One might ask whether the defacement of artworks is a form of political art. While the political aspect of the actions of climate activists is obvious, the artistic value is not immediately apparent. In any case, the activists themselves do not cite artistic expression as the reason for their actions. Rather, they are interested in maximum attention, which they generate by pointing out as forcefully as possible that art will perish along with the planet ("no art on a dead planet").

It should be noted that in most cases, the works chosen for defacement were protected by a pane of glass. Damage to paintings was therefore the exception rather than the rule. These actions must therefore be distinguished from the systematic destruction of art, which can take various forms. On the one hand, destruction itself can be an artistic concept, as was the case with Banksy's shredded "Love is in the Bin" (2018) or the Swiss sculptor Bernhard Luginbühl, who regularly set his wooden constructions ablaze. On the other hand, destruction and vandalism can be directed against art that is seen as problematic or harmful and is attacked for political or religious reasons. Examples from history are well known.

Regardless of the activists' intentions, however, their actions have already been recognised by others as art or treated as such. The climate activists were included in the art magazine Monopol's list of the 100 most influential personalities in the art world. An important US art critic also saw the actions as art, albeit only as "unconvincing performance art". The Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin, on the other hand, integrated an attack with paint into the exhibition by taking down the stained painting for restoration, but leaving the splashes of paint around the picture and adding a plaque. They then became a valued and frequently photographed work of art in their own right.

As with all forms of disruptive protest, the actions of climate activists raise the question of whether the attention generated is high enough to justify the disturbance to other people and whether all PR is indeed good PR. Many may have been disturbed by the fact that art was chosen as the object of the action, when the connection between global warming and for example oil platforms or parliament buildings seems to be much closer. Museums in their best form can precisely be a symbol of sustainability and careful handling of cultural heritage.

However, the fact that cooperation with museums would therefore be a promising way forward for climate activists must be rejected, at least from the activists' point of view. Their aim is not to steadily increase their influence on existing institutions in order to exert their influence on politics and legislation from within the system at some point. Rather, their form of civil disobedience expresses that they do not trust existing institutions to respond to global warming and that change must be more disruptive and aggressive. In view of the massive power imbalance, cooperation between climate activists and museums would also run the risk of resulting in appropriation rather than cooperation.

Whether the type of climate protest described above will survive at all is questionable. Now that attacks on art have been very rare for some time, the "Last Generation" also wants to stop its famous “gluing campaign” and instead focus on "protests at the sites of destruction and confrontation with politicians".

«Why do we need anyone to change our national anthem?» –  When Russian-born composer, Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971) first performed his reorchestrated and reharmonized version of the Star-Spangled Banner in the autumn of 1941, it was dismissed by the majority of the American audience. The newspaper quote above captures the overriding sentiment it provoked.

«I was obliged to begin my concerts during the war with the Star-Spangled Banner, the existing arrangements of which seemed to me very poor», explained Stravinsky, justifying his decision to give the hymn a new harmonic setting. Stravinsky created several versions of the work, which differed primarily in instrumentation and key signature. In 1939, the composer emigrated to the US and subsequently applied for citizenship. Stravinsky planned to dedicate his Star-Spangled Banner to the then president F.D. Roosevelt and the American people. However, the Roosevelt administration declined to accept Stravinsky’s hymn.

Stravinsky, who explored new musical aesthetics in other works such as Le Sacre du printemps or Pétrouchka, employed a more traditional Klangsprache for his version of Star-Spangled Banner: «My wish was to mold this music in the traditions of the most severe classic voice leading», stated the composer. In his reharmonization of the Star-Spangled Banner, he uses less chromatic harmonies, i.e. harmonies outside of the key, than are present in the version composed by Walter Damrosch during the First World War and officially recognized by Congress in 1931. While Damrosch’s chromatisms had already settled into the collective ear, Stravinsky’s version contained unfamiliar «Stravinskian chords that will make the average American eyebrow leap to a new high».

