Artistic Gesture - Or Pure Vandalism And Theft?

There is less controversy when a mining company removes an entire mountain from the landscape.

Yes, but they don't display it "artistically" ... on a plinth! ;-)

- Richard Reeve
ReevePhotos.com

True its the opposite. They try not to call attention to it and people gladly look away. Better to be distracted by the silly art world.

Excerpted from the linked article:

"...The artist's previous works include a series of pictures showing him taking a mouthful of milk from a cow's udder, walking for several hours, then giving it to a cat.

He has photographed a horse staring at a floating bubble made of its own semen.

And he created a series of pictures showing a crying man on a high bridge. Santillan stands below and catches a tear in his eye..."

Sounds like attention-seeking stunts to me. Just my 2¢ worth.



"There is less controversy when a mining company removes an entire mountain from the landscape."

Good point, Edward.

kind of silly considering i'm certain everyone that went up there has the top of that mountain. and its not like its noticed, or even provable unless they can find the tiny flat spot it created. and if they got it back, will they glue it on? sounds like a lot of nothing. technically because he did it to make money or fame for himself, it is an act of vandalism. but unless there is some law that you can't take back a rock from a mountain, he didn't really break any laws. and he can claim anything. he could have gotten that from the bottom.


---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

He just sped-up (is that a word?) the natural erosion a bit.

It's all about perception. One cannot help but think of, "The Emperor's New clothes" every time this sort of thing happens.
Piero Manzoni, Damien Hurst, and Tracey Emin instantly come to mind, to name but three...

i think.... rock from my backyard... the fools.


---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

The next chapter will find us in the British Museum at a podium in front of the Rosetta Stone where some outraged politician will talk about leading the charge up the mountain to carry pebbles and "restore" the mountain peak to its former glory.

Ironically the procession will begin in front of a stone building and travel over cobblestone streets created from ballast from trading ship of yore.

Just wait until someone starts a movement to return the moon rocks! :)

Either that or throw stones through the gallery window. How come I had such a hard time coming up with examples of irony in middle school?

"...How come I had such a hard time coming up with examples of irony in middle school?"


Because in school we had to do it for a grade. :)

This is what he displayed.

I have to be honest, while I usually find performance art (like the cow to cat or catching the tear described here) to be totally hokey, I sort of like this display. It's surely a harmless act, A bird could have knocked that stone over and no one would have been the wiser. Of course I hear all the mothers scolding "if everyone just took an inch of rock there'd be no mountain left!", which is true, but not the case here. Maybe he needs a fine or something.

But the way this is displayed makes me imagine the whole mountain underneath it. I find it kind of compelling in that way.

So true Greg. I never could come up with a good short story either. Too paralyzed by fear after reading the greats like Henry O.

"Here kid, read some of the most amazing stories ever told. Now you write one. " - what a torturous way to teach.

.....

I lived next to Acadia National Park for seven years. There is a rule about not taking anything out of any national parks. Especially the oh so tempting round beach stones. But its all for good reason - 3 million visitors a year - if everyone took a stone there would be no beach left. Each stone probably takes thousands of years to get nice and round.

As it is Boston, Portland and other cities on the East Coast were paved with these rocks brought back as ballast. One year they caught a guy with a pick up truck full of them. That's pure theft.

I guess he couldn't afford a lampshade, being a starving artist and all that...

What is sad about this story to me is to find out that England's tallest peak is only 3,029 ft. Our valley floor is high than that, by 150%! If this mountain is in protected public land then he needs to receive whatever punishment the law spells out for removing a piece of rock from it. That is all. Move on, nothing to see here.

lol @Cynthia= reminds of the time I was scolded by an older gentleman for taking about 4 roses from a public rose garden. If everyone did that. Yeah, but they do prune those roses on a regular basis. Outside the Petrified Forest I was shocked to find acres of petrified wood for sale but if you dare pick up a piece inside the park there would be a huge fine. The thrill of owning a piece disappeared after realzing there was plenty for sale but it was not worth the risk of taking some out of the forest.

I've visited Mammoth Cave Nat'l Park here in Kentucky (great tourism plug), and they always tell you about not removingrocks, touching the cave walls, etc., which I agree with. Ihave been on tours in the cave with both elementary and high school students. Which ones do you think disobeyed the rules more?

The act might not be much, but if it were not his own property (even if it's a national trust) and he did it without asking, then his act isn't right even if his art is beautiful.

Tangent: I'm convinced that the number of performance artists who have severe rebellion issues with their parents run very high.

Edit: My statement doesn't seem fair to performance artists and is probably a reflection of how few I've seen. Maybe it's fairer to say all artists are rebellious in some way.

