What Happens If You Break an Artwork? | Hacker News Reader

What Happens If You Break an Artwork?

artsy.net

79 pointsprismatic72 comments

What gets me is that in a world where artists often experiment with viewer interactivity, sometimes you just can't tell what in a museum you're supposed to touch and what you're not supposed to touch.

There was a huge retrospective exhibition of Yoko Ono's work at Musee d'Art Contemporain in Lyon, France in 2016. Included were a mixture of interactive/participatory elements (ladders you were meant to climb, a room filled with hammers and nails that you were supposed to contribute to by banging a nail into whatever you wanted) and other obviously not interactive elements (videos, paintings, things protected by glass).

And I remember, in the same room as the ladders you could climb and combat helmets suspended from the ceiling by ropes that were swinging around because people were walking through them, was a sheet of either canvas or paper mounted on the wall, with another piece of either canvas or paper suspended about an inch in front of it by some string, with some holes cut into the front sheet so that you could just see that there was something drawn or written on the hidden layer.

Well, in a room filled with people talking and laughing and climbing ladders and pushing helmets around, I went to peek behind the curtain and lifted up the front layer to take a look at the one behind.

A custodian ran at me and told me to step away. I still don't know if I damaged it or participated in it.

"You might think I'm interacting with pieces that are not supposed to be touched, but I'm actually providing a valuable commentary on how even in the subjective realm of art, ego seeks the power to maintain control and enforce 'approved behavior' upon what are equal expressions of art"

"Sir, we need to ask you to leave"

"See, you do get it!"

Two Naked Men Jump into Tracey's Bed

The Bed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Bed

The Naked Men: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cai_Yuan_and_Jian_Jun_Xi

> The artists were detained but no further action was taken.

See, the detainment was part of the performance. It symbolized the futility of consequence, commented on the ephemeral attention of the general public, and highlighted that no one is surprised that tracey has naked men jumping into her bed

> sometimes you just can't tell what in a museum you're supposed to touch and what you're not supposed to touch.

In one pop sculpture exhibition, I stared so long at a coffee machine until an attendant came over and asked me if there was a problem with the refreshments.

Are there any documented studies where art experts were challenged to differentiate between:

- abstract paintings by someone universally regarded as "good", and something done by a very young child?

- a piece of new, legitimate, modern art vs maybe a pile of random things from a junkyard

I'm aware it might just be me that's confused, but I have a suspicion much of the abstract and/or modern art world is void of value...that is, without lots of context about the artist and their intentions.

Your comment reminds me of a scene in "The Great Beauty" where the little girl expresses her tantrum with buckets of paint hurled on a very large canvas. The grown-ups stood back, fascinated, it was kinda obscene.

Here's an interesting article that addresses your question (well, partially):

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2011/03/1...

That's exactly what I was looking for...thank you!

Why should context not matter for art (or anything else really)? Suppose you come across a what appears to be a picture of Mozart in the sand on a beach. Doesn't it matter to your understanding of what you see if it was drawn by an artist, the happenstance by the motion of the waves, or a crawling turtle?

The times I've seen these things, sufficient context was not provided.

A picture of Mozart (even if appearing by chance in the sand) isn't in my definition of these abstract or modern art pieces that are confusing to me. I'm asking about the things that I have trouble recognizing as something worth looking at. Blobs and splatters of paint, or as shown elsewhere in the comments, a bag of garbage.

That is one of the things museums do, the curators put things in the museum because they think people should look at it (the act of which of course becomes part of it). Suppose you picked up a book on real analysis without understanding basic arithmetic. Would it be the fault of the author that you didn't understand what you were looking at? Would they have done something wrong?

One way to think about art is that each piece is made at a point in time but is participating in a long din of conversation(s). If you don't understand the general arc of the conversation (or at least the conversation going on right around you), you will miss some of the aesthetic value of any piece. This is as true of Michelangelo as it is of Barnet Newman even if you have more context-free aesthetic/technical appreciation for Michelangelo's work.

Most museums also have docents which are usually more than happy to talk about various pieces.