The remake of the Star-Spangled Banners earned Stravinsky not only musical criticism but even prompted legal problems. On January 15th, 1944, the composer wanted to conduct his hymn at the Symphony Hall in Boston. But only moments before the performance was to commence, the new version was prohibited by police. Stravinsky reported: «a Police Commissioner appeared in my dressing-room and informed me of a Massachusetts law forbidding any ‘tampering’ with national property. He said that policemen had already been instructed to remove my arrangements from the music stands». Ultimately, the traditional version of the hymn was performed that night. Although the law mentioned by Stravinsky is still in effect today, it hasn’t held the music world back from performing new versions of the hymn. Jimi Hendrix, for example, not only famously played his own version of the Star-Spangled Banner at Woodstock but also later on in Massachusetts.

Besides the criticism and negative repercussions that Stravinsky endured because of his Star-Spangled Banner, the work also had its admirers. Shortly after its first performance a reviewer noted: «Stravinsky's new harmonization of The Star-Spangled Banner, which may seem strange to conventional ears, yet cuts new facets of beauty in the gem of a noble melody». These musical ‘new facets’ in Stravinsky’s Star-Spangled boldly follow their own laws.

[CONSERVATION-RESTORATION]

Provenance research could be a new concept for viewers, since it reflects a desire on the part of museums to emphasise the importance of provenance, notably through exhibitions such as the Curt Glaser exhibition at the Kunstmuseum Basel, the Gurlitt exhibition at the Kunstmuseum Bern or the Bührle collection at the Kunsthaus Zurich. This focus helps to raise awareness of the historical and legal significance of cultural assets, and of the consequences that provenance can have. A provenance study is currently being carried out on the Bührle collection, which could have legal consequences such as restitution.

Provenance can be understood as the succession of changes in the legal status of a cultural object. This notion is linked to other changes such as the evolution of alterations, the evolution of the environments surrounding the cultural property, the various restorations or the impact on authenticity and original character. It is therefore an invaluable concept for attaching values to cultural property, carrying out an examination and diagnosis with a view to a conservation-restoration project, observing a potential impact on authenticity or determining whether cultural property has been illicitly trafficked. This research process thus allows for a higher quality conservation process, for legally and ethically responsible treatment of cultural heritage and for raising awareness of this responsibility. It also enables a cultural asset to be fully appreciated beyond its artistic or technical aspects, because a cultural asset is part of a set of values (associative, historical, scientific, commemorative, etc.) as categorised by Aloïs Riegl, Roslyn Russel, Kylie Winkworth and Barbara Appelbaum. The assessment of cultural values requires knowledge of successive historical, legal, artistic and societal contexts, of the societal importance surrounding the cultural asset, and of the materiality and provenance of a cultural asset.

Provenance research is not necessarily a new concept. In fact, it is a concept that is already well known in museum practice and to independent conservation-restoration professionals, as it forms part of the crucial documentation of a cultural object. It is a professional principle combined with a duty of care enshrined in the Code of Ethics of the International Council of Museums (ICOM) and is recognised and exercised by practitioners in terms of new acquisitions and new mandates. However, this is less true of Swiss federal museum policy, as the importance attached to provenance research has only recently increased significantly, as demonstrated by the creation of an independent commission of experts for cultural heritage with a problematic past by the Swiss Federal Council in November 2023. This is now a major issue, with the aim of stepping up provenance research in federal collections and creating an independent commission for disputes concerning the restitution of works of art.

At the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, Miriam Cahn presented her exhibition "Ma pensée sérielle" (2023) with 200 works, which often show naked figures against an abstract background and deal with topics such as violence in Ukraine. One picture of forced fellatio sparked fierce controversy when it was claimed to depict a child. The child protection movement Innocence en danger (Innocence in danger) protested and called for the artist to publicly condemn pedophilia. Despite statements by Cahn and the Palais de Tokyo, the debate was non-productive. Innocence en danger was accused of having political motives and many supporters of the exhibition also rose up in response to the uproar, but ultimately the matter had to be settled in court. The situation raises questions about the boundary between art and reality and the role of institutions in dealing with controversial works.

