Tax Court Ruling Is Seen as a Victory for Artists →

Susan Crile, a painter and printmaker who teaches at Hunter College, was accused by the I.R.S. of underpaying her taxes. Constance Kheel

If you say you are an artist, but you make little money from selling your art, can your work be considered a profession in the eyes of the Internal Revenue Service?

In a ruling handed down late last week by the United States Tax Court and seen by many as an important victory for artists, the answer is yes. The case involved the New York painter and printmaker Susan Crile, whose politically charged work is in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Guggenheim Museum and several other major institutions. In 2010, the I.R.S. accused Ms. Crile of underpaying her taxes, basing the case on the contention that her work as an artist over several decades was, for tax-deduction purposes, not a profession but something she did as part of her job as a professor of studio art at Hunter College.

The heart of the case touches on a situation familiar to many thousands of artists — from visual artists to musicians and actors — who earn a living as teachers or studio assistants or stagehands while pursuing creative careers that they hope will flourish and someday be able to pay the bills.

During a trial before the tax court last year, Ms. Crile, whose work has focused on subjects like the Persian Gulf war of 1991 and the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison, described a dogged career of more than 40 years that has been more successful critically than financially. From 1971 through 2013, court papers said, she earned $667,902 from the sale of 356 works of art — or an average income of a little less than $16,000 per year — and, like many artists, she wrote off expenses from her work, like supplies, travel and meals, on her taxes. Only three years of her art career have been profitable, court records showed, and her reliable income came from teaching at Hunter, where she began part time in 1983 and became a tenured professor in 1994.

The I.R.S., which accused Ms. Crile of underpaying her taxes by more than $81,000 from 2004 to 2009, argued that based on several factors, such as her lack of a written business plan, her work as an artist was “an activity not engaged in for profit” and that she could not claim tax deductions in excess of the income she made from her art. Further, in a claim that alarmed many in the art world, the I.R.S. contended that Ms. Crile’s legal position that she was both an artist and a teacher was “artificial” and that she made art primarily to keep her job as a teacher. (Hunter College requires its studio-art teachers to exhibit their work but does not require them to sell.) The agency argued that for tax purposes, Ms. Crile’s profession should be that of a teacher, and that her art-related expenses should have been filed not as business expenses but as unreimbursed employee expenses.

But Judge Albert G. Lauber of the tax court ruled Thursday that Ms. Crile had “met her burden of proving that in carrying on her activity as an artist, she had an actual and honest objective of making a profit” and therefore under tax law should be considered a professional artist.

Robert Storr, dean of the Yale School of Art, who testified on Ms. Crile’s behalf, said Monday that the ability to deduct art-related expenses — in art careers that might generate little money — was “one of the last remaining areas where the federal government cuts artists any slack to allow them to do what they do,” and that its protection was crucial.

Micaela McMurrough, a lawyer at Cravath, Swaine & Moore who represented Ms. Crile, said one of the key points argued in the case was that “art is not a business like other businesses.” “And I think that’s what this decision reflects, to a large extent,” she said.

Michael J. De Matos, a lawyer for the Internal Revenue Service, referred questions about the decision to the agency’s press office, which did not immediately return calls for comment.

Ms. Crile said she was relieved by the decision, for herself but also for many other creative professionals it might affect. “I think this was an attempt to get rid of a whole category of people from being able to take tax deductions,” she said. “I’ve done a lot of political work that is not so easy, and it’s not easy to show or to sell. But I’m an artist. And if I’m not considered one, then I don’t know who could be.”

Art forever changed by World War I →

A scene from “All Quiet on the Western Front” from 1930. (Universal Pictures, Universal Pictures)

Along with millions of idealistic young men who were cut to pieces by machine guns and obliterated by artillery shells, there was another major casualty of World War I: traditional ideas about Western art.

The Great War of 1914-18 tilted culture on its axis, particularly in Europe and the United States. Nearly 100 years later, that legacy is being wrestled with in film, visual art, music, television shows like the gauzily nostalgic PBS soaper "Downton Abbey" and plays including the Tony Award-winning"War Horse," concluding its run at the Ahmanson Theatre.

