title, or not even that.
How much could I get for my work of art: an X of ketchup on a white canvas. Since I don't want to spend much money on the canvas, the canvas would only be 12" by 12". The ketchup would be Heinz 57 of course, my wife's favorite ketchup.
Could I nick that stupid curator for $100,000? $1,000,000? It's ART!
I read once that over time, the works of Samuel Beckett had fewer and fewer words. The ultimate Beckett work might have only a title, or not even that.
The Kunsten Museum's exhibition guides can be repetitive at times.
"“We are not a wealthy museum,” [said Lasse Andersson, the museum’s director]. The money came from modest reserves earmarked for the upkeep of the building."
And yet they paid him $75,000 for sh*t. A lot of modern art is a con, and they got conned.
Who's the bigger con artist.... this guy or Hunter?
the money was supposed to represent the wage gap between Danish workers and Austrian workers
The canvas without the money represents the wage problem more eloquently than a canvas covered with money. Anyone who looks at it will sympathize with the underpaid workers who are essentially in the same position.
This is like when Peter Dinklage, wealthy actor, said that it was insulting to hire Little People as the Seven Dwarfs in the new Snow White. He put average-income people out of work with his artistic vision from the heights of success.
Maybe he used the money to pay down his student loans.
I wonder what multiple of money this artist makes compared to the clerk at the art store who sold him the canvas and other materials used for his work. I further wonder what the appropriate multiple should be. I would recommend some multiple of five or perhaps ten. Anymore than that would not be equitable, and this artist would be participating and even increasing the iniquities of our society. I would like to see art store clerks picketing outside his home to seek their fair share of the art market which they make possible by their labor.
Retained earnings. How will you vote... redistribute your capital?
Wonder what Hunter would get for a couple of blank canvases.
A Blackrock... black rock represents the diversity targeting people of black. A blank canvas represents the diversity of people of blank... black. h/t NAACP
So, here’s an end game twist:
The he returns the $75K the museum returns the blank canvases.
A bigger museum with deeper pockets buys the blank canvases for $1million and gives them a prominent location just for spite.
Definitely not a new idea.
Saw this play in London in 2000.
Amusing jab at the "capitalistic system" by the artists and museum. Neither of which are likely to exist without these capitalistic times.
Oh, sure, an artist, writer, curator, might find a patron among the nobles who would support them doing something ordered, but even then the discretionary money used for it would have come from the noble engaging in capitalist activity even if the lesser are prohibited from using their earnings to better themselves through participation in markets and enterprises.
In the precapitalistic ages writing was an unremunerative art. Blacksmiths and shoemakers could make a living, but authors could not. Writing was a liberal art, a hobby, but not a profession. It was a noble pursuit of wealthy people, of kings, grandees and statesmen, of patricians and other gentlemen of independent means. It was practiced in spare time by bishops and monks, university teachers and soldiers. The penniless man whom an irresistible impulse prompted to write had first to secure some source of revenue other than authorship.
Mises, Ludwig von (1956). The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality
the money was supposed to represent the wage gap between Danish workers and Austrian workers
Why Austrian workers? Why not Swedish, Norwegian, Belgian or German - the nearest neighbors? Does Austria subsidize artists in some way that makes the spread bigger?
Left Bank of the Charles said...
"Another question here: Who owns the two blank canvases and what price would they fetch if sold as Take the Money and Run works of art? Of course, there would be a potential for the artist to sell many more than two."
Apparently, my amateur artist wife owns two lost Haaning masterpieces and didn't even know it!
We should sell them before the price goes down.
John Cage found his lazy-girl job. Much more interested in wandering the forest hunting mushrooms than in actually writing music.
https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-experimental-artist-john-cage-obsessed-mushrooms
John Cage found his lazy-girl job. Much more interested in wandering the forest hunting mushrooms than in actually writing music.
https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-experimental-artist-john-cage-obsessed-mushrooms
Lloyd W. Robertson said...
"I read once that over time, the works of Samuel Beckett had fewer and fewer words. The ultimate Beckett work might have only a title, or not even that."
His last work was a poem that proves the trend: What Is The Word
Wild Swan wins the thread with her comment.
Mike of Snoqualmie said...
"How much could I get for my work of art: an X of ketchup on a white canvas. Since I don't want to spend much money on the canvas, the canvas would only be 12" by 12". The ketchup would be Heinz 57 of course, my wife's favorite ketchup."
