VISUAL CULTURE AEP

Hello everyone! I'm back! Thank my art teacher, but I'm only going to be artsy for now on in case I rant in a blog post or something.

1. Christo and Jeanne-Claude have been made famous by their large wrapped installations. They are well known both in the art world, and by the general public. Is it ethical for AT&T to use a similar idea in their advertisement without the artist's endorsement? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QddkHo1X5qY

Please consider the following in your answer: how do you define ethical, how do we know that the artists do not endorse the product, supporting rationale. Also take into consideration Cristo and Jeanne-Claude's stand on having patrons for their own art, as well as the purpose of their art.

I define ethical as being of a right conduct. In the case of art, there are so many ideas and pieces of work which have been reproduced or tweaked to be used in other pieces of work or by marketing agencies. The whole idea of evolution of art was when people used certain ideas and changed it slightly to suit a different purpose and in doing so, advancing the art form, such as in the case of Pop Art where the media took ideas from Andy Warhol and used it till it became an icon. It is then ethical for AT&T to use a similar idea in the advertisement without the artist's endorsement.

In most cases, it is hardly ever possible to truly get endorsements from the artist himself, as in the case of the Singaporean mall which literally lifted Piet Mondrian's Compositions into their advertisements. More recently, the artist Richard Serra's painting of former President George Bush, which was a near copy of Goya's Saturn Devouring His Son. Most of the artists don't get recognition in many cases and they are acknowledged. In the case of AT&T using the idea of covering up buildings, Christo and Jeanne-Claude were mentioned, but in today's world, the idea of stopping a piece of art by not endorsing it because it contains certain elements of your own is almost unheard of.

If the artist has an objection to raise, then why not? But it shouldn't become a thing of ethics about whether it is right or wrong. In the artistic sense, plenty of our recent day singers and game producers would be campaigning against YouTube videos giving us parodies of top hits. I suppose the controversy comes because the firm was making money out of the idea by putting it into an advertisement, which is a perfectly valid point if someone took references from books and sources for a research paper, but with something as hard to pin-point as that idea, it's hardly possible. Besides, while the idea of wrapping a building was thought up by the duo, AT&T expanded it to include whole cities in America. By that logic that it would be unethical to use the ideas from another artist's work, even something as basic as a style from Vincent Van Gogh or the fashion sense of Lady Gaga.

In the above examples, the artists probably never intended for such uses for their art, but we can't exactly wake some them up in their graves to ask them. They just made the Mona Lisa talk, one of the most renowned paintings in the world, and it's going to be very vague to see whether it's really ethical to do that. It is relevant to talk of such works of art in this context because ethics is more than just law, the way a person would respect a dead man's body even if he wouldn't know or feel any mutilation one does to the body. If we would have a law requiring artists to endorse the product, there would be some logistical problems not just with the deceased, but also with how much a person needs to use from an idea to require the endorsement of the original artist.

AT&T while they used the idea of covering the building as Christo and Jeanne-Claude did, the technique was quite different from that of the original artists who painstakingly planned the drape of the fabric over whichever landscape or building they were going to create the artwork with. The cloth in this case was simply rolled off the edges of building and hung straight down.

Christo and Jeanne-Claude wanted to be self-sufficient in their artwork and they accept no sponsorship or commissions or public funds. Their stance to their work was that they wanted to just enjoy it with their friends and among themselves and if the public was interested, that was a bonus. In that sense, I think it's safe to say that they wouldn't have any qualms with AT&T using their idea of wrapping the building.

Therefore, I think that it was ethical for AT&T to use a similar idea as do many designers and artists when seeking inspiration for their own work. For the sake of allowing a more conducive environment for art and allowing the free market of ideas, it is a step backward to label the use of another person's idea as unethical. In someway or another, ideas will overlap, and if this principle were to be applied throughout the mainstream of art, it would be very difficult to change the trend of over-protectiveness.

eth-i-cal  adjective

1.

pertaining to or dealing with morals or the principles of morality; pertaining to right and wrong in conduct.

2.

being in accordance with the rules or standards for right conduct or practice, esp. the standards of a profession: It was not considered ethical for physicians to advertise.

Please tell me that the answer made some sense.