"It created an epoch in art," said Leo Braudy, a USC professor of English and author of "From Chivalry to Terrorism: War and the Changing Nature of Masculinity." "The question is, what was on one side and what was on the other?"

The simple answer as to what lay on the near side of World War I is Modernism, that slippery but indispensable term denoting a wide range of new sensibilities and aesthetic responses to the industrial age. Modernism took shape decades before World War I, but its clamorous arrival was vastly accelerated by the greatest collective trauma in history to that point.

From the fiction of Hemingway, Virginia Woolf and John Dos Passos to the savagely critical paintings and etchings of George Grosz and Otto Dix, World War I reshaped the notion of what art is, just as it forever altered the perception of what war is. Although World War II racked up more catastrophic losses in blood and treasure, World War I remains the paradigmatic conflict of the modern age, not only politically but also culturally.

"Of all the wars, that is the one that seems to explain us best," said Michael Morpurgo, the English author of the novel "War Horse," about a Devonshire farm boy's death-defying bond with his noble steed Joey, on which the National Theatre of GreatBritain'sproduction is based.

Particularly in his country, he said, World War I resonates louder than the even greater cataclysm that followed it 20 years later. "The First World War for British people is very much a part of who we are," Morpurgo said during a visit to Los Angeles. "It's so deep in us; the poetry, the stories, the loss, the suffering is there in every village churchyard."

During and after World War I, flowery Victorian language was blown apart and replaced by more sinewy and R-rated prose styles. In visual art, Surrealists and Expressionists devised wobbly, chopped-up perspectives and nightmarish visions of fractured human bodies and splintered societies slouching toward moral chaos.

"The whole landscape of the Western Front became surrealistic before the term surrealism was invented by the soldier-poet Guillaume Apollinaire," Modris Eksteins wrote in "Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age."

Throughout Western art, the grim realities of industrial warfare led to a backlash against the propaganda and grandiose nationalism that had sparked the conflagration. Cynicism toward the ruling classes and disgust with war planners and profiteers led to demands for art forms that were honest and direct, less embroidered with rhetoric and euphemism.

"Abstract words such as glory, honor, courage, or hallow were obscene besides the concrete names of villages, the numbers of roads, the names of rivers, the numbers of regiments and the dates," Ernest Hemingway wrote in "A Farewell to Arms," his 1929 novel based on his experiences in the Italian campaign.

Other artists clung to the shards of classical culture as a buffer against nihilistic disillusionment. "These fragments I have shored against my ruins," T.S. Eliot wrote in "The Waste Land" (1922).

In "The Great War and Modern Memory," Paul Fussell argued that the rise of irony as a dominant mode of modern understanding "originates largely in the application of mind and memory to the events of the Great War."

Irony and dissonant humor permeated the music of classical composers such as Alban Berg and Benjamin Britten, a pacifist who parodied marching-band pomposity in his Piano Concert in D. In his 1989 film "War Requiem," based on Britten's non-liturgical Mass, British director Derek Jarman suggested a parallel between the indifferent slaughter of World War I and the neglect of AIDS-infected young men in the 1980s.

Veteran Arts Writer Carol Vogel Resigns from the New York Times →

Vogel with the Whitney's Adam Weinberg. 
Photo courtesy Patrick McMullan.

As Art Basel in Miami Beach opened its doors today to an onslaught of press and VIPs, the news heard in the aisles was that veteran New York Times arts reporter Carol Vogel had resigned. Ms. Vogel has subsequently confirmed the news in an email to artnet News.

Here is Ms. Vogel's statement to artnet News:

As I'm sure you have probably read, the Times is offering voluntary buyouts and for those of us who have been here a while, it's a good deal. So after much soul-searching I have decided to take management up on the offer and resign. (I am joining quite a list of well-known bylines.)

‪I still plan to write and work on some projects I have been wanting to pursue for ages but never had the time because writing for a daily newspaper is all-consuming. It's exciting to finally take a leap into the unknown and to see what other opportunities arise.

