http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-19940942

First of all vandalised is a bit of an extreme description of what has been done, however £2,000 to restore to them is taking the P. Painting six cows surely costs a bit less? A charity being conned by suppliers, pissing their funds away, being a bit dumb, soundbite for the media?

Looks quite cool imo and councils allways give mental quotes as to spend their funds, if they dnt spend up they dnt get the same amount the following year.

I don’t know what they looked like originally, but I think that they did a great job with the skelecows. But you really have to wonder about government priorities when they’re pissed off over some repainted concrete cows…

No doubt, the more they fuss about it the more likely it will be to happen again!

Reactionary objecting to what has evolved into a fascinating community arts project.

vandals

Somehow seems harsh.

It’ll be £2000 because the council has a contract with preferred suppliers of paint, brushes, ladders, etc etc … so whereas they could just pop down to B&Q and get it done for £150, they’re forced to pay £200 for a paintbrush, £750 for a tin of paint and so on …

Leave them as they are. They look amazing!

councils allways give mental quotes as to spend their funds

But you really have to wonder about government priorities when they’re pissed off over some repainted concrete cows…

It’ll be £2000 because the council has a contract with preferred suppliers of paint, brushes, ladders, etc etc

Neither the government or the council are in any way involved

Like you lot up there ^^^ I also saw this and thought
£2k to repaint – really?
and

Leave them as they are.

mmm….. what say the council invite local artists / groups to repaint them, say every 3 months – kind of a community arts project?
Council does not pay them to do it as artists / groups get the promotional benefits?

Who was it who had the idea to put the cows there in the first place, and how much did they cost?

I don’t know what all the fuss is about.

I think they look super, after all we had the wacky lamb bananas 8)

I think they look great, can’t see any need to repaint them. But I like marsdenman’s idea:

mmm….. what say the council invite local artists / groups to repaint them, say every 3 months – kind of a community arts project?

Who was it who had the idea to put the cows there in the first place…?

Is this some sort of comprehension test?

Chances are now they have been brought to the national media attention, if they did paint them back to how they were, it would not take long, before another ‘artist’ came along and re-pained them anyway.

Leave them as they are.

Leave them as they are.

thats not going to be an option for the trust that maintains them

Since they arrived they have been stolen, beheaded, painted pink and had pyjamas and “BSE” painted on them.

So why not leave them until someone else “vanadalises” them?

thats not going to be an option for the trust that maintains them

Well I hope the trust has enough funds in place then to paint them again and again and again.

😉

thats why they are talking about having to take them away. With public artworks like these there are certain obligations on whoever owns and maintains them, particularly to do with attribution. The work can’t be on show if its altered or defaced so they either need to restore it or remove it. Lots of new town developments have these issues as there tended to be a lot of artwork commissioning as part of the development of the town. But the organisation that did that development ceases to exist once the town is complete so those obligations need to be passed on.

I came across some large bronze artworks in a.n.other new town in a council warehouse. They needed to keep it packed away, not because there was anything wrong with it to look at, but because in that transfer of ownership the details had been lost as to who had authored the work and you can’t display work without giving credit to the author. So they were in this predicament where they could neither show or dispose of it.

They needed to keep it packed away not because there was anything wrong with it to look at but because in that transfer of ownership they’d lost the details of who had authored the work and you can display work without giving credit to the author. So they were in this predicament where they could neither show or dispose of it.

You buy or commission a piece of work then you own it, if artists don’t want their work to be seen, maybe they should stop selling it.

You buy or commission a piece of work then you own it, if artists don’t want their work to be seen, maybe they should stop selling it.

If you buy something and take it home you can smash it up burn it, scribble on it or do anything you like with it. But when something is being commissioned into the public domain then its different. If the work is changed that change – made in the public domain- is tacitly attributed to the artist.

Ford don’t stop me modifying my car, artists need to get over themselves and realise they are selling goods and services just like everyone else.

Ford don’t stop me modifying my car,

no they don’t. But they would want to stop you publically attributing those modifications to them. Artists aren’t selling goods and services just like anyone else.

Well not currently they are not, because they are given special legal protections that they don’t deserve. Open up the market like everything else and allow art designed to actually be seen instead of sitting in warehouses.

“We don’t condone graffiti obviously, but it’s pretty awesome.

Agrees.

Yes there might be rules about what can and can’t be done with them. If so, they should probably be seeing if there’s any room to change that- because this is more interesting frankly.

But if not… Well, it didn’t cost £2000 to repaint them this time did it? I’ll do it for £250 and I’ll bring my own brushes.

Well not currently they are not, because they are given special legal protections that they don’t deserve.

you’ve got the same legal protections though. I’m an artist sometimes (I’ve got a prodigious turn over of one or two works of art every 4 or 5 years) I don’t have some special charter that applies to me and noone else. But not all goods and services are the same and not all transactions are the same.

Say you buy a ford car, and you do a splendid job of modifying it. A proper job – not some pastiche or replica of someone else’s car but you do something really quite original. And those modications are attributed to you – your car is featured on the cover in Fab Ford magazine with a little article about you perhaps. Perhaps its one of many successful car mods you’ve done, so you name and reputation is associated with those cars. In fact your modified car is so well regarded that you donate it to a motor museum (or you sell it to a third party and they donate it), where it accessioned (formally joins the museums collection and comes under their care) and goes on display as ‘MSP’s ace ford’.

Now that donation (or it could be a sale, or the museum could have commissioned you) is a very different transaction to you selling to a private individual. If you sold to another private individual they can do what the want with it – add their own alterations, take all your work off and revert to the original car, or whatever. They could do that even if you are quite vocal that you don’t want them to. But they can’t change that car and claim they changes are your handywork. But museums (or other public bodies) hold work in trust, both on behalf of the wider public and the donor or the item. They must care for it and maintain it. If it was accessioned as ‘MSP’s ace ford’ then they must keep it in shape/ form / appearance that description implies. They couldn’t un-modify it and still attribute it to you, and they couldn’t further modify it and attribute it to you. And the constraints of the donate would prohibit those modifications anyway, with or without attribution, and their duty of care would mean if a third party decided to vandalise or change it the museum would be duty bound to restore it.

Now you’re an easy going guy and you could say that you’re happy for those changes to have happened – but the museum’s not only about you, the public like your car as it is, they want and they trust the museum to keep the car exactly as you made it.

Intellectual property is an unusual concept if you’re only familiar with commodities and services. Artists, architects, designers, musical composers, writers, computer programmers and other “creative” workers retain some intellectual property rights over their works. It’s why you can’t copy Hamlet and claim it as your own work. This is not unusual.

But this sometimes clashes with the client or public needs. A building I visit needs a refreshments vending machine because the staff work 24/7 shifts. But the architect made no provision for this and does not want it, for some pretentious artistic reason. Now that is silly!

Well that’s a very creative story and you have clearly tried very hard to prove your point, but it contradicts your earlier assertion about public art sitting in a warehouse because they lost a piece of paper.

it doesn’t contradict that at all. I know of one work, sitting in one warehouse about 12 years ago. My point there was to illustrate the change of hands between the original commissioning agent and the current owner – in new towns. The trust in Milton Keynes didn’t commission the work, the work has been placed in their care. In fact the care of those works and probabaly other public domain items – like parks created by the earlier corporation- will probably be why the trust was formed in the first instance. Care for those works will be what the trust is constituted to do, so by saying its not their choice to make to leave the cows unrestored – their own constitution prevents that.