Sep 18, 2023 at 7:01 p.m
The judge has ordered Danish artist Jens Haaning to repay 66,000 euros to the Arts Museum in Aalborg. Haaning received the money to create two works of art, but handed in blank canvases. He named them Take the Money and Run (take the money and run).
Haaning’s assignment was to depict in the two works of art the difference between salaries in Austria and Denmark. For this he received 70,000 euros in cash from the museum. This money would be spread over the canvases and one canvas would be larger than the other canvas. Instead, Haaning handed in blank canvases. The judge has now decided that Haaning must repay the amount, minus the costs incurred and his artist fee.
The museum director previously said he laughed out loud when he first saw the blank canvases in 2021. He hung them in the museum anyway, because of the “humorous approach” and because they reflect “how we value work”.
Still, the director wanted the money back. Haaning told the channel on Monday TV2 Nord that the museum had earned “much, much more” than he had received because of all the publicity.
It is not the first time that a blank canvas has caused a stir. In 1951, the American artist Robert Rauschenberg caused a sensation with his White Paintings (white paintings), a series of canvases on which he had applied white paint with a paint roller.
Image: ANP Photo
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Foreign Media and Culture
2023-09-18 17:01:05
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