An attorney for [artist] Di Modica, Norman Siegel, said the 4-foot-tall bronze girl was created as part of an advertising campaign for Boston-based investment firm State Street Global Advisors and its placement opposite the bull exploits the earlier sculpture for commercial gain and negates its positive message.Arguably the second sculpture steals something from the first work, as the first work is necessary for the effect of the second work. He seems to be charging that it's a bit more than that, though: that the act is one of defacement, such that his positive and optimistic sculpture is transformed into a big meanie.
"The placement of the statue of the young girl in opposition to 'Charging Bull' has undermined the integrity and modified the 'Charging Bull'" Siegel said. "The 'Charging Bull' no longer carries a positive, optimistic message. Rather it has been transformed into a negative force and a threat."
I guess the bull (and the bear) are some of those animal spirits that Keynes was talking about. William Safire apparently wrote on the history of the phrase.
The phrase that Keynes made famous in economics has a long history. "Physitions teache that there ben thre kindes of spirites", wrote Bartholomew Traheron in his 1543 translation of a text on surgery, "animal, vital, and natural. The animal spirite hath his seate in the brayne ... called animal, bycause it is the first instrument of the soule, which the Latins call animam." William Wood in 1719 was the first to apply it in economics: "The Increase of our Foreign Trade...whence has arisen all those Animal Spirits, those Springs of Riches which has enabled us to spend so many millions for the preservation of our Liberties." Hear, hear. Novelists seized its upbeat sense with enthusiasm. Daniel Defoe, in "Robinson Crusoe": "That the surprise may not drive the Animal Spirits from the Heart." Jane Austen used it to mean "ebullience" in "Pride and Prejudice": "She had high animal spirits." Benjamin Disraeli, a novelist in 1844, used it in that sense: "He...had great animal spirits, and a keen sense of enjoyment."I thought it was a reference to Descartes, though, who uses the term in Passions of the Soul as part of an explanation of how passion can interfere with rational decision-making. That seemed to be what Keynes was talking about, but perhaps Safire was right.
21 comments:
Arguably the second sculpture steals something from the first work, as the first work is necessary for the effect of the second work.
Not at all, and not at all. As with all art, the effect is solely within the mind of the one experiencing the art and created solely by that mind.
This is just the manufactured dudgeon of a disgruntled artist who's lost the pride of place that he never was promised, potentiated by the blustering of a fee-seeking lawyer.
Next, they'll be arguing that his painting of a down arrow is somehow stolen from by my painting of an up arrow as the two hang next to each other on a gallery wall.
Eric Hines
Not at all, and not at all
Then it shouldn't matter at all where the statue is displayed, and shouldn't be any bother to move it to a spot not proximate to the preexisting sculpture. Which is all that the artist is asking to be done.
The very opposition to moving it, from e.g.: Mayor de Blasio, demonstrates that it is a derivative work, incomplete without Mr. Di Modica’s Charging Bull, and would be a violation of the artist's rights even pre-VARA (17 U.S. Code § 106A)
I'm with Douglas on this one. I don't know the relevant law at all, but I do think the artist has a legitimate complaint about the effect of this on his work.
A gallery is a very different contextual space than a free art installation like a street corner. The statue of the girl would not have the same meaning or impact without the Bull.
When I saw the news story about the new statue, my first thought was, after groaning at the "Grrrrrrl Power!" breathless coverage, to sigh because to me, the whole interpretation of the statue is supposed to be feminism against capitalism and "the Patriarchy." That's certainly how the people at the unveiling were describing it, and the journalists reporting the story. So I side with the bull and bear sculptor - adding the girl, because of her placement and how she was presented to the public, reverses the meaning of the original work and is dependent on that original work, without having Mr. Di Miodica's permission.
LittleRed1
The very opposition to moving it...demonstrates that it is a derivative work
Not even close. The second artist has the same right to a particular place as does the first. Let the bull's artist be required to move his.
The statue of the girl would not have the same meaning or impact without the Bull.
Not the same meaning to you, perhaps. Its meaning to me is invariant from location.
A gallery is a very different contextual space than a free art installation like a street corner.
No free galleries in your world? Separately from that, the street corner is just a free gallery once it's used for displaying art.
