Re: permission denied

On Fri, May 19, 2000, Pat Sloane <patsloane[_at_]aol.com> wrote:
>
> Who is the art historian involved (I assume a Simone Martini
> specialist), and what has been the response among other Martini
> specialists to date as to this person's prior publications on
> the matter? If "controversial," what is the controversy about?
> the qualifications of the author? the persuasiveness of the
> theory?

The art historian is Gordon Moran. He has been working on this problem for a number of years following leads in the literature dating back to the Renaissance. The controversy has to do with the questionable attribution of the fresco to Simone Martini and the apparent unwillingness of the local officials to accept the facts that might dislodge the fame of the fresco, from an artist of the stature of Simone Martini to another, perhaps even from a later period. The situation is described in the article online at:

   http://bak.spc.org/everything/e/hard/text/simonem.html

Gordon Moran graduated from Yale University specializing in Sienese art before becoming a stock broker. He has since returned to his quest to discover the truth about the painting and in the process has published another book entitled Silencing Scientists and Scholars in Other Fields: Power, Paradigm Controls, Peer Review, and Scholarly Communication (Ablex Publishing, 1998).

> On your art historian hoping to force the municipal owner(s) of
> the painting to sell his book in their bookshop, is there some
> basis in Italian law for an author forcing a shop to sell his book?

According to the information I have from Mr. Moran, the owner of the bookshop first approached him to write a book about the controversy (several years ago) because "the bookshop had received many requests, from students and tourists, for such a publication [about the Guido Riccio controversy]." The editor of Notizie d'Arte, a local publisher, worked with the bookshop and Mr. Moran in deciding what type of publication to produce, but it was only after the manuscript was well advanced that the permissions issues halted the plans to incorporate photos of the actual fresco. The editor and author finally produced a booklet but instead of using photos, they decided to use line drawings of the fresco as illustrations. No one was forcing the bookshop to carry the book. The local officials were apparently using the power of their law to limit the type of information that could be associated with the bookshop.

My question has more to do with the power of laws, in this case in the guise of copyright, in limiting scholarship and critical discourse that might result in unpopular conclusions. The notion that a country can limit access to its cultural heritage or control what others, even foreigners, can do with cultural icons is at the heart of my question.

That the fresco is already a cultural icon seems incontrovertible: it appears everywhere, from notepaper to ashtrays, plates, posters, wine bottle labels, cheese cover labels, cookie boxes, advertisements for tennis tournaments and auction horses, tee shirts and more, according to Mr. Moran. In Italy it was the control of the Tuscan landscape that we read about a few years ago following the success of films such as those produced by Merchant-Ivory. Apparently the Italian officials saw a cash cow and wanted to be sure that they would have a piece of it especially since the cow seemed to be in foreign hands. While in New Zealand, I heard about a similar controversy regarding the use of Maori flora and fauna by the European settlers of that country particularly in commercial logos (for example the decorative motif that identifies Air New Zealand). The solution that was being discussed was copyrighting the flora and fauna of that country.

So, do we accede or fight? If fight, what tools or strategies work best when we have tried to use the prescribed methods and they don't produce the results that we need?

I'm remembering an idea that was suggested to me a few years ago regarding copyright and the law as it applies to education. In business it's common practice that you tell your lawyers what you want and their job is to figure out a way to accomplish that. In education we are less likely to have lawyers who do nothing else but fight and win our battles, but isn't that what we need these days, given the ever deminishing bundle of rights at our disposal?

Battle, anyone?

Christine L. Sundt
Visual Resources Curator
Architecture & Allied Arts Library
University of Oregon
Lawrence Hall - Room 300
Eugene, OR 97403-5249
PHONE: 541-346-2209
FAX: 541-346-2205

csundt[_at_]oregon.uoregon.edu
http://libweb.uoregon.edu/aaa/vrc/VRCinfo.html
http://oregon.uoregon.edu/~csundt/index.htm