Someone must have surely done one of those clickbait articles featuring the picture question 'Modern Abstract Art or Random Picture of Painter's Scaffold'?

The context is important, but that an artwork does not have to have any special value in of itself, certainly is a change that some people do not get used to.

To be clear, I didn't mean just monetary value. I can appreciate an interesting geometric pattern made of scrap steel. Or a translucent weave that reveals a leaf, made from dental floss.

What's hard to a appreciate is a semi-arranged pile of trash that's supposed to be a commentary on "disposable society". But which required little time or skill to create.

I also didn't mean monetary value. I meant the value you can assign to an object or performance by itself, with no context.

For example, you can look at an Impressionist painting, and most people would agree that by itself, it has some aesthetic value. Knowing the context of that painting might make it even more valuable, in other ways.

However, the pile of trash you mention does not hold any intrinsic value by most standards (you can find lots of those in any alley), but knowing the context, the commentary and the intention, makes it valuable.

Think of it like an inside joke.

> "maybe a pile of random things from a junkyard"

I definitely thought one exhibit at a modern art museum was junk from a remodel or something, because it was a pile of drywall, plastic sheeting, and other types of normal construction junk.

Pierre Brassau, Monkey Artist

http://hoaxes.org/archive/permalink/pierre_brassau_monkey_ar...

My boss has some art in his apartment; whenever he's dialed in over video from home, I try to figure out if it's drawn by his nieces and nephews, or is worth $15,000 per.

I was a museum security guard and a patron was confused. " can I sit there " he asked. " sure It's just a bench"

Though they had an art toys exhibit where the line was less clear. especially the playground jungle gym based art. The signs did little to stop kids..

I was at a local art school's grad show having a conversation with an old friend. Over a few minutes a small crowd formed and was staring at the liquor license on the wall that was in front of us.

If something speaks to you, don't let anybody hold you back :)

There is a sadistic installation at the MoMA, which is a single, fine steel filament suspended from ceiling to floor. There is a small weight on the floor holding it taught, but otherwise the wire is nearly invisible as you walk through the space. I imagine that is very much the point, but I do not know whether installing it right in the middle of a busy room was also a directive from the artist. In any case, the end result of these perplexing decisions is that a security guard has to be dedicated to stand next to this single piece, all day long, advising people not to bump into it. I cannot imagine a job more Sisyphean.

> I cannot imagine a job more Sisyphean.

For what it's worth, if you go to see (or interact) with Maurizio Cattelan's "America"[1] at the Guggenheim in New York, it is a staffer's job to stand by the door and check on it after every person's visit.

(After my turn, I asked the staffer if that was the weirdest job they'd ever had to do, and she said that it wasn't; perhaps she had previously worked at the MoMA.)

1: https://www.guggenheim.org/exhibition/maurizio-cattelan-amer...

The SFMOMA had a Bruce Conner exhibition recently that displayed his artwork TOUCH/DO NOT TOUCH [1] which had to have a guard stationed out front full time whose sole job was telling patrons they couldn't touch the artwork that said "touch" on it.

1: https://www.moma.org/m/tours/55/tour_stops/687?locale=en

You reminded me of this:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/3604278.stm

Geez. I'm trying to be understanding, but if your work was mistaken for garbage...

It's like someone tossing my code because it looked like the output of /dev/random...

Let's just say that comments are important when you write Perl.

    head -c 100 /dev/random | perl

Considering they called it 'auto-destructive' art; I think the point was that it would eventually be thrown away on accident. I love this.

I was in Manchester Museum recently, looking at samples of Mars and Moon rocks etc., and in classic British wry humour, there was an all caps sign exhorting us to "PLEASE TOUCH".

Problem solved :)

A physics professor in college brought a meteorite to class and wanted everyone to touch every nook and cranny of that thing because it was high in iron and our oils helped keep it from rusting.

I leaned against some shelving at a museum once. Turns out it wasn't shelving, but some unlabeled art. shrug

Did the info/explanation of the piece or the program not indicate whether it was interactive or not?

