No, it’s not. Eminent domain requires that the taking be for public use. That’s never (so far as I know) been applied to artwork.
No, it’s not a different thing, as my example of hiding art in the basement shows.
It’s b.
B again. The “true” measure is what the tribe and the museum agree on. If the museum and the tribe agree on a price of c.50% of whatever a buyer has, then that’s the “true” value. If they agree it’s £100 million, then that’s the price. But it has to be a mutual agreement - if the tribe offers everything they have and that’s not enough, it’s not mutual.
Regards,
Shodan
Absolutely.
I’ve picked on Vermeer precisely because I find his work extraordinary. I am a huge fan of Degas, both his ballerinas and his sculpture. There’s a piece taken from the left pilaster of The Gates of Hell called “The Old Courtesan,” which many people have called ugly. It’s not – it’s a study in dignity and age and it still brings tears to my eyes. Ironically enough, I am fascinated by a Caravaggio work called “Saint Matthew and the Angel,” which depicts Matthew writing the Gospel guided by an angel’s hand. My reference to this work is ironic because it was painted in the early 1600s but all we know of it now is black-and-white photographs of it; it was destroyed by Allied bombs that hit its Berlin museum home during World War II.
The evolution of perspective in Piero della Francesca’s work fascinates me. Ghirlandaio’s frescos are something I pray to be able to see in person some day. Ditto for Goya’s works in Madrid. I love more modern works too – seascapes from Winslow Homer and the more gritty Ashcan School works from Edward Hopper and George Bellows. I have stood in front of the “Fall of Icarus” by Breughel and recited W.H. Auden’s poem. (And later learned it might not be by Breughel at all!)
I say all this to emphasize as strongly as I can that my position on this matter does not arise from a lack of love for, or appreciation for, fine art.
No. Because I don’t recognize any “right” I have to that value in any legally cognizable sense.
No, they don’t. They don’t owe me that value, any more than Karen Gillian owes me because I liked her as a long-haired redhead and she shaved herself bald. My right to appreciate her aesthetically certainly exists, but it falls well short of creating any duty on her part to preserve that look for me. And the owner of a painting likewise has no duty to preserve my enjoyment of it.
I never doubted it!
I didn’t *ask *whether you recognised a right to that value in a legally cognizable sense. At this point in my argument, I’m not particularly interested in rights in any sense, legally cognizable or otherwise. The question was about whether the experience of viewing fine art had value to you. I think it’s clear from your moving answer above that it does. If we can agree on that, we can go on to discuss rights, and interests, and even legal cognizability if you really wish (although as I say, what various different jurisdictions have decided about this at different times and places is food for thought rather than any kind of final word on the matter).
If, somehow or other, you lost the ability to ever again stand in front of the Old Courtesan with tears in your eyes, the quality of your life would have been diminished, yes? Whether that’s because you’ve gone blind, or because you can’t afford the museum entrance fee, or because it broke in an earthquake, or whatever. You would have lost something you value. Can we agree on that, at least?
Hmm. I’ve already said I’m not particularly persuaded by the analogy between people and property you’re making here. That “likewise” is doing a lot of work.
If you’ve got time, I’d be really interested in your answer to my Vatican iconoclasm through experiment above. What do you believe the world’s response would be?
Absolutely.
But why? In each case, I’m appreciating something of beauty, and the owner of that thing destroys it for reasons I personally find insufficient. Why are you persuaded in one case but not the other? What distinctions exist?
You suspected that there would be widespread outrage and condemnation, and serious attempts to stop them outright by the majority of people.
I disagree. There would be loud condemnation, yes, but from a minority of people. The vast majority of people could not even name a single piece of art that was threatened by your scenario, or, if given a visual multiple choice, accurately select which pieces were in the Vatican as opposed to the Louvre, the Prado, the Rijksmuseum, or the Art Institute. At best, if shown “The Creation of Adam,” I imagine that many people would know the of work, simply because it has been so often parodied and copied. In my experience, most people have at best a vague awareness that there is such a thing as fine art, and know that they SHOULD have some appreciation for it, but would be pretty vague about placing Michelangelo, Van Gogh, and Picasso in correct chronological order, much less what works would be lost by an insane, suddenly iconoclast Vatican curator.
It’s not a law because it’s not a problem. If a lot of rich people started buying up beloved works of art and destroying them, I expect the law would change pretty quickly.
In general, people are cool with restrictions on ownership when they make sense for the common good. For example, most people have no problem with copyright. Owning a book does not mean that you have the right to make unlimited copies of it. Your position that ownership is absolute is the position of the fringy “information wants to be free” copyright cranks: If I own a work of art I should be able to do whatever I want with it, including making lots of duplicates of it. But most people agree that* limiting ownership so that it excludes the right to make copies* is a good thing.
So, Bricker, what is your position on copyright? Do you think there is an ethical or moral justification for limiting property rights in that way? Or should someone who owns a book be able to make as many copies of it as he wants?
No – because when you buy a book, it’s clear you possess the physical copy but do not generally also acquire the intellectual rights. There is an ethical justification for creating a copyright protection, and that’s the fact that our understanding of what you buy when you buy the book is delineated: the pages and the dustcover, but not the intellectual rights.
So you’re cool with your rights of ownership being limited when you purchase a book. Good, we’re making progress!
If the government can carve out “the right to copy” as being a separate from “ownership”, then why can’t the government carve out “the right to destroy” as being separate from “ownership”?
In general? Or in the U.S.?
In the U.S., the state governments have plenary legal authority. There’s no bar to their passing such a law.
I have never contended otherwise.
If they did so, however, they would trigger the protections of the Fifth Amendment’s Takings Clause.