Ms. Vogel is known for having the inside scoop on major arts stories and for her column Inside Art, which often breaks news in the art world and is followed closely by arts writers each Thursday when it is published.

But as recently as late July, this past summer, there were reports that Ms. Vogel, who joined the staff of the Times in 1983, had plagiarized the writing of other arts writers in crafting her stories. The news first surfaced in an article in Mediabistro's FishbowlNY, which claimed that Ms. Vogel's writing, for her story on Piero di Cosimo entitled "A Renaissance Master Finally Gets A Showcase," had allegedly mirrored that of a Wikipedia entry on the artist. So much so that it spawned an investigation by the Times and got a response from that paper's public editor Margaret Sullivan. In a piece on July 30, Sullivan wrote there was "little dispute about the claim," and further stated, in part:

In the case under review at The Times, an isolated instance of rewriting Wikipedia is not, in my opinion, a firing offense. Something like that probably warrants a written warning or a short suspension. (By the way, I have no vote on this as public editor, and no involvement in the process.) But a widespread pattern is a different matter altogether.

Ms. Vogel clarified in a follow-up email to artnet News that she would continue writing both for the Times as well as pursue projects outside the paper. We wish Ms. Vogel luck on her future endeavors.

Art Nouveau Movement →

Image via Deviant Art

Art Nouveau was a movement that swept through the decorative arts and architecture in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Generating enthusiasts throughout Europe and beyond, the movement issued in a wide variety of styles, and, consequently, it is known by various names, such as the Glasgow Style, or, in the German-speaking world, Jugendstil. Art Nouveau was aimed at modernizing design, seeking to escape the eclectic historical styles that had previously been popular. Artists drew inspiration from both organic and geometric forms, evolving elegant designs that united flowing, natural forms with more angular contours. The movement was committed to abolishing the traditional hierarchy of the arts, which viewed so-called liberal arts, such as painting and sculpture, as superior to craft-based decorative arts, and ultimately it had far more influence on the latter. The style went out of fashion after it gave way to Art Deco in the 1920s, but it experienced a popular revival in the 1960s, and it is now seen as an important predecessor of modernism.

• The desire to abandon the historical styles of the 19th century was an important impetus behind Art Nouveau and one that establishes the movement's modernism. Industrial production was, at that point, widespread, and yet the decorative arts were increasingly dominated by poorly made objects imitating earlier periods. The practitioners of Art Nouveau sought to revive good workmanship, raise the status of craft, and produce genuinely modern design.
   
• The academic system, which dominated art education from the 17th to the 19th century, underpinned the widespread belief that media such as painting and sculpture were superior to crafts such as furniture design and silver-smithing. The consequence, many believed, was the neglect of good craftsmanship. Art Nouveau artists sought to overturn that belief, aspiring instead to "total works of the arts," the infamous Gesamtkunstwerk, that inspired buildings and interiors in which every element partook of the same visual vocabulary.
   
• Many Art Nouveau designers felt that 19th century design had been excessively ornamental, and in wishing to avoid what they perceived as frivolous decoration, they evolved a belief that the function of an object should dictate its form. This theory had its roots in contemporary revivals of the gothic style, and in practice it was a somewhat flexible ethos, yet it would be an important part of the style's legacy to later movements such as modernism and the Bauhaus.

Art Nouveau (the "new art") was a widely influential but relatively short-lived movement that emerged in the final decade of the 19th century and was already beginning to decline a decade later. This movement - less a collective one than a disparate group of visual artists, designers and architects spread throughout Europe was aimed at creating styles of design more appropriate to the modern age, and it was characterized by organic, flowing lines- forms resembling the stems and blossoms of plants - as well as geometric forms such as squares and rectangles.

The advent of Art Nouveau can be traced to two distinct influences: the first was the introduction, around 1880, of the Arts and Crafts movement, led by the English designer William Morris. This movement, much like Art Nouveau, was a reaction against the cluttered designs and compositions of Victorian-era decorative art. The second was the current vogue for Japanese art, particularly wood-block prints, that swept up many European artists in the 1880s and 90s, including the likes of Gustav Klimt, Emile Galleand James Abbott McNeill Whistler. Japanese wood-block prints contained floral and bulbous forms, and "whiplash" curves, all key elements of what would eventually become Art Nouveau.

