The EU Asks, “Is it art?”

Hosting a Dan Flavin retrospective, the Hayward Gallery in London says that the American artist, who died in 1996, created pioneering sculpture for half a century. Nonetheless, taking on the recurring question, “Is it art?”, the European Commission in Brussels has ruled that the work has "the characteristics of lighting fittings ... and is therefore to be classified ... as wall lighting fittings".

This is no angels-dancing-on-the-head-of-a-pin debate. For tax purposes, classifying the pieces as light fixtures means that any Flavin work imported into the European Union is subject to full VAT, which rose to 20% on January 1; classified as sculpture, the pieces would be subject to only 5% VAT.

Art critic Laura Cumming has said about Flavin’s art, "You wonder how it is possible that so much pleasure could emit from such a dismal source: the cold fluorescent tubes of strip lighting." But in its ruling, the Commission said: "It is not the installation that constitutes a ‘work of art' but the result of the operations (the light effect) carried out by it."

Hmmm… if the only things installed in a room are lights, and the only reason people go into the room is to look at the effect of those lights … ??? I wonder, is it "the result of the operations" or the purpose of the operations that constitutes a work of art ?

This is not the first time this has come up as a tax issue. The Guardian cites one famous precedent for the Commission's decision; “In 1926 the American collector and photographer Edward Steichen bought a bronze version of [Romanian sculptor Constantin Brancusi’s] tall slender Bird In Space, and attempted to import it to the US. Since it had neither head, feet, nor feathers, US customs refused to accept it as a zero-rated work of art, and instead classified it as ‘a manufacture of metal ... held dutiable at 40%’.”

After paying the $600 tax, Steichen and Brancusi took the matter to court – their legal fees paid by the millionaire collector Peggy Guggenheim. The decision was overturned, the judge ruling that "while some difficulty might be encountered in associating it with a bird, it is nevertheless pleasing to look at and highly ornamental". Steichen got his money back.

Take note, EC.

Less Elephant Dung?

This headline in a recent issue of Art Knowledge News makes me think I might yet learn to better appreciate contemporary art!

Less Elephant Dung in New Show by Chris Ofili at Tate Britain

If It Has Function, Can It Be Art?

Some art theorists insist that art is made to be seen, not used. Essayist Siri Hustvedt is one of these. In her Mysteries of the Rectangle, she says that art "has not practical function beyond visual communication between the product the artist created and the viewer.”

I don't know what Hustvedt thinks about Fountain, but even if she agrees with me that Duchamp's urinal is not art, I suspect our reasoning might not be the same ... I disagree that functional things can't qualify as art.

Take Clark Sorensen’s urinals, for example.

Titled Nature Calls, his series of one-of-a-kind, hand-made porcelain fixtures was inspired by Georgia O'Keeffe’s large-scale flower paintings.

Like Duchamp’s Dadaist Fountain, Sorensen’s Nature Calls urinals are also intended to be humorous and ironic. But unlike Duchamp, Soensen has created something original and unique, elevating the mundane into the realm of artistic expression.

Marcel Duchamp’s urinal ... er, "Fountain"

I don’t always succeed in appreciating a (so-called) work of art.

For example, I’ve never been able to appreciate Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain … which isn’t a fountain at all. It’s a urinal. And I’m not ashamed to say that I don’t “get” it, despite the fact that a poll of 500 art experts named it as the most influential work of modern art … ahead of works by Picasso and Matisse!

Duchamp's idea was that it’s the creative process that is the most important thing - that the work itself can be made of anything and can take any form.

Conceptually, I agree with that … but I can’t see that Duchamp actually created anything. What he did was purchase a factory-made product and hang it on a wall. And, indeed, when Duchamp shocked the art establishment in 1917, offering it for the first exhibition of the Society of Independent Artists in New York, Fountain was rejected for being neither original nor art.

Duchamp’s urinal is an example of Dadaism. According to its proponents, Dada was not art, it was "anti art", bent on rejecting traditional culture, and embracing chaos and irrationality. For everything that art stood for, Dada was to represent the opposite. Where art was concerned with long-established aesthetics, Dada ignored aesthetics. If art was to appeal to sensibilities, Dada was intended to offend. If art is a gift of the Universe, then Dada rejected the spirit of reciprocal generosity.

To my mind, even if American Dadism was driven by a sense of irony and humor, its negative purpose moves it out of the realm of art. Dadists themselves called it “anti-art”. How can something anti-art be art?

Art as a Gift of the Universe

I haven’t posted for a rather long time because I’ve been busy pondering the meaning of life.

Actually, among the things I’ve been juggling is a treatise on the Art of Looking. As I’ve considered the subject, I’ve realized something quite fundamental about my approach to art:

I believe that a work of art is a gift of the Universe.

Here’s the spiritual logic: anything created by someone is an offering of a part of that person’s Being … an expression of the uniqueness of who that person is. We talk about a person as “gifted”. We refer to a person’s particular talent as “a gift from God”. We talk about gifts “coming from the heart”.

When a child gives us an off-kilter clay something-or-other, we are delighted … we recognize the care and concentration and the effort that went into it, and we receive it as a gift of that child’s Being … even while wondering what it is!

The extent to which you at least try to appreciate the work is an expression of your gratitude for the gift. It’s a reciprocal relationship. Taht may sound a little flaky … but so often when looking at an amazing work I feel a profound gratitude to the Universe that human beings are able to create such things.