Eric Hines
As with all art, the effect is solely within the mind of the one experiencing the art and created solely by that mind.
Sure, and with language as well. That's the post-modernist interpretation to a T. That's why they say it's perfectly fine to interpret words like "shall not be infringed" in any way the reader chooses. That is the case with all forms of communication, of course, whether language or art or law or religion or whatever else you might come up with. Meaning is always created by the mind of the one perceiving the signs, no where else.
Except that words are much more precise, and have widely disseminated dictionaries, whereas Pollock paint spatters, or even statues, are not and do not.
Post-modernist interpretation--your strawman--isn't applicable to words. On the other hand, the bull's artist plainly is applying your post-modernist interpretation, after the fact, to his piece. So maybe not a complete strawman, since you're not alone in applying it.
Eric Hines
I don't think that's a fair interpretation, Mr. Hines.
Let's say that an artist associated with the KKK decided to make a sculpture of a gallows with a hangman's noose. It seems to me that -- although the sculpture conveys a perfectly despicable meaning on its own -- it would be a matter of significant interest if it was built in such a way that the noose hung right in front of the face of an earlier statue of a Civil Rights hero. That context would add another meaning, even more despicable, so much so that it might come under our very limited constraints against artistic free expression.
Now the meaning is already ugly, agreed. However, it does seem to make a difference whether the place of display is (on the one hand) the artist's own property or (on the other) immediately in front of the Civil Rights hero's statue.
Further, that juxtaposition does seem to alter the meaning of the first statue as well. Before, families might want to bring their children to see it because it is an expression of respect for this hero and the values he embodied in life. After, families would not want their children to see it because it would have become a villainous expression of disrespect and insult.
That's an extreme example, but surely it clarifies the point. We might not forbid the gallows statue on private property; we almost certainly would on public property, as that would imply some blessing from the state; we definitely would in juxtaposition with the hero's statue. That difference exists because context, in fact, matters to meaning.
Quite the opposite, Mr. Hines. Artistic themes with commonly understood meanings are well-documented from ancient times, and space (i.e., the spaces both within the object and the spaces surrounding it) have long been understood to be part of the meaning of a work of art. In fact, the use of space in the arrangement of lines has long been understood as a defining quality of written poetry as well.
Dictionaries, on the other hand, never tell us what a word means. They merely document the common usage of words at the time, and, of course, the focus, biases, and limitations of their makers.
...juxtaposition does seem to alter the meaning of the first statue as well.
Again, that's your interpretation. It might even be a widespread one. That doesn't make it right or wrong, or even proper or improper.
Dictionaries, on the other hand, never tell us what a word means. They merely document the common usage....
Talk about post-modernist interpretations. That's exactly how meaning of words is set out, and learned by others. And dictionaries are accessible to anyone who can read. Art "themes," on the other hand, are only "commonly understood" by those who've had occasion to study art to some extent. I'm a living example that a single college semester is an insufficient extent. Art "themes" meanings are not accessible to anyone who can see.
As to the noose in front of a Civil Rights hero and the question of private vs public property: the latter is irrelevant; both the girl and the bull are on public property, and so each has an equal right to be present. Beyond that, you seem to have constructed the one to be much closer to the other than the girl is to the bull, or maybe I've misinterpreted your description.
Keep in mind, too, that the original sensitive artist's bull was foisted off onto the city behind its back, and the city objected to it, hauling it away. It was only later that the city allowed it to be displayed on public property. The Precious Artist is in no position to squawk about another piece of art upstaging his own guerrilla effort.
Withal, what's your limiting principle? How much separation is necessary between two performance artists depicting opposing themes before one can be recognized as not altering the meaning of the other? What's the minimum separation required between two soap box speakers espousing opposing positions before one can be recognized as not altering the meaning of the other? How much is clearly more than necessary, excessive for the purpose?
What's the minimum acceptable separation between the bull and the girl? Based on what criterion or set of criteria?
With the existing separation, I certainly have no problem looking at each of them separately; my ability to focus isn't that impaired. It just isn't that hard to do.
Eric Hines
I'm just trying to test your suggestion that a work of art is necessarily separate from its physical placement (or, as you put it, "Its meaning to me is invariant from location").