It is difficult to pinpoint the first work(s) of art that officially launched Art Nouveau. Some argue that the patterned, flowing lines and floral backgrounds found in the paintings of Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gauguin represent Art Nouveau's birth, or perhaps even the decorative lithographs of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, such as La Goule at the Moulin Rouge (1891). But most point to the origins in the decorative arts, and in particular to a book jacket by English architect and designer Arthur Heygate Mackmurdo for the 1883 volume Wren's City Churches. The design depicts serpentine stalks of flowers coalescing into one large, whiplashed stalk at the bottom of the page, clearly reminiscent of Japanese-style wood-block prints.

Swiss Artist Valentin Carron Busted For Plagiarism →

Valentin Carron
Photo via: elevation1049

Where does appropriation stop and plagiarism begin? The Swiss artist Valentin Carron has been accused of plagiarism for his piece The Dawn, presented by his Zurich gallery Eva Presenhuber at FIAC last month, Radio Télévision Suisse reports.

The resin sculpture, priced at a reported $67,000, is a replica of a 1977 steel artwork by Francesco Marino di Teana, L'Aube (“dawn" in French), which is displayed in Neuchâtel in front of the city's art and history museum.

Carron told RTS that he “wanted to reproduce the emotion this work provoked" in him when he first encountered it in Neuchâtel. The artist, who represented Switzerland at the last Venice Biennale, described the process as one of “appropriation."

“The copy is so exact that it becomes a forgery," retorted the son of the artist, Nicolas Marino. “It's complete plagiarism."

Valentin Carron, The Dawn at FIAC 2014 (L), Francesco di Teana, L'Aube, 1977, Musée d'art de Neuchâtel, Switzerland

Marino has made clear he intends to sue Carron. He is supported by Jean-François Roudillon, the director of Paris's Galerie Loft, in charge of Francesco Marino di Teana's catalogue raisonné.

“I am saddened and shocked that an international art fair like FIAC facilitates practices that force the artist's heir to go to court to protect his rights and his father's reputation," he said in an open letter.

He continued: “Are contemporary artists so lacking in ideas that, rather than being inspired by the work of their predecessors, they cast copies?"

Several art world personalities have come to Carron's defense, including Christian Bernard, the director of the Mamco in Geneva. Talking to RTS, he insisted on the difference of material between the two pieces. Carron's resin piece “denounces itself as an imitation, presents itself as a replica," he said. “The simple fact that it has the same title shows that it's an appropriation and not a theft."

“Appropriation," he continued quoting the work of Elaine Sturtevant, “is a process that has been legitimated by art history. Valentin Carron has pursued this process and brought something new to it. Accusing him of plagiarism is showing that one ignores everything of today's art."

Bernard said that he was ready to defend Carron's work in court.

Pierre Keller, the former director of the Ecole cantonale d'art de Lausanne (ECAL), has also stepped in to support his former student. He said that Carron had been influenced by his professor at ECAL, John Armleder, who is famous, in part, for his appropriations. In his view, Marino's lawsuit “is already lost."

Dislike Abstract Art? Try it again with a Less-Cluttered Mind →

(Photo: Denis Kuvaev/Shutterstock)

The last time you visited an art museum, did you find the abstract paintings sort of … annoying? Were you drawn to the landscapes and portraits, but turned off by the squiggles and dots?

New research suggests this preference may reflect your personality. But it also may be a sign that you’ve simply got too much on your mind, or that the physical environment—the gallery itself—leaves something to be desired.

An Italian research team led by psychologist Antonio Chirumboloreports people with a strong need for cognitive closure—that is, to have quick, definitive answers to vexing questions—are less likely to appreciate abstract art.

While that’s not surprising, the researchers note that while this desire for certainty is a constant for some people, it can be induced in others. If environmental cues are unwittingly prompting this mindset, they are effectively making people less open to abstract art.

