“No touching. No photography.”
These are the most basic and banal rules that are to be enforced by all museum employees at all times. Other important things I need not intone with such frequency include: no breaking, yes liking, no eating, drinking or smoking.
On the matter of photography, I imagine this must strike those stationed near the
Jeff Wall exhibition as at least a little funny to say. I know it’s hard not to use the short-handed two word rule, but really it could not make less syntactic sense in a museum throughout which there are photographs. I have taken to also mentioning that there is no sculpting allowed on premises, but that visitors are allowed to construct meaning.
Less
hackneyed-
newspaper-
humorist-ly, though there is a more interesting and vital argument occurring here and one that I am torn about. First, there is the issue of copyright/property infringement that is the stated reason for the ban on photography in the exhibitions of new and materially robust pieces by Douglas Gordon, Wall and Eliasson (as opposed to the dim rooms in which Joseph Cornell’s much more delicate boxes and assemblages are housed). Since these artists and their collectors both profit from the distribution of
books, prints, DVDs, coffee mugs, etc emblazoned with images of these works there is the concern that unauthorized reproductions/piracy will detract from sanctioned sales. On the matter of Eliasson’s work this seems a little ludicrous considering how experiential, multisensorial and occasionally synesthetic it is: even the most visually based of his pieces (say Beauty or the photographic grids) still heavily rely upon the participant’s body’s interaction within the proscribed space for their effect. While this argument can obviously be made of/for/with/about any work of art (and given the opportunity I no doubt will and have), Eliasson’s work in particular seems to bear this idea implicitly. In my experience, it takes an exceptional
artist to photograph most existing works and create a singular work that is rigorous, compelling and visually distinctive. Eliasson’s work, on the other hand, thrives in the hands, eyes and cameras of others. A short perusal of
flickr for user-submitted images from 2004’s
The Weather Project at the Tate Modern, shows a number of interesting and beautiful photographs. Could Eliasson, as an artist somehow theoretically divorced from the economic realities of his work, fully justify so proprietary a policy?
One element of this rule that does appeal to me strongly, and perhaps Eliasson is aware of this too, is that by removing the ubiquitous digital or cell phone camera from the user’s hand, s/he much more fully becomes a participant. Even though many times a day I wish that I were able to capture any number of images, there is something very reassuring (and almost nineties) about having to simply engage in the moment and space at hand. The removal/recontextualization of certain perceptual mediation provides one of the greatest hallmarks of Eliasson’s work and to introduce the blogging-mad image-grab to which most spectacles are now subjected would certainly trivialize the potentially profound impact of the works.
