Lucrative Bullshit: Ephemeral Visual Art > Performance Art
2 February 2010
From The New York Observer// January 26, 2010 | 8:06 p.m 
“If it wasn’t being exhibited in a museum, Mr. Sehgal’s work would most certainly be classified as performance art or experimental dance. But Mr. Sehgal, who completed studies in dance and economics, does not consider himself a practitioner of either, and vehemently insists that his work—though choreographed, rehearsed and presented live in front of onlookers—should be thought of as conceptual art, to be displayed not in theaters or performance halls but art galleries and museums. He also, unlike most performance artists, forbids any documentation of his pieces, meaning no one can videotape them, photograph them, or issue certificates of their authenticity.
This insistence has been a lucrative one for Mr. Sehgal, whose works—some of which exist in what he calls multiple editions—have reportedly been bought by collectors for sums in the six figures. (Owning one of Mr. Sehgal’s works, whether you’re a museum or a private collector, means having the right to call upon him and have his “interpreters” come present the piece whenever you want.)
How Mr. Sehgal is able to have the career he has while doing what he does is not self-evident, and there are those who question the validity of the distinction he draws between his work and the kind of stage-based theater, dance and performance that so often goes ignored by the art world.
“You can go to any number of dance panels where this comes up—about context and why artists are able to support themselves and dancers aren’t,” said RoseLee Goldberg, the author of a history of performance art and director of the performance art biennial Performa. “They don’t understand why if you did the same work in a dance context, you wouldn’t be able to command a price to sell the work. You’re looking at the very crux of the difference between these two economies and the histories that shape them.”
Read an interview with Tino Sehgal HERE.