“Curators of exhibitions of modern and abstract art should take into account environmental factors which may induce greater need for closure in visitors, and thus negatively affect viewers’ implicit evaluation of the artworks.”

In the online journal PLoS One,Chirumbolo and his colleagues describe two experiments. The first featured 60 women between the ages of 19 and 30, none of whom had any training in art or architecture.

After filling out a questionnaire designed to measure their dispositional need for closure, they completed an Implicit Association Task in which a series of images (abstract and figurative) and words (positive and negative) flashed onto a computer screen. Researchers noted how quickly and accurately they categorized each word and image.

Overall, “participants tended to exhibit an implicit preference for figurative art over abstract art,” the researchers report. But this tendency was exaggerated for those with a high need for cognitive closure.

The second experiment featured 54 women between the ages of 19 and 28, again with no art training. After their baseline need for closure was established, they were randomly assigned to a “high cognitive load condition” in which they were instructed to memorize nine numbers, or a “low cognitive load condition” in which they told to memorize one number. They then completed the same categorization task.

Again, those who were inherently inclined to seek closure showed an implicit dislike for abstract art. But so did those who were distracted by the need to memorize nine numbers. Indeed, the effect of the cognitive overload was distinct from, and stronger than, the participants’ baseline need for closure.

Chirumbolo and his colleagues explain that in situations where “information processing is more costly and effortful, the desire for unambiguous and stable knowledge predominates, and anything which runs counter to this is perceived as unpleasant and displeasing.”

In other words, if distractions are soaking up too much of your brain power, you have little tolerance for ambiguity. You want to get a strong sense of what you’re looking at and move on.

With this in mind, “Curators of exhibitions of modern and abstract art should take into account environmental factors which may induce greater need for closure in visitors, and thus negatively affect viewers’ implicit evaluation of the artworks,” the researchers write. Anything that reduces viewers’ cognitive load, from simple-to-navigate galleries to clear, understandable explanatory labels accompanying the works, will help.

“Beauty is not an intrinsic characteristic,” Chirumbolo and his colleagues conclude. “Judgments about beauty are individual and subjective, and depend on psychological factors.”

So if you hated that Jackson Pollock exhibit, think back to your state of mind on the day you visited the gallery. If your mental to-do list was long and distracting, you may want to go back in a more relaxed state. You may find the experience much more enjoyable.

SOTHEBY’S $50 M. VAN GOGH ACTUALLY FAILED TO SELL IN 1990 →

Sotheby’s has put together an impressive evening sale for next week, led by two works literally guaranteed to go for above $100 million and $80 million each (by Alberto Giacometti and Amedeo Modigiani, respectively). The catalogue cover lot for the sale, a Vincent van Gogh from 1890 with the sale’s third-highest estimate, however, was actually bought in under a $12 million-to-$16 million estimate in 1990. They’re now calling it Nature mort, Vase aux marguerites et coquelicots and its current estimate is $30 million to $50 million.

The painting was acquired in 1928 by A. Conger Goodyear, the first president of the Museum of Modern Art who then gave it to his son George Forman Goodyear who gifted 60 percent of it to the Albright Knox Art Gallery before deciding to sell it in 1990. According to Artnet’s price database, it was in the November 14, 1990 sale as Vase de Bleuets et Coquelicots. (That actually makes much more sense as a title since in French would be more likely say “vase de marguerites et coquelicots” to describe this painting, depending on whatever kinds of flowers you think those are. “Vas aux” something more describes a real-life vase with a depiction of something on it, Vas aux Guerriers, etc.) In 1991 Goodyear apparently managed to sell it to an “important European collection,” the seller of this work.

Why does a painting get bought in? Who knows! Doesn’t mean it’s a bad work. In fact, the auction-record-setting Van Gogh, Portrait du Dr. Gachet (1980) sold that May for $82.5 million. Should that have helped or hurt the attempted sale of this painting in 1990? Who knows! (Maybe that means the market for Van Gogh was hot at the time, or, with the sale of that painting, satiated!) Is this current estimate over-ambitious or the reflection of a booming market? Who knows! At any rate, this not guaranteed lot is definitely one to watch.