The picture is abstract and does not allow any clear conclusions to be drawn about the age or gender of the person being coerced. Although the slender physique and size evoke associations reminiscent of a young person, they also reflect Cahn's illustrative skill in emphasizing the power dynamic between the figures through the difference in size and their positioning in the picture.

In such public "cancel campaigns", however, the works are shared and condemned outside of the artistic context - in this case, the criticized image was photographed by the president of the child protection movement and posted on Twitter. As a result, it is shown outside its intended sphere of influence. On the one hand, this means that it reaches people who are not the target audience, and on the other hand, it cannot have its intended effect.

Considering that the painting was located in a separate room at the Palais de Tokyo, which was equipped with trigger warnings and monitored, and that, contrary to the claims of the child protection movement, the Palais de Tokyo hardly has any underage visitors, the uproar seems exaggerated.

The shift of art from a privilege of the aristocracy to a common property of society creates tensions between different opinions, and you cannot please everyone. In this case, art was protected by the legal system from the invasive tendencies of politics.

It consisted of countless wooden pallets, was installed on the Bahnhofsplatz in Biel in 2019 and was dedicated to the writer Robert Walser (1878-1956): the Robert Walser-Sculpture by Thomas Hirschhorn. The sculpture’s actual art was not its wooden construction, but the interactions it stimulated. People met on the sculpture, tagged it, or painted pictures on the pallets. Instead of the traditional art-historical concept of distanced, passive art viewers, the Robert Walser-Sculpture called for an active audience to get involved and become participants - a concept that was actively implemented and demonstrated not least by the fact that the wooden structure became more and more colourful in the course of the 86 day-exhibition.

The artwork also created controversy: some were upset that the work "blocked" the station square, others doubted whether the Robert Walser-Sculpture was art at all. By declaring every reaction with, through and about the Robert Walser-Sculpture as part of the sculpture, negative opinions, too, transformed into art and its creators became participants.

The boundaries between positively connoted participation of an audience and attacks - maybe even vandalism - seem to be fluid. Its perception has also changed in the history of art and of the Schweizerische Plastikausstellung – this outdoor sculpture exhibition has been taking place since 1954 and its 13th edition provided the framework for Hirschhorn's work. Smearing a sculpture was historically condemned as malicious vandalism. Today, such an act could be read as the expression of opinion of an active audience. The legal definition of vandalism diverges from an artistic or social sensibility. It even seems as if the concept of vandalism becomes obsolete when an artist declares all reactions within a work to be art.

With such active participation of individuals, the question of authorship arises: did the participants become artists of the Robert Walser-Sculpture? They didn’t. The participants’ productivity was desired by Hirschhorn and therefore belonged to the sculpture, to which Thomas Hirschhorn declared himself to be the sole artist. The Robert-Walser-Sculpture was his idea, his realisation, his art.

The history of art builds on a long tradition of borrowing, altering and appropriating. Making reference to existing motifs within the history of art enables artists to refer to, comment, and expand on the socio-cultural meanings that have commonly been attributed to them. Embedded in a particular social context, such changes in meaning become particularly evident across different eras. The prominent representation of Venus, for instance, takes on markedly different meanings across its portrayals in Titian’s Venus of Urbino (1538), Manet’s Olympia (1863) and Erizku’s I Have Three Hearts (2017). This may be equally stark among contemporary sources: in the 1950s, pop artists like Andy Warhol directly replicated images from popular culture as a means of social criticism. The use of existing images is thus integral to the ability of art to operate within its social and historical context. Having come to raise issues concerning authorship, however, these artistic acts of appropriation enter in conflict with the law.