I wonder if they're going to have to start posting security guards at the tops of mountains... If Santillan can change the dimensions of England by taking the top inch off it's highest mountain, I'm sure someone will want to change the world by taking the top inch off Mt. Everest, or Mauna Kea.

Just think of the possibilities... I'd like to watch someone try to make the ocean a little deeper by excavating the bottom inch off the deepest part of the Mariana Trench...

Thousands of man hours keep that mountain in as good as condition as possible. It is the same as if someone went to one of your national parks and took an important piece home with them. This is a National Park here

It is not just a rock but a symbol of the peak of a very important part of our country

So, it is vandalism and theft

The thing is..... on the gallery's description of the work they say ;'The artist stole.................. @ so they actually admit and KNOW it is bad but are letting it go on

Disgusting

Ah, Abby. Like cutting the tip off of Roosevelt's nose on Mount Rushmore. Sorry for being tepid in my argument. So are charges going to be levied against the gallery and artist? Especially the gallery.

I don't know. People are such pussies nowadays

Theft is theft, unless you're famous or the theft is very big...

He should be prosecuted for vandalizing a National Park.

If not, then presumably he's set a legal precedent and people can start traipsing up Scafell Pike with picks, shovels and wheelbarrows...

- Richard Reeve
ReevePhotos.com

What's interesting to me is that the reaction is proving his point. He correctly identified the one tiny bit of rock that people would care about, but only if he made a big deal out of what he did. Had he said nothing, no one would have even noticed.

People probably do more damage with their foot prints than this guy taking the pebble.

Another story from Acadia - on top of Mt. Cadillac where an auto road lets cars, bike, buses, and over-sized RVs drive up to the top of the mountain, there are all kinds of signs talking about the fragile mountain plants which take decades to gain a foothold in the rocky barren landscape.

People trample all over them even though there are plenty of cement paths in place.

....

The sad part of this stone story is the amount of apologetic language coming from the artist's representative. Let the public debate the piece. We don't need to know that artist picks up litter.

When someone picks up a rock, displays it in a museum and it can cause this much outrage, he is on to something. He is doing is job as an artist - opening a conversation and raising questions.

Here in New Hampshire the state had a lot invested in a stone outcropping that looked like a face - The Old Man of the Mountain. The thing is on everything in the state - official seal etc.

Well one day nature took its course and the thing fell off the mountain. There were people who actually wanted to raise money to recreate the thing. So you have something that is wondrous because it was created by nature. And then you want to replace it with something man made.

Sometimes you just have to switch focus and concentrate on things that really matter.

Typical old school gallery lighting, it sucks.

I took three rocks out of the Red Rock Canyon back in 1975, sue me.

It is a pebble, barely a stone. People track out more mud by the bucket load on their boots every day.

I love my electric heat, I love my central air. Mountains disappear every day for me to be comfortable.

When will we change, not one artist, we, us?

Animals are designed to kill. We are the best at this. We have to change.

Dave

I'm heading to Sanibel Island, Florida in a few weeks. The island is full of irony. While its home to the Ding Darling National Wildlife Refuge (named after the cartoonist) and the protection of habitat, it is also known for its abundant seashells.

The idea of taking natural resources (in this case calcium carbonate) during the activity known as "shelling" or "doing the Sanibel Stoop" is part of the marketing of this vacation spot. Taking plastic bags full of shells back north is not only encouraged --- it is ingrained into every visitor that it is a must do activity when visiting the island.

I can't imagine how many tons of seashells have left the eco-system over the years. And Florida could certainly use every millimeter of land mass it can get.

Really thought-provoking comments on this thread! I can understand everyone's point of view, but my first, instinctive reaction was "that's exactly what gives Art a bad name!"

Thanks Richard for bringing this to our attention - funny that this news should be spotted by someone in Pennsylvania, when I hadn't heard anything about it here in England!

Now where did I put that lump of Mount Vesuvius? What can I use as a plinth ... ?!

I have a small piece of the Berlin Wall knocking about somewhere in a box (honestly) perhaps I should put that under a swinging lamp. Or better still embed it between a sliced sheep sitting upright in an unmade bed....

- Richard Reeve
ReevePhotos.com

Watch out for the asbestos in that piece of the Berlin Wall.

As a military brat with a family stationed in Germany in the 70s one of the scariest moments of my life was traveling to Berlin for a swim meet by train and having to stop in East Germany and watch the solders patrol round outside the windows with big scary German Shepherds.

The top of Scafell Pike is a huge manmade cairn that usurps the place of the rock that nature intended to be the highest point. The "peak" is really a plateau covered in rubble and a tiny bit of it going missing is irrelevant. The mountain is eroding, anyway.

