Law in the Work of Felix Gonzales-Torres

Abstract

Within contemporary art, it is well known that Félix GonzálezTorres created elegant, sparse and poetic art works. Through his use of diverse media—photography, drawing, and sculpture (created by using unusual materials such as candy, stacks of paper, or battery operated clocks) González-Torres’ merged the personal and the political; the conceptual and the aesthetic. These aspects of his work have been thoroughly explored by artists, scholars, and collectors alike. What observers have not examined nearly as fully are the many ways that Félix González-Torres’s art referenced, utilized and challenged legal tools and doctrines in part by complicating the notion and definition of the art object itself. By merging minimal-conceptual art strategies with legal devices, González-Torres’ art works upset and expand our understanding of what constitutes the art object, the ownership, exhibition and dissemination of art, and the public’s relationship to art and art institutions. Certain art historians are skeptical of conceptual artists’ use of law and legal instruments. For example, in his book, Conceptual Art and the Politics of Publicity, Alexander Alberro laments that Seth Siegelaub and Robert Projansky’s artists’ contract of 1971, better known as The Artist’s Reserved Rights Transfer and Sale Agreement, did nothing more than facilitate the commodification of ideas. It is quite possible that this skepticism and criticism is based on a superficial understanding of legal doctrines and philosophical jurisprudence. No stranger to the hermetic and the obtuse, the law does not lend itself to facile consumption and understanding of its historical-philosophical origins, let alone its practical applications, by other disciplines. Félix González-Torres counters this type of cursory approach. An avid reader of literature, art history and semiotic theory, González-Torres