Clive Thompson estava na Art Gallery of Ontario quando usou seu iPhone para fotografar um quadro de Lawren Harris. Logo foi avisado pelo segurança do museu que câmeras eram proibidas no local.
De fato a luz intensa do flash pode deteriorar obras de arte, mas o iPhone não tem flash, apenas câmera. Qual a razão para a proibição? A explicação é o Copyright ©. Museus temem o uso indevido das imagens.
Mas um artista ao criar uma obra não está usando elementos (estilos e invenções) dos artistas que o antecederam? Não fosse assim ainda estaríamos pintando imagens de animais em cavernas. E afinal, quem fotografa uma obra de arte e mostra a outros não está divulgando o trabalho do artista? Algumas instituições argumentam que as fotos atrapalham o fluxo dos visitantes que passam pelos corredores. É verdade, mas apenas em casos raros.
Clive Thompson expôs a contradição sobre a proibição de fotos em museus e o copyright em seu blog. Abaixo, trechos da ótima ponderacão de Thompson.
“By the time I hit the Art Gallery of Ontario two weeks ago, I was much more able to appreciate Carmichael’s work, since he was doing the same thing a hundred years ago — using fauvist techniques to re-see the Canadian wilderness. This whole process became a most excellent cultural-feedback loop: The fauvists inspire Jamie, who does paintings of video games in that style, which gets me interested in the fauvists, which allows me to re-appreciate the revolutions in Canadian art that were triggered a century ago during the actual time of the fauvists.
It reminded me of a point often made by folks who fight overly-aggressive copyright laws: All new art is based on art that came before, so copyright law ought not to be too rigid. If you can’t remix and resample and re-use art — after a reasonable term of exclusivity for the original creators, who in this case are long dead — then culture dies. More subtly yet, our appreciation for earlier art dies if our contemporary artists cannot easily plunder the styles and content of their forebears.
The irony here is that the instant after I snapped this picture, the security guards of the Art Gallery of Ontario raced over to (politely) warn me that I wasn’t allowed to take pictures. Why? Well, some art galleries disallow photos because flashes can damage paintings, a prohibition that makes total sense. But my iPhone doesn’t have a flash. No, the Art Gallery of Ontario prohibits photographs of artwork because of copyright restrictions. The AGO folks don’t sound very happy about this (“We didn’t set the copyright rules but we are required to respect them,” as they point out on their site). It’s even more daft when you consider that I’m basically doing free promotion here.You want people to visit galleries? Well, surely one good way is to let visitors take and post photos of their little kids spellbound by major works of art.”
http://www.collisiondetection.net/mt/archives/2010/01/i_wasnt_suppose.php
