The Kunsten Museum of Contemporary Art in Aalborg, Denmark, sued the Danish artist Jens Haaning for having delivered two completely blank canvases under the name “take the money and run”, which the Danish author presented after both parties agreed by contract to carry out a work for which they paid a sum of more than 72 thousand euros.
According to the museum’s director, Lasse Andersson, they had an established contract in which the artist should rebuild an old work that represented a year’s salary in Denmark and Austria, with Danish kroner and euros.
But to his surprise, two days before the opening Haaning warned through a message that “he had not produced that work” that included several bills pasted on the fabric canvases. Sure enough, when the museum’s curators opened the package they found the surprising find.
As a result of the “scam”, the museum set a deadline for the return of the money for January 16, however, since that agreement was not fulfilled, they decided to go to court.
In response to the request of the museum authorities, Haaning, 56, jokingly declared that “the work of art is that I took your money.”
Faced with the complaints he received due to the repercussion of what happened, said “it’s not theft. It’s a breach of contract and breach of contract is part of the job.”
What’s more, as a protest against the conditions in which he works -as reported- encouraged other colleagues to do the same: “I encourage other people who have working conditions as miserable as mine to do the same,” adding that recreating his previous jobs to fulfill this one would have cost him money out of pocket.
Outside the legal framework for the money dispute between the artist and the museum authorities, the director jokingly acknowledged that, despite Haaning’s provocative attitude, “I laughed because it was very humorous.”
Speaking to AS Actualidad, Carlos Suárez, CEO of Saisho, the listed art market, explained that this “has already happened more times, an Italian artist in Basel Miami wrapped a banana in cellophane, ate it once he sold the work, and went to the supermarket across the street, bought another one and wrapped it up again. Or the work of ARCO that was a Ninot del Rey, was not sold, but the work was burned anyway. Or the famous work of Banksy, auctioned, which self-destructed and then sold for five times more expensive”.
“These examples come to illustrate that conceptual art, which is where this type of work is framed, mixed with action art, a current where what the artist does to make it is part of the work. The work is not what has value, but the creation process, which matters a lot”, Suárez explained.
“Haaning was already working criticizing works of money, marginal groups, precisely with the power relationship that exists between groups, at the labor level as well as in society. In this sense, one of the series with which he becomes famous is in works where includes money in the very framework of the works, as criticism that ends up denigrating everything, including art, also criticizing the very poor conditions that the artists themselves have, “he said.
The expert said that “the context is something that is valued, it is a way of cataloging whether an artist is art or not, and how good the artist is. In this case, the artist takes the money, and what he does is deliver empty canvases, taking the money and changing the title of the work, including a performance, seize the opportunity. It is a message of “take the money and run”, because you have to take advantage when you can. It is the criticism of the artist. It is something very consistent with the work he has done to date.
“This artist, who defends that this action is part of the work, and the museum, despite the fact that it delivers them blank, exhibits them. It is like a coordinated marketing action, precisely to gain diffusion and revalue the work. It would not surprise me that debates arose about the value of this type of work, the conditions of artists in Denmark. And, of course, this work is going to be revalued for sure. They do not have value because they are blank per se, but because of what they have assumed. This genre is very interesting, art is the concept behind it, in addition to the innovative and transformative element that it can carry out,” he concluded.
