[A2k] "No Photography" of collage at London's National Portrait Gallery

[Manon Ress]

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[ Picked text/plain from multipart/alternative ]
Thanks to Herve Le Crosnier for pointer to this "delicious irony":


Warhol is turning in his grave

An exhibition of pop art at London's National Portrait Gallery
unwittingly celebrates a golden age before copyright was king

     * Cory Doctorow
     * Guardian Unlimited
     * Tuesday November 13 2007

The excellent programme for Pop Art Portraits, the current exhibition
at London's National Portrait Gallery, has a lot to say about the
pictures hanging on the walls and the diverse source material the
artists used to produce their provocative works.

Apparently they cut up magazines, copied comic books, drew
trademarked cartoon characters like Minnie Mouse, reproduced covers
from Time magazine, made ironic use of a cartoon Charles Atlas,
painted over iconic photos of James Dean and Elvis Presley - and
that's just in the first of seven rooms.

The programme describes the aesthetic experience conjured up by these
transmogrified icons of high and low culture. Celebrated pop artists
including Larry Poons, Robert Rauschenberg and Andy Warhol created
these images by nicking the work of others, without permission, and
transforming it to make statements and evoke emotions never
countenanced by the original creators.

Despite this, the programme does not say a word about copyright. Can
you blame the authors? A treatise on the way that copyright and
trademarks were - had to be - trammelled to make these works could
fill volumes.

Reading the programme, you can only assume that the curators' message
about copyright is that where free expression is concerned, the
rights of the creators of the original source material must take a
back seat to those of the pop artists.

There is, however, another message about copyright in the National
Portrait Gallery: it is implicit in the "No Photography" signs
prominently displayed throughout its rooms, including one by the
entrance to the Pop Art Portraits exhibition.

These signs are not intended to protect the works from the
depredations of camera flashes (otherwise they would read "No Flash
Photography"). No, the ban on pictures is meant to safeguard the
copyright of the works hung on the walls - a fact that every member
of staff I asked instantly confirmed.

Indeed, it seems every square centimetre of the National Portrait
Gallery is under some form of copyright. I wasn't even allowed to
photograph the "No Photographs" sign. A member of staff explained
that the typography and layout of the signs was itself copyrighted.

If true, presumably the same rules would prevent anyone from taking
any pictures in any public place - unless you could somehow contrive
to get a shot of Leicester Square without any writing, logos,
architectural facades or images in it. Otherwise I doubt even Warhol
could have got away with it.

So what's the message of the show? Is it a celebration of remix
culture, revelling in the endless possibilities opened up by
appropriating and reusing images without permission?

Or is it the epitaph on the tombstone of the sweet days before the UN
set up the World Intellectual Property Organization and the ensuing
mania for turning everything that can be sensed and recorded into
someone's property?

Does this show - paid for with public money, with some works that are
themselves owned by public institutions - seek to inspire us to
become 21st century pop artists, armed with cameraphones, websites
and mixers, or is it supposed to inform us that our chance has passed
and we'd best settle for a life as information serfs who can't even
make free use of what our eyes see and our ears hear?

Perhaps, just perhaps, this is actually a Dadaist show masquerading
as a pop art show. Perhaps the point is to titillate us with the
delicious irony of celebrating copyright infringement while
simultaneously taking the view that even the "No Photography" sign is
a form of property not to be reproduced without the permission that
can never be had.

=B7 Cory Doctorow is a digital activist, science fiction author and co-
editor of the popular blog Boing Boing.

************************************************************************
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Manon Anne Ress
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Il vaut mieux remuer une question, sans la d=E9cider, que la d=E9cider,
sans la remuer.
Pens=E9es, essais, maximes et correspondance de J. Joubert  p.249
http://visualiseur.bnf.fr/Visualiseur?Destination=3DGallica&O=3DNUMM-88671
Translation: It is better to debate a question without settling it
than to settle a question without debating it