Since NOT destroying a valuable artistic work benefits the owner more financially than destroying it does, how can the government’s actions be considered a “taking”? :dubious:
After all, the government wouldn’t be saying “you must display this work to the public”. They would merely be saying “you can’t smash it to bits with a sledge hammer”. Preventing someone from incurring a loss caused by their own spite/foolishness seems like an odd interpretation of the Takings clause.
But it is nice that you’re acknowledging that it’s perfectly fine for the government to mandate that ownership does not include “the right of destruction”.
Great! Can we move on from there to suggest that you have an interest - putting it no more strongly than that - in the continued existence of the Old Courtesan?
The analogy fails for the same reason that you can’t keep Karen Gillian in the basement next to your Vermeer, despite the fact they’re both beautiful. (Your wife wouldn’t approve.) It’s a category error to confuse people and things.
This is interesting. I don’t, of course, claim that the majority of people are well-informed about art - I agree that most people think it’s something they should appreciate. But that alone puts it in a class apart from other topics people aren’t well informed on - moral philosophy, accountancy standards, metallurgy - where there is no sense that this ignorance is any kind of lack. I think the concept of Great Art as something that ought be appreciated would be enough to generate widespread outrage if there were a threat that the opportunity to appreciate it were gone. And I don’t think the lack of specific knowledge would be a barrier to that.
Because there’s value in the destruction. As I hinted above, what better way to ensure my political protest receives millions of dollars of free advertising?
But the intrinsic value of the piece is only one part. You’re taking away from me the shock value I’d get.
“Perfectly fine,” is a trifle misleading. It’s perfectly within the sovereign power of a state government to do. “Fine,” carries with it an echo of approval which my comment lacked.
Absolutely.
Well, it’s true that Mrs. Bricker is not open to such arrangements.
But Ms. Gillian’s HAIR is not exactly HER, is it?
I say it would, because what you’ve described is people getting outraged because the media have told them to get outraged, and then relying on that wide sense of outrage to claim a mandate. In my view, if it even happened, it would be a faux mandate at best: a fauxdate. 
You could similarly argue that the government is “taking” something from you by preventing you from dancing naked in Times Square, and thus laws against public indecency are violations of the Fifth Amendment.
If you wish to dance naked in public to get attention, or destroy a valuable piece of art to get on the evening news, then you should accept the legal consequences of your actions as part of the cost of the protest. It’s called civil disobedience for a reason.
In fact, by making such actions illegal, the government INCREASES their effectiveness as a means of protest. The destruction is MORE VALUABLE to you if the government forbids it.
So while you agree that it is completely legal, you disapprove of the government carving out different categories of ownership such as “copyright”, “mineral rights”, “rights of destruction” and so on. Why? What justification do you have for this odd view?
I disagree.
You know who would be outraged if you destroyed your art? *Other billionaires who love and collect art. *
Most of them would kill to get the pieces in your hypothetical, and people in that category don’t need to test the limits of their ownership power by pulling the stunt you’re hypothesizing about. They would not be pleased, and neither would your stockholders and your heirs. Fine art collecting is a billionaire’s game, and they play by their own rules. You flout them and you’ll find out what real power is.
I’m sure you’re right, but I was discussing whether there existed large numbers of people who who rise up in righteous indignation. The billionaire community is tiny. (In numbers, anyway; I agree they probably wield disproportionate influence).
But this reasoning will be abandoned if we start discussing making American flag burning illegal, yes?
I clearly and explicitly said that I approved of copyrights. See, inter alia, post #167.
I don’t agree that my view with respect to a right of destruction is odd. I think the vast majority of people in this country would agree that owning a piece of personal property gives you the right to destroy it.
Bricker- I skipped ahead in this thread.
Surely, there’s nothing conceptually wrong with declaring eminent domain over the right to destroy a masterpiece or historical landmark. There’s a public interest in having these works available to future generations, even if nobody viewed them today.
If there’s no case law though, I’m not surprised. Scrooge McDuck may have enjoyed lighting his cigar with $100 bills, but even he didn’t burn one of a kind works of art.
There was public outcry over the destroyed Buddha statues of Afghanistan, works that probably less than 1% of the public had been familiar with previously. You don’t need to be a librarian to oppose book burning. Also, this country is run by the chattering classes anyway.
It’s unfortunately true that “public” interest in artwork might someday be stretched into the “public use” that the Fifth Amendment’s Takings Clause requires.
But it never has been. I certainly concede that some future society might create this legal framework. But I am arguing that it doesn’t now exist.
Where to begin?
I think that much of the public outcry was triggered by who the destroyers were.
Excellent. I’m pushed for time now, but let me know how you feel about the following:
- You are not unique, or even especially rare, in having an interest in being able to experience fine art. (I mean you’re special, sure, but, you know…)
- I will posit that you - and all of us - have an interest in being able to own property and that ownership implies control over that which is owned.
- Nevertheless, where A’s interest in property ownership impinges in some way on an interest of B’s it may be the case that B’s interest prevails.
What!? I thought the point was that the separation of the red, luscious tresses from Ms Gillian’s scalp was the very thing that detracted from the beauty you found in them. If you find the hair in and of itself to be aesthetically pleasing, you have no need to compel her not to cut if off. If on the other hand you demand that it be left in situ then it is her, and not just her hair, who is subject to physical compulsion. And compulsion over the body is categorically different from compulsion over mere stuff.
Hmm. How can you tell when people’s outrage is intrinsic, and when it is merely the result of media campaigning? For example, the media has in recent years started to portray homophobia as bad and homophobes as ignorant or hateful. And many more people now feel homophobia is bad and that homophobes are ignorant or hateful. Is this pro man-date mandate really a fauxdate?