It’s part installation art, part sculpture & part performance art JDS architects: experiencing the void is a proposal for the interior core of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York where a heavy duty orange mesh net is installed like a archimedean screw so people can walk, run, lay and marvel at the space floating 6 stories up in the air.

The installation & sculpture art is obvious, the performance part comes into play when the lawyers standing at the base of the work all fall over dead like dominoes from the mind shattering liability at stake.

So needless to say the odds of this ever happening are much the same as Bad at Sports taking over the reins of MOCA. Which sadly like Leno we are more then willing to do if Mr. Deitch doesn’t quite work out.

I wish Annie Leibovitz well and hope she gets her financial situation back on track and doesn’t suffer the pain shared by The Beatles and Stones which is the never ending chase to put the genie (rights to your own work) back in the bottle once you have sold it. Aside from that I can’t bring myself to shed a tear or show any shock over her situation.

If you haven’t had a chance to read up on this, on July 29th Ms. Leibovitz was sued by Art Capital Group in the NY State Supreme Court for failure to pay towards a loan of $24 million that she took. The collateral for this was properties in Greenwich Village and in Rhinebeck, N.Y., her negatives and the rights to her photographs.

Essentially the bulk of her assets.

Now after failure to make the basic payments Art Capital Group has successfully pursued payment in the courts and is gaining access to the collateral with the goal of liquefying the assets to regain the funds. Ms. Leibovitz has not commented on the actions and I don’t see any advantage to commenting but sadly it is reported that this is not the first time she has had problems making proper financial payments to clients or the state for taxes.

The point is this is not a rare case in the Art world, many many artists and creative professionals regularly take upon themselves financial responsibilities that they are ill prepared to handle or worse ignore all together. Only to learn that ignorance isn’t a defense in the court and a lifetimes worth of work and struggle can be lost in the balance of a few or single bad financial decisions.

I know it feels like it is hard to find people to trust, or you don’t want to have some “parental” figure limiting your decisions or options but the business side of art is as important in the long term if not in many ways more important in enabling great work to be produced and shared with the world.

Please take this opportunity to take a good hard look at your current situation if this current economy hasn’t made you already and ask yourself are you properly taking care of your long term finances and are adequately planing for trouble and can personally handle that responsibility yourself. If the answer is no, find someone skilled who you can partner with to make sure you don’t sign contracts or do expenditures you will live the rest of your life regretting.

Life in Art is hard enough, don’t be your own worst enemy.

From yesterday’s L.A. Times:

“The legal adventures of Shepard Fairey came to a head today when the L.A. street artist received a sentence of two years probation from a Boston court as part of a plea arrangement with prosecutors.

Fairey agreed to plead guilty to three vandalism charges in exchange for the prosecutors dropping 11 other charges. The artist pleaded guilty to one charge of defacing property and two charges of “wanton destruction of property” valued at under $250.

The judge also ordered Fairey to pay $2,000 to a graffiti removal organization and said that the artist cannot possess tagging materials except for legal art installations.”

Although Fairey’s Boston-related court case is over, his legal battle with the Associated Press over his use of Barack Obama’s image is still ongoing. Read more on this story here and here.

If you haven’t heard who Steve Bierfeldt is, he was flying from Lambert Airport in St. Louis to Washington D.C. on March 29, 2009. He was later detained in a small room at Lambert-St. Louis International Airport and interrogated by Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officials for nearly half an hour after he passed a metal box containing cash through a security checkpoint X-ray machine. Mr. Bierfeldt is also the Director of Development for the PAC “Campaign For Liberty” which among other things is an advocacy group for promoting and defending the principles of individual liberty, constitutional government, sound money, free markets, and a noninterventionist foreign policy, by means of educational and political activity.

On top of that he used his iphone to record the entire interrogation, which can be heard here:

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Now this is not literally in the realm of the fine arts but it easily could have. If you spend anytime with a major art institution or business you could easily have $4,000 USD on you (from fund raising, merchandise sales, ticket sales or any other activity), could easily be asked to answer questions that officers have no legal authority to have you answer or better yet questions that have little to no bearing on the function of their assigned duties under the law.

Basically the point of this do you have the right to travel within the United States with however much money cash you want. Do you have to right to not answer questions in regard to you employment, activities, plans, political affiliations among other things? Needless to say it is not the responsibility or interest of any police officer or government agent of any department to advise you of your rights at any time. Infact the day to day operations of may departments predicates that you do not know and do not care to utilize the rights you have under law.

This is brought up to ask questions more then to give any one opinion or legal reading but it is pertinent to know two things:

1. Anything you say can and will be used against you (and never in your defense).
2. Not answering questions does not imply guilt, just that you are willing to spend time fulfilling the curiosity of agents who feel it’s their legal and moral right to have any and every point of interest answered.

To clarify those points you have the great and simple faq of your constitutional rights provided by one of Tony Fitzpatrick’s favorite groups “The National Hobo Museum” on top of that here is a very good primer on “why” saying anything less then 100% truthfully and accurately can harm you and in all even the most innocuous statement can be used against you and never in your defense (Rule 801(d)(2)(A) thrown out as hearsay).

I have seen way too many artists lack of knowledge of the legal, financial & business rights and terms used against them to exercise information or money out of them over the years. It’s important to watch after yourself since no one else will.

This is an ongoing story that I will barely scratch the surface of but Bill Henson an artist/photographer living in Australia has over the last few days/week been having his work of 25+ years seized, closed down and put into legal doubt.

His work is largely inky black desaturated figurative photos of individuals in minimal or distant urban environments wearing either loose clothing or nude. The catch is that there are also nude teen age models included. [Read more]

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