The Art of the Olympics and the Cultural Olympiad: Bell ringers of the world, unite and take over

Whilst technically spread over four years, and starting with the end of one edition of the Games and finishing at the closing ceremony of the next, this week has seen something of a relaunch of the  Cultural Olympiad for London 2012 and the London 2012 Festival programme. Perhaps the most eye catching, or ear splitting, highlight of which is Martin Creed's Work No 1197 which has campanologists of the world polishing their bells in excited expectation.

As part of this, a number of high profile artists have designed posters in celebration of the event, the seemingly omnipresent Martin Creed amongst them, and his effort is reproduced above. A slide show of them all, including efforts from Gary Hume, Rachel Whiteread, Bridget Riley and Howard Hodgkin, can be viewed here. Its fair to say that these have come in for some criticism, some of the Daily Mail ultra reactionary variety (see Louise Eccles' A splodge of blue paint and coffee cup rings...Infant school art? No, posters for the London Olympics)  but a lot of the criticism seems to have picked up on the lack of an overt  identity linking it with the place the event is taking place. Certainly there are a number of previous examples that have made this link more explicit, see for example one of the posters for the 1948 Games that plays on some, frankly pretty obvious, London iconography.

Perhaps some of the Daily Mail readers were a bit perturbed that there weren't enough bowler hats, London taxis and red telephone boxes on the posters, but I liked them. At least they were not safe and cliched, and did celebrate some great contemporary British artists. It did however get me thinking about art and sport more generally, and also about cultural aspects of the Olympics. First anyone who has been on a tour at Camp Nou will have seen the art gallery, much of it inspired by a competition that is run by FC Barcelona (mes que un club) and the famous Miro poster. 

This is a famous example, but I am sure there are others. In the meantime, all of the posters for the 2012 Olympics and Paralympics are not only available as poster prints at the reasonable price of £7 (all good stockists etc - but can only be bought with a VISA card on London 2012 site, but that's another story)  but also high end signed art prints of these have been made available from the admirable (I have bought some work from them in the past, but not London 2012 work) countereditions although these will be beyond many people's price range with the box set currently set at £11,000 but unavailable and Bridget Riley's piece already sold out.

A Fire in my Belly

I have posted before on the relationship between art and law, and in particular the policing of 'contentious' art, yesterdays Guardian provided another great example with news of the National Portrait Gallery in Washington pulling an exhibit from the Hide/Seek exhibition. Over 18s can watch the video in question, A Fire in my Belly, here. It's an interesting piece created by the artist David Wojnarowicz in 1987 to mark the death of his lover Peter Hujar, but was removed from the exhibition following pressure from the Catholic League. Religion and sex in art, and especially the 'same sex' variety, are often targets for moral outrage and attempts to prohibit. What is particularly interesting here is that it marks another attempt to censor work not by using more traditional avenues such as criminal law, but by the threat of withdrawing funding. It reminded me of the Sensation exhibition, and the furore surrounding Chris Ofili's  The Holy Virgin Mary. Its a great piece of work, and was shown recently at Tate Britain as part of a retrospective of his work, but when it was shown in New York in the 1990s it was vandalised and the then mayor Guiliani threatened to withdraw future public funding from the gallery. The picture below shows the piece protected by plexi -glass in the gallery. For more on this see art crimes.

Popularity of copyright: mash-ups and time

With the great digital impact upon creation and its using, that is, producing and consuming, copyright law has become not only subject of protecting and promoting creativity within the popular culture, but also it has become an object of popularity itself. We are witnessing the continuous dialogues, if not conflicts, between those justifying its existence and those calling for its greater flexibility and balance. However, in context of its popular image is there a new tendency of the copyright law, or more specifically by those exercising it, in viewing creativity differently? Or to put it other way round –is there a new tendency in permitting copyright infringement? In trying to answer this I will look at two different forms of ‘mash-ups’ that appeared recently on the creative landscape of music and art.

Two weeks ago, DJ Greg Gillis or Girl Talk published on a record label ‘Illegal Art’ his newest fifth album “All Day” of mash-ups which back in 2008 the NY Times named his album ‘a lawsuit waiting to happen’. In anticipation of some popular copyright stuff, Joe Mullin in his article poses very good question ‘Why the music industry isn’t suing Mash-up star ‘Girl Talk’?’ He is wondering why the ‘lawsuit waiting to happen’ is waiting still for the fifth time. Subsequently followed by sane reasoning, he provides a fair point: “Gillis would be a ready-made hero for copyright reformers; if he were sued, he’d have some of the best copyright lawyers in the country knocking on his door asking to take his case for free.”

In other words, it is only because it will attract such a great publicity, likewise the Napster case, and once again those lobbying for its rigid protection even if they win the decision they will lose one more battle on the long run. Mullin states that Girl Talk is just one artist with a laptop who will not be followed by other creative established artists, so in that case the industry will remain quiet. Is the industry scared of popularity!? Obviously, artists does not seem having any problem with mash-ups; it is the labels and publishing industries that fight against that. Nevertheless, as Mullin’s article states that Electronic Frontier Foundation are waiting for the lawsuit to happen as "they’re positively eager to litigate a case over music sampling, which they believe is a clear-cut case of fair use.” Rule out sampling as fair use in America and copyright will gain even greater popularity. Entertainment copyright law made in America!

I do not think there is any copyright war on the long run. Neither I think the 'fair use' notion helps much here. Those using copyright law as a tool for financial gaining, or to be more sympathetic - those wanting to protect creativity, are just adapting to the new mode of copyright existence without knowing it. It seems like there is some silent changing of the copyright system itself and its understanding, affecting everyone –from creator to user in allowing and recognising the novel developments of creation or knowledge sharing, producing and consuming. No matter what side you are on, you just cannot control it. Deliberately or not the great recording companies are restraining from lawsuits only because there is no other way. Probably law in general or this one in particular always has been tolerant or flexible enough to embrace novelties (something most scholars and civil initiatives are trying to succeed today), but it always needed some additional time.

