Jeff Koons describes his affinity for creating a dialogue with other artists by referencing art history — both Classical and Modern — in his work.

From ArtBabble:

Jeff Koons plucks images and objects from popular culture, framing questions about taste and pleasure. His contextual sleight-of-hand, which transforms banal items into sumptuous icons, takes on a psychological dimension through dramatic shifts in scale, spectacularly engineered surfaces, and subliminal allegories of animals, humans, and anthropomorphized objects.

Image: Mitsuhiro Okamoto http://okamotomitsuhiro.com/page/w/battamon/BATTAmons.htm

Louis Vuitton Malletier (LVMH) recently put a halt to an exhibition comprised of 9 luxury branded locusts. The works, created from knockoff handbags by Kyoto-based artist Mitsuhiro Okamoto, are meant as social commentary. Okamoto is miffed that the company aligns his art, entitled Batta Mon (batta, “locust” and battamon, slang for “knockoff”), with counterfeit products. The Kobe Fashion Museum removed the sculptures following the May 6th LVMH request — citing trademark infringement.

Via Pink Tentacle.

The Detroit News reports that Bioresource Inc., the company that claims to own the derelict Packard Motor Car plant in Detroit, is suing the gallery responsible for removing graffiti by notorious London street artist Banksy. The piece (below), discovered in May amongst the ruins of the factory, was on display for 10 days at the 555 Nonprofit Gallery and Studios. Its relocation created an uproar, compelling the gallery to remove the piece from public view.

Sculptural installations can fail for a variety of reasons — some site specific works are not built to accommodate changing conditions, others are scorned by the community (see Richard Serra’s Tilted Arc), and finally, there is a category of works that are just plain dangerous. This week I’m counting down 5 art installation disasters, mishaps and failures.

1. Christo and Jeanne-Claude: The curse of The Umbrellas

International artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude, famous for controversial large scale environmental works, including The Gates in NYC’s Central Park, had a multitude of problems with their Umbrellas installations in October 1991.

Simultaneously appearing in both Southern California (Tejon Pass) and Ibaraki, Japan, Christo and Jeanne-Claude installed 1,760, 485-pound yellow umbrellas and 1,340, 485-pound blue umbrellas, respectively.

The umbrellas were a welcome and unexpected addition to both landscapes, but the artists underestimated the volatile wind in Southern California’s Grapevine. Despite having been wind tunnel tested to withstand gusts of 65 mph, a 40 mph+ gale lifted an umbrella, crushing a spectator against a boulder.

Out of respect, Christo and Jeanne-Claude had both pieces removed at the end of October. Coincidentally, while disassembling the Japanese installation, a crane operator was electrocuted when he inadvertently touched a high-voltage power line. From christojeanclaude.net:

After 18 days, The Umbrellas were removed from the land. They were taken apart and most of the materials were recycled. The paint was scraped off the aluminum parts, (poles, ribs and struts) which was melted down and used again as aluminum. like soda cans or whatever aluminum is used for. The steel bases became scrap metal or were used as bases for satellite dishes. The fabric used in the projects is always industrial man made fabrics, which are manufactured for ecological purposes (air and water filters, or sand bags against floods), or agricultural purposes, such as “erosion control mesh” which was used for the Wrapped Coast in Australia in 1969, and for construction purposes.

More on the incidents from NYT.

Sculptural installations can fail for a variety of reasons — some site specific works are not built to accommodate changing conditions, others are scorned by the community (see Richard Serra’s Tilted Arc), and finally, there is a category of works that are just plain dangerous. This week I’m counting down 5 art installation disasters, mishaps and failures.

2. Dreamspace V takes flight in County Durham, England

In July 2006, an inflatable sculpture known as Dreamspace V broke free from its moorings at Riverside Park in Chester-le-Street, County Durham, killing 2 and injuring 13. The late Maurice Agis had been designing abstract walk-through “Dreamspaces” since the 1960′s. His project Colourspace, similarly lifted off the ground while being shown in Travemunde, Germany in 1980.