The copyright infringement case concerning Andy Warhol’s use of Lynn Goldsmith’s photograph of Prince has been debated before the US Supreme Court. In 1981, Goldsmith was commissioned by Newsweek to photograph Prince. The black-and-white portrait intended to portray the upcoming singer’s identity. Three years later, Warhol received this photo as reference to create a silkscreen for Vanity Fair. Bold contours, bright colors, and a new two-dimensionality differentiate Warhol’s reproductions from Goldsmith’s black-and-white photograph. The pop artist's controversial work, portraying Prince’s now iconic identity, is immediately recognizable as Warhol's creation and is thus to be acknowledged as an independent work of art in style, color, and medium. Whether the silkscreens are deemed an infringement of Goldsmith’s work by legal institutions will not only influence the ability of artists to freely copy to create new art, but even that of art and educational institutions to exhibit and discuss appropriative art. The transformative character and creative intent of artworks, a matter whose legal qualification is disputed among lawyers, remains an important artistic and art historical field. The ability to build on existent imagery is ultimately an indispensable artistic freedom that requires protection by law.

Small gray signs and orange shapes on large white panels are reminiscent of cartographic images such as maps or floor plans: “The Division of the Earth” is an installation by artist Dierk Schmidt (*1965), exhibited among others at documenta 12 in Kassel in 2007. The installation consists of a large number of individual bas-reliefs, designed as diagrams of legal synopses of the Berlin Africa Conference (1884-1885). The installation deals with laws written at that time and the global effects of colonial rule up to present times. But how can a factual legal document with brutal consequences be translated into the visual realm?

The artist Schmidt develops his own system of symbols for his works and thus translates the complex legal language into the abstraction of painting. With the help of an accompanying caption, the installation's diagrams can be deciphered by the viewer.

The individual works examine history, its depiction and definition within art, as well as its present-day consequences on several interpretative levels. Semiotically, the African conference in Berlin at the time is mapped through written excerpts and summary bullet points from the "Acte Général" drafted during that time. The genocide of the Herero and Nama in what is now Namibia by German troops and the ongoing legal and political struggle for compensation and apologies is depicted in an abstract manner by means of abstract floor plans, maps, and supplementary letter excerpts. Tables listing the present states and uninvited indigenous countries of origin on the African continent complete the depiction of the "division of the earth" between the colonial powers of the time.

Amidst the images reduced to color and motif, the structural violence of colonialism is revealed. Thus, the installation becomes a new and modern form of the historiographic image.

Within a series of Suzanne Lacy's early pieces on the human body and its anatomy, "Body Contract" was created in 1974. As with many of Lacy's works, "Body Contract" responds to the events of its time and was intended to stimulate discussion and change.

Shortly after the first heart was successfully transplanted in 1967 and the transplantation of organs was assured a future in medicine, Lacy's piece "Body Contract" was born. With this, Lacy responded to a series of newspaper advertisements that appeared around 1970, which, presumably out of financial concerns, advertised the private sale of organs. The possibility of transplantation suddenly created a need for organs and opened up a new market.

„Body Contract“ is a legally binding contract in which the artist sells the disposition to various transplantable body parts after her death as artworks. The piece consists of 14 pages of paper typed on a typewriter and contains four attachments, as well as a price list of the artist's various body parts. With the purchase, the potential buyers receive the contract as a work of art and the right to determine whether and where the respective body part should be donated after Lacy's death.

This work focuses on the human body and raises the question of the extent to which the law is allowed to determine its disposal. With this piece, she raised ethical and social questions and demonstrated the need for discussion and regulation within this era of medical innovations.

Right: View into the courtyard of the Reichtags-building onto the installation: "Der Bevölkerung" von Hans Haacke, Elisa Ludwig, Hans Haacke: Der Bevölkerung, Fotografie, 2022

Today, the white, almost life-sized illuminated letters "Der Bevölkerung" (The Population), framed by green thickets, rise inconspicuously from a rectangular vat in the northern atrium of the Reichstag building in Berlin. The German-American artist Hans Haacke (*1936) critically reflects on the question "Who exactly is represented by the German parliament?" in a time of political upheaval with his sculptural Earth Art installation "Der Bevölkerung".

The monumental 6.80 x 20 x 80 m large installation was realized as part of the Kunst-am-Bau projects for the Reichstag building that was to be redesigned. The selection of the artworks was made by the committee "Kunstbeirat" (Art Advisory Board), whose criteria were the overall artistic concept and historical reference to the location, considering the biography of the artist as well as his or her previous work.

