Pictures of polaroids

A recent article in The Guardian inspired today's trip to the Colnaghi Gallery to see the current exhibition of Julian Schnabel's work. He uses a 1970s handmade polaroid camera to great effect:

"It is as if you were Xeroxing your own face. The pictures have such physicality: their surface is like fine leather, stained from chemicals. Each one has a body and is more than an image."

The pictures that he creates are extremely varied, some in sepia, some are covered in paint to greater or lesser effect. My favourites were two of Mickey Rourke looking surprisingly unlike his public image and one of a man (possibly the artist) painting in a garden.

Why the art review? Partly because I felt like it. But the IP twist on the tale is the gallery's attitude towards photography: "No flash and not too many." Use on a blog was "ok." Hence the couple of pictures uploaded here. This strikes me as a perfectly reasonable standpoint and contrasts with my experience of a number of museums and galleries who have attempted to restrict photography on the basis that to photograph their pictures and in some instances the building itself would be copyright infringement. More often than not both the paintings and the buildings are hundreds of years old.

No one wants to wander round a gallery while every second person is taking a photo rather than appreciating the art but to outright ban photography in the name of intellectual property has long been a source of personal annoyance. Particularly where the art in question is based on a number of sources and may even directly copy other images. My photographs are not good quality but they will serve as a reminder and an illustration.

Julian Schnabel's Polaroids exhibition is at Colnaghi gallery, 15 Old Bond Street, London W1 until 12 November 2010.

The Turner Prize and copyright

Loves of Shepherds 2000

The Turner Prize, awarded each year in the United Kingdom since 1984, is intended to celebrate new developments in contemporary art. It should be awarded to "a British artist under fifty for an outstanding exhibition or other presentation of their work in the twelve months preceding". One thing I'm not sure about is the interplay, if any, between conventional copyright rules and unconventional art -- and a short inspection of the Turner Prize's further particulars did not throw any immediate light on the competition's copyright policy.

Double Star: artwork for the book cover

This is not an academic issue. In 2000 there was some controversy after it appeared that Turner Prize nominee Glenn Brown was accused of plagiarism after science fiction enthusiasts drew attention to the similarity of 'Loves of Shepherds 2000 (above, right) with the cover of 1970s classic Double Star, by Robert A. Heinlein (left). The Double Star cover was created by Anthony Robert, but no mention was made either of the book or the cover art in the Turner Prize catalogue.

The chairman of the Turner Prize jury, Sir Nicholas Serota, explained that Glenn Brown frequently used the work of other artists in developing his own work: "He uses other artists' work, but that doesn't mean to say you could possibly mistake his work for theirs... he takes the image, he transforms it, he gives it a completely different scale." One might ask whether, even if no-one could mistake Robert's work for Brown's, might one when seeing Brown's work mistake it for Robert's.