‘Artist Jens Haaning received $84,000 to incorporate into a piece. When the Kunsten museum took the delivery, they found two empty frames with a new title: “Take the Money And Run.”
‘“The work of art is that I took their money,” Haaning told broadcaster DR.
‘The museum wants its money back, but Haaning is so far declining.’
Add the Subjectivist theory of art (“Art is anything I say it is”) to the Institutional theory of art (“Art is whatever those in charge of art institutions say it is”) to the Social-Performance theory of art (“Art is an act of subversive social commentary”) to the Conceptual theory of art (“Art is the idea, not needing a material embodiment”) to a Postmodern theory of art (“Art is a weapon in the anti-establishment culture wars”) — and this makes perfect sense.
As a postmodernist art institution, the Kunsten has no intellectual tools in its toolkit to argue against Haaning.
Source: Bloomberg Business.
Related: My “Why Art Became Ugly,” also republished in Art: Modern, Postmodern, and Beyond.