A glimpse inside Dreamspace V prior to the mishap:

Agis himself scrambled to secure the piece, but his efforts were futile as the wind set the multicolored sculpture adrift. CCTV footage of the incident:

After a lengthy investigation by the Health and Safety Committee and Durham police, he was charged with gross negligence manslaughter. Agis was fined £10,000 for various health and safety violations, later reduced to £2500 on appeal.

More on the accident via the Guardian. More on the trial from the BBC and the Guardian.

Sculptural installations can fail for a variety of reasons — some site specific works are not built to accommodate changing conditions, others are scorned by the community (see Richard Serra’s Tilted Arc), and finally, there is a category of works that are just plain dangerous. This week I’m counting down 5 art installation disasters, mishaps and failures.

4. Reading Cones topple

In October 1988, 2 workers were pinned for several minutes when the 32-ton steel Richard Serra sculpture, Reading Cones, toppled from its jacks in the Leo Castelli gallery. The SoHo building was evacuated to assess the damage caused when the 17 by 14 feet sculpture crashed through 2 o f 9 cast-iron support beams. At the time, the $200,000 piece was being deinstalled and shipped to storage — it now resides in Chicago’s Grant Park.

More from NYT.

3. Serra’s Sculpture No. 3 breaks loose

On November 18, 1971, Raymond Johnson, a worker helping to install Richard Serra’s Sculpture No. 3 was killed when one of the plates broke loose from its support and fell on him. The sculpture, which consisted of two 21/4 inch thick, 8 foot square steel plates weighing 5,212 pounds each was being assembled at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. Johnson’s wife would later bring a wrongful death suit against the artist, steel fabricator, engineering firm, and rigger involved in installing the piece. From the court’s factual history:

The fatal sculpture was designed to convey a precarious “house of cards” appearance through arrangement of its large steel plates, although the plates were designed to be firmly and safely connected when assembled so that people could walk around and between them. The primary notched support bar was designed by [the engineering firm] to be made from solid steel and was intended to be able to safely accommodate plates four times the weight of those actually used.

[The fabricator], however, because of scheduling difficulties, did not cut the notches into the bar with heavy machinery but instead flame-cut large sections through the bar and welded the remaining pieces to form notches. This considerably lessened the tensile strength of the support bar. Additionally, the plaintiff offered proof that [the fabricator]‘s notch-welds were defective and deceptively camouflaged with rust to make the support bar appear solid as shown in the plans.

While Serra was exonerated, the fabricator and rigger were found negligent.

The Associated Press reports that Australian band Men at Work lost a copyright suit alleging its mega-hit Down Under infringed upon a 70 year old children’s song. Kookaburra Sits in the Old Gum Tree was written by Australian teacher Marion Sinclair, who later assigned the rights to Larrikin Music.

The music publishing company sought 60 percent of Men at Work’s royalties, but the court ruled that Larrikin would receive 5% of the band’s royalties from 2002 forward — earlier damages being barred by the statute of limitations.

The original melody and Down Under flute riff compared:

More from AP.

Last week the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) sent a mailer encouraging its members to challenge groups that “promote Copyleft in order to undermine our Copyright.” Such groups include Creative Commons (CC), Public Knowledge, and Electronic Frontier Foundation.

On Wednesday, Eric Steuer, Creative Director for Creative Commons responded via the CC website. Steuer said, in part:

Creative Commons licenses are copyright licenses – plain and simple. Period. CC licenses are legal tools that creators can use to offer certain usage rights to the public, while reserving other rights. Without copyright, these tools don’t work. Artists and record labels that want to make their music available to the public for certain uses, like noncommercial sharing or remixing, should consider using CC licenses. [...] In fact, many of the artists who use CC licenses are also members of collecting societies, including ASCAP. That’s how we first heard about this smear campaign – many musicians that support Creative Commons received the email and forwarded it to us. Some of them even included a donation to Creative Commons.

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