Layers of Meaning

Christo - copyrights & more reviews

The oooos and ahhs have subsided a bit - now we are getting to the critical (and even the catty) on Christo's gates in Central Park - and down to the money: who has the right to sell postcards of the Gates?

From the Washington Post: " There's not much tension between nature and man-made in this project, since Central Park is about as unnatural a bit of landscape as you could ever come across. The artists' gates just add an extra bit of decorative artifice to spaces that are pretty artificial, and decorative, anyway ...
...The gates are often said to be a classic "saffron" color, but to my eyes that's a much warmer, more flamboyant hue than what's now hanging in Central Park -- "saffron" ought to be the color of paella at midnight in Valencia or of the robes on an Eastern divine. Central Park's PVC archways, it seems to me, are an almost perfect, very modern, slightly pinkish "hazard orange."

Who owns the Gates images on postcards, posters and photographs?
Image rights may emerge as the one of the most interesting aspects of this installation. In January 2002, "Artist Christo has won the rights to images of Germany's Reichstag building, which he and his wife shrink-wrapped as an art project. The couple covered the parliament building in metallic silver fabric in 1995. Christo took legal action against a photographic agency which wanted to sell postcards with the image on. But Germany's Constitutional Court, the country's highest, has ruled the pictures can only be sold with the permission of Christo and his wife Jeanne-Claude."

Robert Lederman, a New York arts activist, has reportedly been circulating an email claiming that a similar action is taking place in New York: "Christo's publisher claims a vast new degree of copyright and trademark protection. They claim they will prosecute anyone who sells their own original photos of The Gates; who makes and sells a drawing of The Gates or who even uses the words, The Gates, without their permission. They claim to have copyrighted the words, The Gates. They also claim to have an agreement with the media that media sources may only use news photos of the gates for the period the installation is up. That after that the media will only be allowed to use "official" photos of The Gates." An interesting discussion of copyright of public art on the blog Stay Free.

Photo above is by Nathan Blaney.