Talking of time, I saw Christian Marclay newest work ‘The Clock’ at the White Cube Gallery which already gained a great acclaim with his cinematic work that tried to grasp the essence of time, while inviting the viewer to experience time by viewing thousands of excerpted film scenes and dialogues related to time, through using cut up-edit technique. The whole piece of 24h video material is screened in real time, depending on the place (time zone) where it is shown. While watching some extracts of the famous film “Time machine” around 17:42h the question of whether Marclay provided copyright licences started ticking together with my sensation of simultaneously seeing and feeling time.

In no time, I found the following answer to my question from Marclay himself in the Economist “Technically it’s illegal....but most would consider it fair use”. How is he so sure? In believe he or the institution that commissioned his work has consulted a lawyer, this transformative work goes beyond the ‘fair use’ protection. The article’s comment that he ’ultimately pays homage to the films, particularly the actors’ does not seem plausible. He is just an established artist, and in contrast to the music industry’s established musicians, appropriation is something common and moreover praised in artistic practices. Another argument could be that law can’t deal with re-mixes of great quantity of original materials used in one work. However the positive thing is whatever the arguments are there are flashes of ameliorating mode as to how copyright work or creation as such are approached by the creators, owners and users today.

Copyright law today is concerned more with its very existence rather than with the rationales why it was recognised at first state. Its justifications are just realms where political and economic powers are exercised, lobbying groups creating strict laws to fight digitalisation and control the consequences of reproducing and distributing. Nevertheless, copyright silently reshapes itself. Copyright law has always been silent, but its utter usage of protecting copyright has positioned it in a place not any other law would like to be. Nevertheless, it is that utterance that made it so popular. On the long run, possibly copyright will be saved by its very popularity.

Copyright law is not a product of this time and things do not change overnight, but they do change during 'All Day'. Goethe says - “The day is committed to error and floundering; success and achievement are matters of long range”.

Children, Art and Law

Laura Cumming's piece in yesterday's Observer adds an interesting extra level to the blog posted here in October on Brooke Shields. The detail above is taken from Bronzino's An Alegory with Venus and Cupid, a painting that has hung, apparently without problem, in the National Gallery for many years. Cumming explains some of the context and coverage of this image in her piece  When juxtaposed with work such as that of Tierney Gearon and others it provides a useful way of trying to undertand the context within which we see children within art, and how the way we view this can be constructed.

Policing Art - Brooke Shields and the Metropolitan Police

The Tate Modern's new exhibition, Pop Life, looks to already have created a furore. I have not visited it myself yet, having preferred to take the short walk from work to the Royal Academy to see the superb Anish Kapoor exhibition, but will report back once I have done in the next few weeks.  On 1 October, the day the exhibition was due to open to the public, the Guardian reported  that the Tate had pulled one particular exhibit, Richard Prince's Spiritual America.  His piece contains an image of the 10 year old Brooke Shields, authorised by her mother and originally taken by the photographer Gary Gross in 1976 for the Playboy publication, Sugar and Spice. A cropped version of this image appears above. The photo was subsequently used by Richard Prince as the basis for his own piece. Initially, he put the photo in a gilt frame and displayed it, without any label, in a shopfront in a part of run down New York. Apparently there was very little complaint when it has been  shown previously, including recently in the US as part of a Richard Prince Retrospective at the Guggenheim. For the Tate installation of Spiritual America, the photo hung, in  its tacky frame, on its own inside what Adrian Searle called a 'dark red and womb like' room. However, the gallery was visited by the Metropolitan Police and the display has been, to use the words of the Tate, 'temporarily closed down' and the catalogue withdrawn from sale. I have blogged before about the regulation of art, and indeed discussed a visit to the exhibition Seduced last year with my LLM students. This case also appears to have echoes of previous problems galleries have had involving the use of images of children, involving Robert Mapplethorpe and Tierney Gearon amongst others. No doubt time well tell what will become of this particular exhibit, and a view of the comments via the Guardian website shows that the area is one that provokes strong emotions, but a moot point is whether we feel the police should be regulating art, and how the law operates in this area? This question is one that will run and run.

Seduced!

This semester I am teaching a module entitled Controlling Creativity: the Censorship of Entertainment Products to our LLM Entertainment Law Students at the University of Westminster. As part of this we try and have various field trips and outings, previous years have seen us go on a trip to see Jerry Springer the Opera at the Cambridge Theatre for example. In addition we try and get some practical input from bodies such as the British Board of Film Classification and the Advertising Standards Authority who come and give presentations to our students. Students give presentations and write papers based on an area of specific interest to them, broadly framed by the idea of 'controlling creativity'. Over the years we have had some really innovative pieces from the students in many diverse areas.

This year we decided to go and see the Barbican exhibition 'Seduced: Art and Sex from Antiquity to Now'. There are details on the Barbican site of coverage of the exhibition and also a link to a BBC 4 News review;
http://www.barbican.org.uk/artgallery/event-detail.asp?ID=5625

As part of the feedback from this I asked the students to write their own reviews - these provided further proof of the value and use of contextual approaches to the teaching of law. One student began her review as follows;

"I’ve been reading a lot about this exhibition in the newspapers and was seriously considering to pay it a visit. Although I don’t go to art exhibitions very often, the combination of art and sex really appealed to me. However as time passed by, I never took any action to actually go to the Barbican. Therefore I was pleasantly surprised that last week Guy announced we were going to the exhibition and that tickets were paid for by the University. Such a great initiative and so appropriate for the module on censorship we are following at the moment.