That seems really implausible to me; the meaning of a sculpture placed in a hot blast furnace is different from one placed on a sidewalk. The former is like Calvin & Hobbes 'taking advantage of the medium's impermanence.' The latter is almost the symbol of permanence.
The question about 'how far' seems to me to miss the point. If neither of the two works was designed to play off each other, it might not be that separating them added or subtracted anything from their meanings. But when one is, placing it in juxtaposition attains an effect that is otherwise not available.
You need to reread your first sentence in your comment at 1:25, this time attending to the quoted "to me" phrasing as well as the context that includes the preceding sentence in the comment from which you quoted me. Your description of my suggestion has nothing to do with my claim as I put it.
The absence of a limiting principle is the problem. Say one of the two pieces was designed to play off the other. How far a separation is necessary to defeat the claimed copyright violation?
In the particular case, where is the copyright violation in a public square where the allegedly violated piece sits solely on the benefit of a temporary permit to be there (for all that the temporarity has been winked at)?
Eric Hines
I don't dispute you have a right to doggedly insist that you personally possess a meaning that nothing can influence. I just find it highly implausible to suggest that the meaning of the art work is not influenced by its placement in at least some cases. It seems as if it is fairly easy to invert the meaning of the art, in fact. Instead of a symbol of a liberating energy and joy, the bull becomes a symbol of aggressive oppression; the Civil Rights statue becomes not a public honoring of someone who did well in the face of insults during a difficult period of history and a celebration of his cause, but a public insult to that person and everyone who associates themselves with his cause; the bronze statue becomes not a symbol of permanence, but a poignant symbol of the impermanence even of things usually thought solid.
If what you're left with is, "Well, the statue in my head is still pretty solid and unchangeable," you're no longer talking about art. You're talking about a concept to which you alone have access, not a mode of human communication.
I'll leave the specific boundaries to others who work in this area. I don't have a precise answer to 'how far?' and the like. It just doesn't seem plausible to suggest that it doesn't matter.
...you personally possess a meaning that nothing can influence.
Where did you get that idea? All I've said is that distance does not, for me, which is not the same as nothing can, nor even the same as "distance can not."
It seems as if it is fairly easy to invert the meaning of the art....
Of course it is--art is in the eye of the beholder; the artist can suggest an originating meaning, but it's the viewers who apply it, or not. It's their minds that do the interpretation once the artist takes his hand away. That's especially true for Pollock's stuff and the like, but it's also true for what might seem more representational, like our statues of the bull and little girl. But interpretations across viewers aren't identical there, either: I have two statuettes of cats on my mantle, one somewhat abstract of a house cat and one more representational of a cougar or mountain lion flexing so that its muscles are in relief. Neither one impacts the meaning of the other, and the artists might have been saying similar or opposing or merely differing things with the pieces. But the artists' work is done; the interpretation, in their current location, is no longer under the artists' control. More: my wife ignores them altogether, as I suspect, do a significant fraction of the passersby on a New York street intersection.
I don't have a precise answer to 'how far?'
Well, if you don't have an idea of how far (I'm omitting "precise;" if that's too much, correct me), on what basis do you claim the little girl isn't far enough? Don't know means don't know.
Eric Hines
Well, if you don't have an idea of how far (I'm omitting "precise;" if that's too much, correct me), on what basis do you claim the little girl isn't far enough? Don't know means don't know.
That's a Zeno-style problem, but there's a pretty good answer from Timothy Williamson to vagueness problems like this. There is a point at which I would know that I know that it's far enough away -- the point at which the bull is no longer at all visible. There is a point that I know that I know it's too close -- the current point. There is also a region in which I'm not sure that I know that I know it's too close, or if it's far enough away yet. But the existence of the region of vagueness doesn't mean that I can't have certain knowledge about the clear regions on the extreme ends.
But the artists' work is done; the interpretation, in their current location, is no longer under the artists' control.
It never was, in the strict sense of 'control.' However, artists can certainly take context into account in trying to convey a meaning. The bull statue stands on its own; the girl statue is dependent on context for the meaning it intends to convey. That's why it's derivative.
