Artists

This just in from Rep. Jerry Nadler’s office:

Today, the United States Copyright Office released a new report, updating and reversing its analysis of resale royalties for the first time since 1992. This new analysis is important to visual artists, including illustrators, painters, photographers, and sculptors, and the market for the sale of their work. Many of the Copyright Office’s recommendations will be reflected in the new version of Congressman Jerrold Nadler’s (NY-10) Equity for Visual Artists Act, which he plans to introduce early in 2014.

Nadler had said late last month, at an evening sponsored by the International Foundation for Art Research, that he would redo a bill he’d previously sponsored. In one part, he pledged to reduce the amount paid to artists from auction sales to 5%, bringing it inline with European laws. The Copyright Office report will inform his new bill.

The text of the report can be found here and the press release is here.

The Copyright Office said it listened to public comments in reversing its past position and has therefore:

…concluded that certain visual artists may  operate at a disadvantage under the copyright law relative to authors of other  types of creative works. Contrary to its 1992 report, the Office is  supportive of further congressional exploration of a resale  royalty at this time. It also supports exploration  of alternative or complementary options that may take into account the broader  context of art industry norms and art market practices, for example, voluntary  initiatives or best practices for transactions and financial provisions  involving artworks.

Here’s The Art Newspaper’s report on the IFAR panel.

For his part, Nadler said “Unlike composers, lyricists, playwrights and screenwriters, the primary means by which visual artists support themselves is through the first sale of a physical work of art. It is fundamentally unfair that these artists receive no further compensation regardless of how much others earn from subsequent sales of their art.”

Still, it remains very unclear whether Nadler’s bill can get through Congress — or even get on the schedule.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Rockalittle

Here’s a refreshing development: Last week, the School of Art at the California Institute of Arts said that it was naming its new building of artists’ studios for John Baldessari, an artist. not for a major donor.

I can’t think of a parallel, but I’d like to hear of others if they do exist.

Baldessari is both an alumnus (of Chouinard) and a long-time faculty member of CalArts. The school plans to raise money for the Baldessari building (pictured at right) with a benefit auction that will feature “more than 70 important works of art by CalArts alumni and faculty” next spring. Funds raised in this initiative will also endow scholarships for students at CalArts.

CalArts hints in the press release that it can do that because it counts “an exceptional number of influential artists” among its alums, and many of the most influential will contribute to the fundraiser. Here’s what that entails:

• More than 40 works donated by CalArts alumni artists will be presented in an exhibition and sale at Paula Cooper Gallery and Metro Pictures in New York from April 5th to April 19th, 2014, with a preview to take place at Regen Projects in Los Angeles in March 2014. Clara Kim, most recently Senior Curator of Visual Arts at the Walker Art Center and former Gallery Director and Curator of REDCAT (Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater) from 2008-2011 will organize the exhibition, providing a rich context that illustrates the history of CalArts.
• Artsy, the premiere online platform for discovering, learning about, and collecting art, will be the exclusive online partner for the presentation and sale of the works.
• On May 13, 2014, Christie’s will auction works by more than 20 artists including John Baldessari, Walead Beshty, Vija Celmins, Matt Mullican, Catherine Opie, Tony Oursler, Ed Ruscha, Carrie Mae Weems, and James Welling, among many others.

CalArts expects to raise $5 million from the sales. More details here.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of CalArts

 

It takes a lot of nerve, and the willingness to be wrong, incredibly wrong, to write the book that Kelly Grovier published in the U.S. this month (and in September in the U.K.).

It’s called 100 Works of Art That Will Define Our Age, and it’s a list of paintings, sculptures, drawings, installations, performances, and video pieces, made between 1989 and the present. Grovier is “an American poet, historian, and art critic,” according to his Wikipedia page, and “contributes regularly to the Times Literary Supplement and is co-founder of the scholarly journal European Romantic Review. He was born in Michigan and now lives in England,” according to his description on Amazon.com.

So in this book, which I have not seen, Grovier forecasts that his chosen 100 works will endure and come to be known as Picasso’s Guernica is known. According to Grovier’s publisher, Thames and Hudson:

Accessible and incisive texts offer a biography of each piece, tracing its inception and impact, and showing how it provides a unique keyhole not only into the imagination of the artist who created it but also into the age in which we live.

You will know some of them, by the likes of Christian Marclay, Matthew Barney, Shirin Neshat, Pipilotti Rist, Nan Goldin, Jeff Koons, Cy Twombly and Xiaogang Zhang — in fact, the BBC has a slide show of works by those eight that were selected.

And many others are predictable (Abramovic, Hirst, Emin, Gursky, Viola, Holzer, Kapoor, on and on). Yet, I was surprised by others — I not only didn’t know the works, I don’t know the artists.

Take a look yourself — T&H published a list of the artists in the book.

 

 

 

Yes, it’s another list. Like some of the others, the best ones, this list is likely to provoke thinking, perhaps start a debate — and that’s why I’m calling it to your attention. It’s Vanity
Fair’s list of “The Six Greatest Living Artists.” Why six? I do not know.

But here’s what the magazine says about the exercise:

Vanity Fair decided to conduct a straw poll. Or maybe it should be called a silk poll. Ask 100 art-world worthies—mainly artists, professors of art, and curators (but not dealers, who must look after their own)—to name whom they consider to be the six most important living artists. Then ask a writer to sketch a portrait of the results. The intent was not to identify once and for all the six most important living artists. No one can know that. The point was to picture contemporary taste and capture the reflection off the sheen of the period. (More Van Dyck, in short, than Rembrandt.) And to ask, as one always does with portraits: Is the dress all that matters? What lies behind moneyed eyes?

And the answers, in order, were Gerhard Richter, Jasper Johns, Richard Serra, Bruce Nauman, Cindy Sherman and Ellsworth Kelly.

But you must read further to get the significance of the vote — VF asked 100 people, listed here, which means there could have been 600 votes all told. But only 54 returned their ballots. and the top vote-getter, Richter, received only 24 votes. Ellsworth Kelly, at No. 6, received 10 votes.

And so the biggest conclusion one can draw from this silk poll is that there is no consensus about who among our living artists really is great, really will stand the test of time.

In case you are interested, four artists received five votes, and they would round out the top ten if VF had gone further: John Baldessari, Jeff Koons, William Kentridge, and Ai Weiwei. The next set, David Hammons, Brice Marden, Ed Ruscha, James Turrell, and Kara Walker, each received four votes.

Damian Hirst is conspicuously missing — hurrah for that. He received three votes, according to the tally here.

My own list, without a lot of thinking, but viscerally, would include Richter, but probably none of the others in the top six. (Ok, one could argue for some of Johns’s output, and early Sherman, but I’m not so sure about their whole careers.) I would probably have James Turrell and Ai Weiwei, plus El Anatsui. After that, I’d have many ties for No. 5 and No. 6.

Of course it all depends on how one defines “greatest.” Those with the most influence on others? Those who produced the greatest works? Some combination? Certainly not by prices at auction…

Photo Credit: Betty, by Richter, Courtesy of Vanity Fair