Hans Haacke was directly approached for the project by the art advisory board and belatedly submitted his first sketch for the art installation in August 1999. The lettering "Der Bevölkerung” which should form the centre of his installation, functioned as a supplement to the lettering "Dem deutschen Volke" (To the German People) affixed to the west portal of the German Reichstag building. For the artist, the lettering attached by Emperor Friedrich Wilhelm in 1916 to mobilise for war has an exclusionary function with citizens living in Germany but not holding German citizenships. Next to referring to a quote by Bertolt Brecht with the inscription "Der Bevölkerung”, it was Haackes’ wish that each member of parliament adds 50 kg of soil from his or her electoral district or hometown to the installation when taking office. Thus, he wanted to create an inclusive framework and emphasise the function of the Bundestag as the representation of all citizens.

Through participation and the choice of soil as a material, he wanted to create a symbol for a joint understanding of Germany, which constantly changes and transforms itself. His aim was thus to develop a field of tension between the two letterings and to encourage critical reflection on the representative function of the Bundestag. Although the submitted concept paper fulfilled all the desired criteria, a heated debate flared up in Germany’s public and political spheres about the lettering and the participatory character of the artwork even before the installation was completed. These targeted in particular the characteristics of the work, to which some, such as Antje Vollmer, then a member of parliament for Bündnis 90/Die Grünen, said that “A sizeable luminous inscription in ancient letters on a bed of German soil is simply biokitsch [to me].”

The female nude is also the focus of Robert Colescott's artwork “Sunday Afternoon with Joaquin Murietta”, but certainly not with the same connotations as in Manet's work. Unlike Édouard Manet's work “Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe”, it is not primarily the nudity itself that is intended to provoke discussion here, but the often racist and sexual stereotypes of that of a naked black woman associated with it. Robert Colescott uses Manet's image to place it in a new context. Thus, it is not a derivation, for this would require the adoption of certain interpretive aspects.

Colescott's problem manifests itself primarily in the overrepresentation of white women in female nudes in art history. In addition, the nudity of a black woman is rarely depicted in the same way as that of a white woman. Colescott plays with these stereotypes by not trying to portray the woman in his painting the same way as the one in Manet's painting, but by understanding her as an emancipated woman. Indications for this theory are the boots she wears, as well as the clothes and weapons lying next to her. If we compare her outfit with that of the men in the picture, it quickly becomes clear that the three meet at eye level. Robert Colescott thus seems to be deliberately not aiming for a derivation of Manet's work, for he does not equate the respective main characters in the two works with one another and thus does not derive the problem of nudity from Manet's female nude to his work at the time. Rather, he places the female nude in his painting in a new context, primarily addressing racial and sexual stereotypes. Here, the sexual stereotypes are not related to nudity per se, but to the issue of equality between men and women. It follows, then, that Colescott's work is to be considered an original work and not a mere derivative of Manet's.

The Pinoncelli affair dates back to 1993, when the artist Pierre Pinoncely, his real name, urinated in Marcel Duchamp's famous Fountain (1917), signed "R. Mutt.", and then smashed it with a hammer.

Marcel Duchamp is considered one of the fathers of the Dada movement, a movement that goes against all historical-artistic categories, is provocative and challenges notions of art and beauty by playing with the absurd. Duchamp's goal with this piece was to show that a work of art, whether made with one's own hands or not, lies in its essence and not in its craftsmanship. By declaring Richard Mutt the author, Duchamp challenged notions of ownership of creation and manufacture between the wholesaler and the artist. Although this urinal is now the most famous urinal in the world, its reception in 1917 was anything but. It was not considered a work of art, but at best a misappropriated industrial object.

Curiously, Pinoncelli justified his act with several versions. Sometimes he was of the opinion that the work of art had been mystified and had therefore lost its provocative side. Another time, he claimed that he had closed the cycle of the "Fountain": An industrial object transformed into a work of art and then, "thanks to Pinoncelli" (as he said), it became a simple industrial object again.

