Art Gallery Musings on Moral Rights from Concurring Opinions
(right: Signs of Human 4 by Zach Stern)
In his recent Concurring Opinions post Art in an Age of Digital Reproduction, Frank Pasquale takes the time to discuss the pro's and con's of expanded "moral rights" in artwork. Excerpt below, link above.
I recently went to the Art Institute of Chicago to see the Jeff Wall show. I’d seen some of his photographs in the newspaper, but I wasn’t buying the critical praise. . .I’m glad I did. One of his pieces, Dead Troops Talk (a vision after an ambush of a Red Army patrol, near Moqor, Afghanistan, winter 1986), struck me as a Dulce et Decorum Est for our time. The visual monotony of a desert landscape and dull Russian officers’ uniforms is relieved only by gore and improbably animated faces, some laughing profanely, others enigmatically contemplating their fate. The startlingly inventive “Flooded Grave” . . . is set in a drab cemetery and features an open, water-filled tomb filled with a riotously colorful array of sea anemones and urchins. All the work was backlit, achieving a luminosity no printed page (or monitor I've seen) can convey.
Which brought me back to my initial lack of enthusiasm for Wall’s work. Did the newspaper copy mislead me? Would thumbnails on the web have done the same thing? . . . I’m . . . wondering about the extent to which an artist might want the power to stop inferior copies of his or her work, if only to avoid misimpressions like mine.
On the other hand, I’d never have even gone to the show if I hadn’t seen the reproductions in the New York Times article on Wall. So I'm not sold on the need to, say, expand moral rights so as to permit artists to assure that only those appreciating the "real presence" of the work itself can see any copy of it.
BLOGGING WITH IMAGES FROM THE INTERNET
Because I use so many images to illustrate this blog and the Settle It Now Negotiation Blog, I'm keenly interested in the apparently contradictory interests of making an author's work available to an audience likely to appreciate it and keeping one's hands off another's work without first obtaining permission.
In my own case, I've found that simply asking permission, giving credit and providing a link to a web site of the artist's choosing generally (99%) results not simply in permission but also in gratitude for the exposure.
Because posting a few thoughts on the blog, along with a vivid image, is such a spontaneous act (at least in my case) there were times in the past when I did not seek permission before posting but only gave credit and linked to the artist's site. I figured everyone googled themselves occasionally, the artist would see his or her name, take a quick look at the context and object if the use was objectionable, in which case I'd promptly remove it.
That, as you can imagine, finally led to a dispute, in consequence of which I no longer post any images other than those for which I've received permission, which I firmly believe constitute "fair use" or those with creative commons licenses (like the one above).
The ability to download material already on the internet in just a few seconds makes it difficult for even an IP specialist to resist.
Nevertheless, I have learned my lesson and hence only link to but do not post a Jeff Wall image here.