When I was there in the 1970s I made a beer can the highest point in England for a short time. It was, I think, a highly symbolic artistic gesture with more meaning than the missing pebble has.

this is ridiculous on so many levels. how many of us have taken a rock or a seashell home when we've had a trip to the ocean or up a mountain? nature itself changes the way the mountain is all the time, those tiny rocks and stones don't remain necessarily where they are. one good storm can easily dislodge a rock. what happens if there's a rockslide? on the other hand, does that make all the seashells i've collected over the years and made into things (or just kept) into glorious works of art? or should every store at the seaside be closed down for selling shells made into frames and ashtrays?

and here, Paul tells us the cairn is manmade anyway and once had a beer can as the highest point. did you put a little union jack into the beer can, Paul? like conquering the cairn as if it was the moon?

I forgot to take my Union Flag, I'm afraid.

good heavens, Paul, you must always carry a flag with you just in case you conquer a cairn (please don't confuse with the dog variety).

We British have never been much for flag waving. Not in our own country, anyway.

For anyone who hasn't been there, here is Scafell Pike and the summit cairn is in the right-hand sidebar - you can click it to get a better look.
Notice also the copious amounts of rock lying about.
http://www.english-lake-district.info/scafell-pike/scafell-pike.html
Here's a broader view coming up to the summit:
http://www.stridingedge.net/old/images/2007/11.%20November/23.11.07%20-%20Scafell%20Pike/23.11.07-066.jpg
the website that is on has a host of lovely pictures of the national park, which are well worth looking at:
http://www.stridingedge.net/old/Walks/2007/11.%20November/23.11.07.htm

I'm British, Paul. Living in New York so I have a small union jack flying from the top of my easel. Does that mean I've become an American, please say no. ;)

Thanks for this wonderful link. I was in the lakes about three years ago when I was visiting my family and friends over there. You've made me homesick now.

Certainly not! Of course you are still British. As I said, waving our flag over other people's countries is perfectly normal. Have you burned the White House down, yet? I think that's what we normally do when we go there.

I was in the Lakes in January for a couple of days. It was lovely but a wee bit dreich.

Here's something I took away during my visit to the Lake District National Park ... I'd forgotten that I still had this bunch to process.

Oh bless you, I love this. it looks so like where I come from in North Wales, Paul. I used to ride my horse across fields that looked just like this. I'm sure most of our phone boxes were a lot dirtier though. ;) Lucky you, I hope I can get over there this year.

I'm planning to take out Congress first! ;)

Congress would be good.
Of course, the Lakes and Snowdonia are quite close together with similar climates and (probably) geology. I haven't been to North Wales for many decades but I'm hoping to have the chance to wander over it within the next year or two.

Well take some of your magnificent photographs when you are there, Paul. Aand yes, they are very similar terrains. Its the dramatic skies that I love most of all

Nice image, Paul.
Regarding Oscar Santillan's oeuvre I still think it's a case of "The Emperor's new Clothes"

- Richard Reeve
ReevePhotos.com

And I think Richard is right. Property is property. They have a right to say no and a we have to do is ask. They'll probably point you to the gift store as a way of "no", but many times it is yes. A public beach makes me think the shells are public domain. But if they say don't touch the sea grass, don't :)

There's a part of Langstrath (on the way up to Scafell) where there are garnets in the rocks and I collected some mineral specimens there. I've also helped myself to a few bits of graphite left in the spoil heap of the old graphite mine there. There are even guidebooks telling you where different minerals are to be found. It turns out that while collecting from some of these sites now requires a permit there are others where you can help yourself http://www.lakedistrict.gov.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0008/171188/factsheet_geology.pdf

Scafell Pike does not appear to be a protected area, so my guess is that the rock was not "stolen". However, taking rocks for commercial use is banned, so lawyers could haggle over whether "artistic" is the same as "commercial".

PS: On closer inspection, it looks as if only specially designated SSSIs have commercial collecting banned.

how to become famous:

step 1

do something controversial.


that's it. that's all you have to do. from this point on, anything you make - someone may have heard of your from some place. they may forget the reason, but the name sticks. and from there you can sell the real art and increase the price.

guy shooting through bedroom windows from the 18th floor, guy cutting the top of a mountain off supposedly, some odd crazy stunt to get your name out there. dali did that kind of stuff as well. just to get the name out there.

---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

and get an agent....

If the rock this artist collected was on the way up then the artist is lying about his work. One bit about those who trespass: let them take an inch and they will take a mile. If they don't, then they call upon their friends and peck away until the mile is done.

I assumed it was a mountain on unmanaged land. I change my stance now that I know differently. I still find the idea compelling, but now I can understand those who see it as vandalism and theft.