My uncle works in art-work transportation, and some of the pieces are basically not transportable, but are travelling from museum to museum anyway.

He remembers a charcoled doorframe, that had to be transported although it basically could come apart any second once moved. They have vibration reducing special boxes, with the same climate protection as humidors have it. Also there are titanic insurance fees at work, to move art. And sometimes, somebody in some state run museum, is forced to take the cheapest option available. One of those haulers venturing into art, transported a artwork by a Chinese artists (do not know the name), basically very long paperrolls with Chinese letters on them to be hung from a halls ceiling. Those rolls they come in cardboard boxes, sealed with tape- and the poor fellow, takes a cutter, and systematically, cuts through the tape that seals all the boxes. Each box a artwork, insured for 25.000€ - sliced.

...so is making fragile art and collecting the insurance a common scam or what? <_<

Not implying that this time was a scam, but I gotta think some people do it.

So like how was he supposed to open the boxes if not by cutting the tape? Or were the boxes intended to never be opened?

Cut the sides, peel off the tape? Or maybe he used a box cutter with a long blade? Either way, it's not his fault

> Either way, it's not his fault

I don't know about that. If you take a job transporting art, it's your job to understand what you're transporting.

And at no point are you supposed to open boxes like that, anyway, no matter what you're transporting - when I unloaded the truck at a department store, they drilled into us that that's a very good way to slice through a rack of t-shirts or pants or whatnot.

If the tape on the boxes was not meant to be cut open under any circumstance, and the tape was not a part of the art itself, doesn't the blame fall upon the person who put the tape on in the first place?

You can cut tape from a packed box without jamming the blade into the box and its contents.

I didn't read it that way. The issue was with the handling of the boxes and not the contents. The box itself was the artwork in addition to the contents. Slicing the tape sliced the box and the box was insured for EUR25k.

"cuts through the tape that seals all the boxes. Each box a artwork, insured for 25.000€ - sliced."

> The box itself was the artwork in addition to the contents.

That's not how I read it (emphasis mine):

> One of those haulers venturing into art, transported a artwork by a Chinese artists (do not know the name), basically very long paperrolls with Chinese letters on them to be hung from a halls ceiling

I love this! I initially assumed your understanding was what s/he meant too but the wording in the last sentence caused me to think the boxes were also art. We are having the exact problem described in the article. Is the bench a bench or an art? Is the gigantic crossword puzzle a puzzle to be completed, or a work that should never be written on?

Is the box a box, or an art? Regardless of the answer, tape never should be used or cut carelessly :-)

I want to print out this thread, put it in a frame, and tack it onto a museum wall.

(Hello, museum visitor. You are now part of this art exhibit. Please refrain from touching yourself.)

I suppose if you're going to make an artwork look like a bench and not surround it with protection, then you'd best make it function as a bench too.

Assuming the artwork did look like a bench, I would like to know what the artist thought of the incident. I imagine if you make a bench out of chicken-wire and styrofoam, it would be very entertaining to hear that someone sat on it and broke it. (I skimmed the article she wrote on the experience, however, and it seems like the resemblance to an actual bench was "vague" at best, so I assume it wasn't just some silly fake bench at all.)

One of the more beautiful mishaps in the OP's article is at the end, telling of a child who accidentally broke a sculpture an artist had spent over 2 years crafting and subsequently dedicated to her daughter. I imagine what the artist would think, making her perfect sculpture only to have it eventually come out broken – a fate not dissimilar from raising a child, such as her daughter whom the sculpture was dedicated to. Also, to be broken by another child in such a context would be delightfully sad. The fact that she renamed the sculpture "Broken" afterward is small, depressing turn of course.

Yes, I would have thought that would be entirely predictable. I love art but seriously some art museums are UX nightmares. Looks like a bench, something present in nearly every museum ever but this one is actually art and you can't sit on it.

The SFMOMA actually has a bench that is also art that is fine for sitting on, but has a nearby sign warning people to not stand on it.

On a slight tangent, does flash photography damage paintings?

I see always people using flash in museums. I assume it's because they don't know how to turn it off.

