Twan Janssen - An Index of Cloudless Skies

Atelier Carvalho Bernau, on the creation of the book:

What can we say, initially we had the hardest time with it. While the collages themselves looked great, we couldn't translate them into a book. Until we listened to that conversation of John Cage with Morton Feldman again, where he reminds us:

“If something is boring after two minutes, try it for four, after four try it for eight, et cetera, you eventually find it isn’t boring. People are constantly complaining, almost every day… Things aren’t boring.”

News Flash: Flavin and Viola works are "not art"

Dec 15, 2010:

In an astonishing move, the European Com­mis­sion (EC) has reversed a decision made in a UK tax tribunal, and refused to classify works by Dan Flavin and Bill Viola as “art”. This means that UK galleries and auction houses will have to pay full VAT (value added tax, which goes up to 20% next year) and customs dues on video and light works, when they are imported from outside the EU. The decision is binding on all member states.

The new classification goes against a victory won in a UK tribunal in 2008 (The Art Newspaper, February 2009, p47). A legal battle began after the Haunch of Venison gallery imported six disassembled video installations by Viola into the UK from the US in 2006, and sought to import a light sculpture by Flavin. Declared as “sculpture”, they would only have been liable for 5% VAT.

But customs rejected this, and charged Haunch of Venison £36,000 duty. In 2008 Haunch appealed, and won: the VAT and Duties Tribunal ruled that such works were indeed “art” and only liable to 5% VAT.

Now the EC has overturned this decision. In its ruling a Flavin work is described as having “the characteristics of lighting fittings…and is therefore to be classified…as wall lighting fittings”. As for Viola, the video-sound installation, says the document, cannot be classified as a sculpture “as it is not the installation that constitutes a ‘work of art’ but the result of the operations (the light effect) carried out by it”.

[via The Art Newspaper]

Oy vey. See also: slippery slope.

Commentary on Hide/Seek from the Washington Post:

"The museum has become a quasi-sacred space, with rules as complicated and inviolate as any church liturgy. People who don't find the meaning of their existence in churches are often passionate about museums, where a set of fundamental values - openness, fearlessness, truthfulness - are celebrated with all the historical trappings."

[via The Washington Post]

Robert Barry

Work by Robert Barry.

[via 01blog]