The paradox is that he declared he completed the artistic process started by Duchamp and even demanded to be recognised as a co-author, but at the same time he also declared to have freed the urinal from its concept as a work of art and thus to have broken only an industrial object. What then did he want to be co-author of, if not the work of art?

"That's why I only painted pictures that could have existed." With these words, Wolfgang Beltracchi sums up his notorious forger career. In his career, the artist described by Der Spiegel as the forger of the century has imitated works of art in the style of many different masters, predominantly from the 19th and 20th centuries.

Today, among other things, Beltracchi uses his undeniable talent to create forgery-proof crypto art in the form of Non-Fungible Tokens (NFT). For the project "The Greats", he made around 2600 NFTs using photo-technical processing, based on the work "Salvator Mundi" attributed to Leonardo Da Vinci, which he reinterpreted in the styles of a wide variety of artists and epochs. All of Beltracchi's variations on the world's most expensive painting are unique and, since 2021, have been available for purchase both as NFTs and physically. Beltracchi thus continues to imitate other artists, with the difference that today he signs with his own name. In doing so, he calls the concept of artistic autonomy into question. However, in a historical context, the concept and meaning of artistic autonomy or work originality have been interpreted in various ways. Especially north of the Alps, the artist was seldom in the foreground, as buyers were often indifferent to the origin of the acquired artwork. Motif and aesthetics were more important - the concept of genius, on the other hand, appeared only in rare cases. In the workshops that trained painters, for example, the apprentices and journeymen adapted the style of their masters. They fulfilled a large number of commissions together with them or even independently. To this day, this can make attributing a work a challenge and is therefore often only possible through experts and technological means.

Even today, some artists create their works with the help of assistants, which raises the question of how much an artist must have contributed to the work for it to be considered an autonomous work of art. In addition, since the beginning of the academic training of artists, old masters were often studied and their work served as a source of inspiration for the creation of new works of art. Beltracchi has made a name for himself as an imitator and even though he continues to imitate other artists’ styles, today he creates works that can be clearly attributed to his person. Through years of studying the masters, he has learned their styles autodidactically, as it were, and paradoxically created his own style by imitating others.

On 15 Stavropoulou street in Athens there is a Neo-classical building with yellowed paint peeling off the façade. Like many buildings in Athens, it is abandoned and left to its decay. Due to higher rents, increasing property taxes and raised fees for historical buildings, many Greek working-class owners were forced to relinquish their property and homes in the aftermath of the world financial crisis from 2007-09.

Against the backdrop of the Greek government using cultural protection law as a provisional fix and bursting real estate speculation, German artist Maria Eichhorn developed an artwork called Κτίριο ως περιουσία άνευ ιδιοκτήτη / Building as Unowned Property (2017-) which attempted to fundamentally inverse property rights by converting the above-mentioned building’s legal status to “unowned“. The legal negotiations and documentation of the administrative process were exhibited at the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens, as part of Documenta 14. Under the premise of “Learning from Athens“, the exhibition program took place in equal parts in Kassel and Athens, aiming to rethink Eurocentric perspectives and decentralize the northwestern canon. Eichhorn’s counterpart project in Kassel, Rose Valland Institute, consisted of founding an organization whose aim is to address unresolved ownership and property claims relating to Nazi expropriation of Jewish citizens’ possessions in Germany. Both projects are to be understood interdependently as they reveal and trouble systems of value by also redirecting flows of power and capital. Eichhorn’s artistic practice undermines concepts of ownership and property through bureaucratic procedures of legal frameworks enacting a new form of critical mimesis and self-reflexivity within institutional critique.

Since in Greek law there is no official mechanism to declare a property as “unowned“, Eichhorn ultimately considered the application for cultural heritage protection. According to Article 46 par. 1 of L. 3028/2002 the decisive power over the usage of a cultural “monument“ remains within the State. Notions of private and public property, use and ownership and the way they are being challenged (or not) are diverging in law and art. Eventually, the deal fell through as the property did not prove suitable due to the variety of parties owning shares of the building. As of today, the property remained shut.

