The Artist's Prerogative

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Just a quick one, stimulated perhaps by a NY Times story on Banksy and his famous self-shedding painting of the girl and the heart-shaped ballon, now titled Love is in the Bin. Banksy had set the painting to “self-destruct” as soon as it was sold at Sotheby’s London in 2018, but the shredder jammed, and the half-destroyed painting was subsequently sold for more than the original undamaged work. Profit assured, no foul? It made me wonder about ownership and art. Does either authorship or ownership entitle one to destroy or alter an artwork that could be argued to be of such cultural value that it “belongs to the world?”  Mind you, I’m not arguing that Love is in the Bin is such a work, or that Banksy is a world class artist. World class marketer, maybe. But that’s not really the point. The question is what prerogatives attach to the creation or possession of an artwork? 

Salvator Mundi is perhaps a better example. This depiction of Christ attributed to Leonardo Da Vinci was sold for 450 million dollars in 2017 and disappeared. A couple of years later it was reported as being housed on the yacht of an Islamic Saudi prince. Strange context for an iconic image of Christ. Yet, nobody seems terribly put out about this - I mean he did, we assume, pay for it, and art often transcends theological fealty. Had the prince, however, opted to destroy the painting - something copyright law would allow - I assume the public reaction would have been quite different. I mean when the Taliban blew up two of the world’s tallest standing Buddhas in 2001, no one - or at least no one not in sympathy with the Taliban - said, “Well, spoils of war. They “owned” them they could do what they wanted.” So, the complexities of copyright law notwithstanding, there appear to be lines you aren’t supposed to cross. You can destroy your own work, or a work you own - the Banksy model. You can purchase an artistically unique work and keep it hidden away for your own pleasure - the Saudi prince model. But you aren’t supposed to blow up works of great cultural significance - the Taliban model.  I realize that copyright law addresses these issues, but like everything when you let the lawyers in, it is not always cut and dried. Each case seems to get adjudicated differently, and deep pockets are often an insurmountable advantage.

So, as I sit here creating a - probably tertiary - digital version of photograph of myself (photographer forgotten - chime in if s/he is you) that I manipulated in Photoshop and then spent an absurd of number of hours hand-painting and am now digitizing, I wonder how does the power of digital technology intersects with the notion of authorship and the prerogative of the artist? With the issue of provenance? Of original and copy? How do we parse provenance in the 21st century? I really don’t know who took the original black and white photo. I have had it for years - 40 or even 50. Does ownership still reside with the original photographer?  [I am now thinking a guy named Alan Williams. The photo was taken, I now faintly recall by his family’s home in the Les Cheneaux Islands off the coast of Michigan’s Upper peninsula sometime in the early 1970s, ’72, ’73?]  But current copyright law certainly asserts that the derivative versions are mine. I’ll stick some copies in here.

Original B&W

Hand-painted

When we were in Venice a year or so ago I remember being fascinated watching restorers at the Scuola Grande di San Rocco working on two large paintings by Tintoretto. Also, I continue to drop in online every now and then to watch the live coverage of the restoration of Rembrandt’s The Night Watch. Both experiences reveal consummate professionals with otherworldly skills. I couldn’t help but wonder “How much of a painting can be ‘restored’ before authorship transfers from the original artist to the restorer?” Especially in the case of “old masters” where the “master” may have actually painted only a small percentage of the canvas, the rest filled in by apprentices - "a priori restorers?" - from his/her studio?  

And now imagine ultra-high resolution 3D scanners and printers capable of building The Night Watch, or Michelangelo’s David for that matter, brush stroke by 3D brush stroke, chisel stroke by chisel stroke to the point where chemical analysis of the materials used in the “copy" becomes the only way to tell copy from original.  Who is the artist?  Who owns the rights to the copy? And is the copy a copy? Ordinarily one can sell a copy as long as you are clear that it is a copy. But what happens when the copy is, by most normal measures, identical to the original? We went through this when music went digital back in 1999, the Napster days. Initially the industry went nuts - this was really, the labels thought, “the day the music died.” But eventually we all became acclimated to the new reality, and artists discovered that they didn’t really need the big labels, and the music was resurrected with far more variety and flexibility.  Will the plastic arts and traditional drawing, painting, photography show the same resilience?

The potential confusion wrought by evolving technology isn’t the only problem. Reconstruction work on the Bamiyan Buddhas has been stymied by bureaucratic UNESCO regulations that require the use of “original material.” Well, the original material was reduced to dust by the Taliban, and the bureaucrats haven’t been able to work their way around that snafu, so the giant niches stand empty, save the shattered ruins. More recently, reconstruction work on the 850-year-old iconic French cathedral, Notre Dame, which the French Senate has declared should be restored to its “last known visual state" is similarly stalled by a debate between architects, cathedral officials, and UNESCO, again, officials - who apparently have a dog in this fight because the cathedral is part of the World Heritage site known as “Paris, Banks of the Seine.”

So, these are the issues that come to mind as I switch from my keyboard back to my Wacom graphics tablet. Fortunately, no one has offered me millions of dollars for either the originals or copies of my works, so I need not thrash about attempting to resolve these issues that seem to reside far, far away from the actual process of making art. However, should the odd Saudi Prince contact you with a significant offer, do send him my way. My people will talk to his people.