Having just read the brief outline of the case, I was more than a little surprised that the court (correctly, in my opinion) decided that the “art” in question was just glorified vandalism:
Glass act: student fined for smashing gallery window and calling it art
Gallery fails to see funny side after student puts metal pole through window as part of an art projectDoes breaking a window count as art? Yes, murmured the 50 or so artniks who recently crowded into a former Edinburgh ambulance garage to view a film of sculptor Kevin Harman doing just that. No, insisted Kate Gray, director of the Collective Gallery in Cockburn Street, whose window it was.
The courts are on Gray’s side. Yesterday Harman, a prize-winning graduate of Edinburgh College of Art, was fined £200 for breaching the peace on 23 November, when he smashed a metal scaffolding pole through one of the gallery’s windows. Fiscal depute Malcolm Stewart described the affair as “a rather bizarre incident” which had left Collective staff “upset.”
I’m actually quite surprised that the court decided this case properly . . . it has seemed for quite some time that an “artist” could declare just about anything to be “art” and get away with it. I’m not against all art, but if in the performance of your artistic work you happen to break a law, I think the police and the courts should not mitigate your treatment just because you’re an “artist”.
