For our first discussion, I will engage you with an age-old debate on artist copyright. The text introduced Chicago’s “Cloud Gate” public art and the later controversy that emerged when a photographer documented the artwork and released the images online. For context, I have copied/pasted the relevant portion of the text below. Please read it and let me know your personal thoughts on the below question –
If public art is public (and sometimes supported in real dollars by the public), where, in your opinion, should the artist’s rights end and the public’s begin?
Context from your textbook below:
Chicago’s Millennium Park has its own very popular and very new gathering space, the focal point of which is Anish Kapoor’s Cloud Gate ( Fig. 11.38 ). Nicknamed “the bean” because of its elliptical, beanlike shape, the work consists of highly polished, mirror-like stainless steel plates that reflect the people, places, and things surrounding it, both permanent and transient. Kapoor has called his piece “a gate to Chicago, a poetic idea about the city it reflects.” The work inspired a new jazz composition (Fanfare for Cloud Gate) by Orbert Davis, performed in Millennium Park on the occasion of the dedication of Kapoor’s sculpture.
A bit of controversy surrounding Cloud Gate proves interesting with regard to the nature of land and environmental art, including commissioned public works of art. Kapoor owns the rights to the piece, and therefore photographs of it cannot be reproduced commercially (as in this book) without his permission. One particular photographer learned this the hard way, when he was not permitted to photograph “the bean” without a prepaid permit. The public response to limits on publishing personal photographs of this public work of art was strong; photographs began to appear all over the Internet (you can find them on Google Images or Flickr, a photo-sharing website). If public art is public (and sometimes supported in real dollars by the public), where, in your opinion, should the artist’s rights end and the public’s begin?