You know something about that closer point, and I know something about that same point--and our points of knowledge directly oppose each other, hence the conundrum, in one strictly personal (and not legal) sense. Even the farther point is too vague for law: no longer visible to whom? The quality of eyesight varies across individuals and within individuals across even short time intervals. No longer visible from what vantage point?
In the sense of the original discussion, though, that vagueness--an entirely personal vagueness as it matters to the disagreement between you and me--impacts the law that's before the court concerning a claimed copyright violation. That vagueness and opposition also are illustrated by your claim that the girl statue is dependent on its physical relationship with the bull. Of course, that's plainly not true--for all your right and ability doggedly to insist the contrary.
Finally, copyright is all about control. As you've noted, this never has been about control, including control from copyright I add. It's just about an artist's ego.
Eric Hines
Talk about post-modernist interpretations. That's exactly how meaning of words is set out, and learned by others.
No, I believe my position on dictionaries is pretty much a historical fact. I left out some things, of course (these are blog comments, not a dissertation), but when the folks at Oxford U. Press work on a new edition of the OED, they do a lot of research into how words are being used, and their new edition will document what they have learned. Reading that dictionary is a good way to see how the meanings of words have been changed by the culture over time.
There is a mutual influence, of course. Once dictionaries started being published a few hundred years ago, they began to influence how people used the language. However, people use words as they will, often employing them in new ways to express themselves, and as those new ways catch on, the meanings change over time. New editions of dictionaries must be produced to accommodate changes in common usage. Dictionaries do influence how words are used, but culture is dominant.
You can see this in borrowing and neologisms as well. Dictionaries don't lead. People start using a new word, or a borrowed word, and if enough people begin using it, then the word is adopted and dictionaries have to change to accommodate that. Dictionaries follow the culture much more than the reverse. This is especially true for English, which has no special organization dedicated to attempting to preserve and enforce some standard of purity on the language.
Also, your stated view of language learning is deeply flawed. The first English dictionaries were written less than 500 years ago. Are you saying no one learned English before then? That the English language didn't exist until there were dictionaries to define its words?
As for how language is learned by individuals, at 2, did your parents give you a dictionary and instruct you to memorize it so you could learn to talk to them? Maybe yours did (kidding!), but that's not how most people learn their native language. People learn living languages from other people first and foremost, from their parents, their friends, movies, songs, books read to them and then books they read, news reports and articles and blogs and so on.
Dictionaries are very useful for reference and for refining one's use of the language. I use them all the time. But they are not the primary way the vast majority of people actually learn language.
Additionally, words are only part of a language. Dictionaries don't go into great depth on grammar, register (polite / impolite, academic / popular, positive / negative connotation, etc.), cultural associations, ironic / sarcastic usage, etc. Words are essential, but they are not the totality of language.
I put the question to authority, since we've had such trouble coming to consensus about it (and since, it being Easter, I was going to have dinner with her anyway). I consulted my mother, who was a lifelong art educator as well as an artist.
She says she thinks the bull artist is right, but that the people who should pay damages are the big corporation who commissioned the Fearless Girl sculpture and not that artist.
Well, that settles it, then.
But, to go back to our discussion of the meanings of images, we can even leave art out of it. Many aspects of visual communication are universal, or at least, widely recognized within a particular culture. Marketers depend on it.
Most of us interpret the world itself visually, so visual symbols can be powerful and probably nearly universal. I've found that a bit of pen and notebook paper drawing can communicate some ideas effectively across impermeable language barriers. A shop with an image of food on the sign communicates 'restaurant'. A cross communicates Christianity.
For the members of a particular culture, there will be visual symbols recognized within the group, like symbols on a flag, or our octagonal red stop sign, or a badge.
Certainly, this kind of communication has limits, and it may be less precise than communication with words, but that doesn't mean we should adopt a post-modernist view of it that meaning is solely constructed within the mind of the viewer. That's no more the case with visual signs than it is with language.
By extension, then, visual art is just one form of visual communication. Some of it fails. Some of it is abstract and is not intended to convey specific meanings. But some of it carries meaning that most people within a culture will understand on some level.
I'm not a post-modernist with any kind of communication. I think together the creator of a message, the receiver of a message, and the larger context of the message all contribute to the construction of that message's meaning. I think that's just as true with art as it is with words.
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