In the “art imitates life” department this week, artists Sean Fletcher and Isabel Reichert will soon perform a piece entitled “How To Sue“, which will consist of taking the San Francisco-based New Langton Arts gallery to court for copyright infringement. The artists allege that the gallery stole one of their concepts and applied it to a call for submissions and upcoming show at the gallery. The artists presented “Selling Yourself and Not Your Art”, a performance focused on the phenomenon of self-help industries, at New Langton Arts. Shortly thereafter, the gallery created a call for submissions based around similar ideas.
Right about now, you may be asking yourself: “Self-help as art? What will they think of next?” This example and other forms of lifelike art are explained by Allan Kaprow, the artist credited with creating the first “happenings”: “Despite formalist and idealist interpretations of art, lifelike art makers’ principal dialogue is not with art but with everything else, one event suggesting another. If you don’t know much about life, you’ll miss much of the meaning of the lifelike art that’s born of it. Indeed, it’s never certain if an artist who creates avantgarde lifelike art is an artist.”
Taking the gallery to court for copyright infringement, in a case that the plaintiffs will most certainly lose (will they lay claim to the entire field of self-help and sue Dale Carnegie next?) is perhaps as close to lifelike that art can get in the nation that is arguably the most litigious in the world. The only way that this performance could become more of a spectacle would be to have it presided over by Judge Judy, who delivers compelling performances regularly via cable TV.
The artifice that is television might make this piece a little less lifelike, since the presence of cameras changes everything, and the chances of your case being heard on Judge Judy or other courtroom reality TV shows are rather small. Court proceedings, for most people, are devastatingly lifelike as unwelcome apppointments held in desolate concrete boxes, far away from swarms of cameramen. But a televised court appearance would make Fletcher and Reichert’s performance more of a spectacle, certainly – lifelike art meets courtroom reality TV. Perhaps I have a concept forming here – does anyone know someone at NBC? I volunteer to be the subject of the pilot episode, since surely the artists will try to sue me for stealing their idea of litigation-as-art.
3 replies on “See You in Court”
The true artist is one whos dying words are: "oh, by the way, my entire life was a work of art. Hope you were taking notes."
Dropping in. Dropping out. Dropping stuff. Very nice blog, Ms. Kasprzak. I think I am due for another alcoholic coffee soon and an Argument. The 10 minute, please. Call, let’s go sue some galleries or invade them with the military.