Julian Stallabrass:
"Permission to reproduce denied"
Three cheers to the High Art Lite author for taking a stand, but why is it standard practice to hide image reproduction refusals from readers?
Sometimes you find certain inspiration for topics in unexpected places. Such was the case when I was reading Julian Stallabrass’s High Art Lite (1999/2006). I came across three beautiful illustrations of artworks inside the book.
I present one of these illustrations below the book covers:
Honest, daring, and informative, I thought.
As any art/design book writer knows, requesting image copyright reprint approvals are a necessary evil in the work. And sometimes copyright holders understandably want to protect their interests— or even push their PR line.
But why can’t it be standard practice for writers to inform readers when image reprints are refused, or texts have been modified— and alert our community that yet again this is happening?
This would not only raise critical media awareness, but it would also provide an important context when images, especially for monographs, even for feature magazine articles, are presented to readers witnessing the surface of the media discourse.
Onto excerpts of my interview with Julian Stallabrass:
R.J. Preece: What was the process of image reproduction requests for your book?
Julian Stallabrass: It was done by the publisher in the usual way. We had no problem with the others. A few people asked to see passages in the book, which is not an unusual request.
There was only one strong objection from [one gallerist]. I spoke to him a number of times. The whole situation emerged in a rather contingent way. He was saying, “Oh yes you can have them” and then, “Oh no you can’t” right up to the production time. So basically we were left with these gaps in the book, which we then had to deal with. So we took this strategy.
I’m happy with it. I think it’s quite instructive. I’m slightly surprised that having done it in the 1999 edition, when the book was revised a number of years later, we went back to him and asked him if he’d like to supply us with the images at this time. And he still said “no”.
R.J. Preece: Was there a reason the images weren’t supplied? Did they not like the copy?
Julian Stallabrass: Well, he wouldn’t say directly. I’ve heard various speculations. I don’t know. I gather it didn’t fit his objectives or that of the artists, and that was that.
This isn’t my only kind of experience with this. I did a piece for October recently, about a quasi-ethnographic strain into contemporary art photography. I got into very long discussions with a foundation about very fine points about details in my text. The threat was always there that they’d withdraw permission to reproduce pictures.
It turned out to be a rather interesting discussion. I was able to put forward a position that a too bland, positive, and uniform literature about an artist can be damaging to their reputation. And a certain critique, salt, in the discussion is good. And they did take that on.
Julian Stallabrass - High Art Lite: 1 | 2 | 3
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