Here's an article investigating the subject: http://people.ds.cam.ac.uk/mhe1000/musphoto/flashphoto2.htm

tl;dr: "Clearly, flashes from 'smartphones' cannot be regarded as a conservation threat in any properly lit gallery."

One wonders, though, about the flash units in modern digital mirrorless/SLR's. They can be quite bright, and since the cameras have UV filters on the sensor already (and many people use additional UV filters over the lens) there's a good chance minimizing UV emissions from the flash was not high on their list of priorities.

> since the cameras have UV filters on the sensor already there's a good chance minimizing UV emissions from the flash was not high on their list of priorities

Oh, on the contrary, we like our batteries to last as much as possible.

It is because they don't know how to turn it off, but also it does not damage paintings.

I'm totally theorycrafting, but if sunlight can make things age and fade (ex: books), wouldn't the light from cameras build up to do some amount of damage as well? Or is the wave spectrum of the two substantially different so that this analogy is moot?

Camera flashes don't produce ultraviolet light, which is the damaging stuff.

Most museums don't display watercolor paintings and many types of photographs or display them for short periods of time in very dark rooms. Watercolor paintings suffer greatly from light. (As to whether flash is particularly bad, that is debatable...)

High-end photoprinters use special paper and ink that is tested for its lightfastness. Turns out that traditional processes like C-Type are less lightfast than high quality digital prints. But slightly more obscure processes like Selenium toning are more lightfast still.

Of course if you have a digital source, you can always make a new print. This doesn't sit well with the commercial art world which considers most of the value to be in a unique handmade tangible object imbued with creative manna by the genius of the artist, and not in a reproducible image that anyone can copy.

In another post, you said flash does cause damage.

"Yes, flash definitely damages paintings."

It depends on the pigments used in the painting. Some are known to be unstable.

Where are you from? Most museums I visited specifically banned flash photography. In fact, most banned all photography.

Yes, flash definitely damages paintings.

Museums that ban photography do so for copyright reasons. The radiant energy of the camera flash is minuscule compared to the energy of the other photons lighting whatever you're looking at.

Don't leave canvas paintings out in the sun.

> Museums that ban photography do so for copyright reasons.

Of course, I wasn't implying otherwise.

In fact, most banned all photography.

That's almost always because of overprotective display and reproduction rights agreements, not physical protection of the works themselves.

> That's almost always because of overprotective display and reproduction rights agreements

Duh. Of course. Why do you think I would think otherwise? It is, however a very usual practice, which is why I find photography in museums unusual enough to ask for a clarification.

That seems like an unnecessarily hostile response. Even if you already knew that, other people reading the conversation might not have known it. There's no call to interpret a declarative statement as a personal attack, or implication that your knowledge was in some fashion lacking.

In my experience, allowing photography in museums isn't "unusual." I would have said it's more common than not. When it's not allowed in busy museums, I also wonder if one reason isn't to discourage people blocking foot traffic and otherwise getting in the way because they need their fiftieth selfie portrait of the day.

yes, I know they specifically ban flash photography. Hence my question.

Where am I from? I've lived the New York City area for about 20 years. Does that help?

However, I've visited museums in London, Paris, Madrid, Rome, Munich, etc. You see it everywhere. Once in the Musée D'Orsay it was so bad, I mentioned it to some workers as I was leaving.

http://m.musee-orsay.fr/en/home.html

That traveling gaming museum that used to show up at E3... one year I was looking at a table covered in handhelds, and I saw a Sega Nomad in its box. I'd never seen one in person, so I opened the box and took it out. I was promptly yelled at "Hey! We'd like to keep that in the box!"

Well why didn't you just bring the empty box then?

Because... they wanted to keep the Nomad in the box.

Odd to put it on a table with many other handhelds you were encouraged to pick up and look at.

Clicked the link on my iphone, turns out I had artsys app installed and got deep linked into it, then was greeted with a login screen, no way to skip and not the article.

Hunted and pecked for it on my home screen, and uninstalled it

Move fast and break shit!

Children have been doing that for ages.

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