On special occasions as kids, my siblings and I would create 12' x 7' masterpieces in white tablecloth that was done in the Jackson Pollack style with artfully applied splotches of spaghetti sauce, melted cheese, mustard, gravy, olive oil, butter, and homemade wine.
The adults did their own version, but it was done in a much more minimalist style.
The skills of an expert grifter are not to be scoffed at! He gave them blank canvas, just close enough to artworks get them confused. If he just handed in a few pages of blank printer paper, the museum would have been certain a lot sooner that they were being scammed.
The best lies are those closest to the truth. See any politician of the last 60 years for examples.
Abbie Hoffman, Steal this Book, made a (small) stir in its day. It's true that there's a lot of stuff on display in famous museums (MoMA especially) that presents as aggressive junk. Marcel Duchamp certainly, but Yves Klein (blue!), Walter De Maria (the dirt room!), Rauschenberg and many others too. What's odd is that, as you go back over the years and see the "work" again and again, it begins to become an old friend, no longer the ridiculous exercise in FU but instead a comfortable presence reminding you of times and experiences past. Proust would find it quite agreeable, I suspect.
Does Austria subsidize artists in some way that makes the spread bigger?
I recall that the Netherlands used to provide a generous stipend to any self-proclaimed "artist". It paid based on output, not quality or merit. The idea was to use it to decorate government buildings, but they accumulated more than they could use, even if they selected the handful of high quality works of art from the enormous warehouses crammed full of pure shit. I think they put a stop to it at some point. Makes me wonder if Austria still has a similar racket going on.
When I went to school, Madison has a town drunk. Art wandered up and down Stste Street occasionally shouting at no one and occasionally washing storefront windows for booze. Before he died some entrepreneur starting selling t-shirts that on the front said "What is Art?" and on the back had a picture of Art and the words "Art...is a window washer" (Art got a cut of the sales, so all is good). Given what passes for art amongst our so-called elite taste-makers, I think the t-shirt guy had a better definition.
Conceptual art is even more ephemeral than Dada. A Dadaist will a least deliver a heap of actual garbage and not just a sliver of foolscap with garbage scrawled on it. If conceptual art has any validity at all, ARKEN needs to pay up and shut up. They got something material, which is much more than conceptual art guarantees by definition. In fact, ARKEN should just start writing checks. Everyone in Denmark who considers himself an artist should submit his name and address on a postcard. The postcards go in a big rotating drum and once a month Greta Tuneberg pulls out one at random. (Yes, yes I know she's Swedish, but she's well-suited to the task intellectually.) Then the name on the card gets a check for €75,000, the ne plus ultra of conceptual art, i.e. Dada without anything to attract roaches.
I could see this coming forty years ago. The content of Art in America became more and more painful to read month by month. Trying to make even literal sense of what those soi-disant art critics wrote in its pages was like being force-fed donuts in Hell. Homer Simpson could do it. Not me.
Unlike most publications, Art in America is still a paper-and-ink thing, probably because the people who live in rent-controlled apartments on Central Park West must have something to put on the coffee table.
Oops! Sorry, everyone. The museum in question is in Aalborg. The larger ARKEN institution is in Copenhagen. ARKEN literally received a pile of dirt in response to a call for pieces commemorating the 1914-1918 Great War. The curators dumped it on their polished marble floor and put a very nice velvet rope around it with a brain-numbing placard describing the dirt in three languages. I jumped to the conclusion the blindsided museum staffers who contracted for concrete examples of conceptual art were the same oblivious doofuses who spent taxpayer money for a cubic meter of earth.
Art is one of those luxury items that rich people use to indicate that they are rich. It doesn't have to be good art. It just has to be expensive and provide snobbery opportunities. Hence, why you get this drivel that no one likes, not even the people who champion it. The fact that it is bad art has nothing to do with anything and is besides the point.
Rocco @ 11:47: "...'What Is The Word'..." Thanks for the cite. Interesting. I would never rush to denigrate Beckett or his work but life is short and my toolkit not very refined, so I look at his strange sad stack of words called, I guess, a "poem," as in "a created thing," and I shrug. I wonder, what's in there? What did he bury under that staccato of "this, this, this" and that seemingly-random rain of a few grudging nouns? What was his intention? To emulate the last half-coherent probings and doubtings of a failing awareness? To set down, in some definitive way, "what it all means"? Or rather the absurdity of such efforts? The brave defiant nobility of humanity seeking, even in the final moments, to put its stamp on the universe?
I think our Becketts will always be difficult. That doesn't mean we don't need them.
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