Art is a very personal thing. Some people like complex pieces that make them think, while others prefer simpler paintings that are easy to appreciate. But what if we told you that there was a new type of art that was created by artificial intelligence (AI)? Some people might be skeptical of art generated by a machine, but we think it is worth checking out. After all, AI is capable of creating some truly amazing things.

In recent years, artificial intelligence has made great strides in the field of art. AI-generated art has been featured in major galleries and museums around the world and has even been sold at auctions for tens of thousands of dollars. Some of the world’s leading artists are also using AI to create new works of art. The results are often stunning, and sometimes even disturbing. One of the most famous examples of AI-generated art is “The Next Rembrandt”, a portrait created by a team of Dutch researchers. Using over 150 million pixels of Rembrandt’s paintings, the AI was able to create a completely new painting that captures the artist’s style and technique. Another example is “Ai-da”, an AI-generated portrait of a woman that was created by a British artist. The painting caused a stir when it was unveiled, as many people thought it resembled a real person instead of a computer-generated image.

AI-generated art is not just limited to painting, it can also write. A Japanese company called burial service has created an AI that writes haiku poems about the departed. The poems are said to be surprisingly moving and have even been used in funeral ceremonies. As AI continues to evolve, it is likely that we will see more and more amazing examples of artworks and texts created by an artificial intelligence. One of them is this very text.

William Hogarth's Marriage A-la-Mode is a series of six images intended for copperplate etching. Hogarth completed the drawings as early as 1744, but it took another two years for three engravers of French descent to complete the etchings. After the tremendous success of the first two cycles within the context of a modern moral subject, actors from the upper class now come into play for the first time in this cycle. The story centres around an arranged marriage between the frivolous and syphilis-ridden son of a spendthrift earl, Lord of Squander, and the daughter of a greedy merchant. The series of pictures begins with the scene of the contractual marriage: papers, pen and inkwell refer to the contractual agreement. The story continues with scenes of the failing marriage, which reaches its pinnacle in the death of the countess in the last picture.

Through the contract, the two fathers are not arranging for their children to live happily together, but for their own wealth or status, which has tragic consequences. Sitting on the right side of the image is the viscount, who has syphilis, as indicated by the black mark on his neck. He does not even look at his wife before signing the contract. The other images point to the marriage falling apart, reaching its climax in the fifth act, titled The Bagno. Having lost both men, the Countess finally poisons herself, after which her ill child now cries out in vain. In the image on the other side, the father, seeming barely involved, pulls the wedding ring from her finger - thus the contract is finally dissolved. But there is no trace of remorse on the father's face.

A satirical depiction of the consequences of the legal failure at that time with regard to marriage is presented by Hogarth. The artist encourages the upper class to reflect on the social implications of a purely contractual marriage. By resorting to easily identifiable iconographic motifs of a contract, it allows him to be equally bold in his critique. The works point out the missing human-directed regulations in prenuptial agreements as well as the negotiation among living beings that result in far-reaching consequences.

Caravaggio uses dramatic lighting to direct the viewer's attention to the motionless body of a woman. In this painting of monumental size, the most brightly illuminated points within the painting draw the immediate focus to the face of a diagonally lying woman. It is the face of a dead woman. Somewhat swollen and with closed eyes, the features lack any sign of liveliness. One hand dangles powerlessly from an arm stretched far away from the body. The other hand lies equally lifeless on her stomach. Only the extremely subtle nimbus above the head and the iconographical characteristics of her red and blue robe reveal that this is not an ordinary dead woman, but the holy Mary herself.

Caravaggio's version of the death of Mary breaks the conventions of the way this theme is usually depicted. The very realistic portrayal of Mary as a recently deceased woman is unprecedented in the history of art. Usually, Mary was painted sitting or lying down with her hands folded in prayer. Her appearance usually resembled an idealized younger woman with gentle facial features. Moreover, despite the theme of dying, most artists‘ main focus was not on the physical state of death, but on her passage into the heavenly realm and her resurrection. Thus, in numerous images of the death of Mary, the theme of heaven, with angels awaiting her, is typically depicted. This is another instance in which Caravaggio goes against tradition: he locates the event in a sparse, dark setting, with nothing to suggest heavenly paradise. Another oddity is the woman sitting in front on the right. She is likely to be identifiable as Mary Magdalene, another highly unconventional placement within the theme of Mary's death.

Despite the original rejection of the work, Caravaggio created a work with such revolutionary iconography whose mysteries have not been fully solved to this day and continue to engage and baffle researchers.

The Grim Reaper behind Rodin's Gates of Hell on the Kunsthaus façade is the first of around 50 Dance of Death figures that the then 80-year-old Harald Naegeli, the sprayer of Zurich, sprayed in, or – as he himself likes to say, gifted to – the city of Zurich during the first lockdown of 2020. In doing so, Naegeli moved the tradition of medieval Dance of Death depictions, often affixed to cemetery walls, into the urban space, right in the middle of life. Whereas in medieval depictions the personified death usually dances with representatives of the various classes, Naegeli's bone men appear alone. Whoever walks past them becomes a potential dance partner and is thus invited to confront his or her own finitude. Naegeli's Dance of Death figures literally confront passers-by. They are not static wall drawings, but beings acting in (urban) space, as can be seen very beautifully in the example of the figure behind the Gates of Hell. By placing one foot on the base of the façade, the Grim Reaper does not remain in the surface, but seems to break out of the wall to walk directly towards the viewers.

The inclusion of architectural elements is one of the characteristic design features of Naegeli's graffiti, as it is the deliberate choice of location for his spray figures - for example Auguste Rodin's (1840-1917) Gates of Hell. The source of inspiration for this was the first part of Dante's "Divine Comedy" (ca. 1307), in which the hellish torments in the Inferno are described. The prospect of redemption in paradise, as in Dante's work, is no longer an issue in Rodin's work six centuries later. This is where Harald Naegeli, who describes himself as an agnostic, comes in, 100 years later, and goes one step further. His message: only death itself is certain, the rest is uncertain. With it, he caused - once again - polarisation and irritation in the midst of a time unsettled by the pandemic.

From the outside, the residential building on Badenerstrasse in Zurich betrays nothing of its pioneering role. If it weren't for the art-in-architecture installation by the Danish artist group Superflex. On the south-western façade of the house, which was erected in 2010 as the first building in Switzerland to comply with the guidelines of the 2000-watt society, "The Contract" is emblazoned on metre-high metal panels. In it, the residents publicly commit to keeping their energy consumption to a maximum of 2000 watts per year. If they break the contract, the rest of the world is entitled to social compensation or damages.

Not only the written content, but also the typographic form, the font as well as the typesetting and the aspect ratios of the metal panels, which are based on a 4A format, take up the aesthetics of a legally binding document. Here, the artwork not only assumes the role of a mediator, it also formulates quite explicitly and draws attention to the environmental problem in the form of a legal document: it visualises it in a form that is both rationally concrete and legally abstract and striking.

However, the work not only refers to a grievance, but ennobles the residents and the building as a climate-conscious prime example.

On the one hand, the symbolic contract has an inward effect by creating a positive identification with its residents. On the other hand, the phrase "the rest of the world" can be used to address everyone standing in front of the building.

Does this contract concern me?  Was I, as part of the rest of the world, even asked whether I wanted to agree to such a contract? Neither I nor the residents signed the contract. And what does "social compensation" mean anyway?  But maybe this hits exactly at the heart of the environmental problem, because we are all affected by the consequences of too much energy consumption, regardless of whether we agree to something or not.

But what if I were to take the artwork seriously as a contract?...

One of the bronze casts of the Gates of Hell by the French sculptor Auguste Rodin (1840-1917) is located to the right of the entrance to the Kunsthaus Zurich. The casts in bronze were made after Rodin’s death, based on a plaster model by the artist. Rodin himself thus never saw the completed work and had consequently no say in its completion. Whether the bronze cast can be considered as an original is discussed below.

In her article, The Originality of the Avantgarde, the art theorist Rosalind Krauss argues that the bronze cast is not an original by Rodin according to the modernist notion of originality, because the plaster model was not yet completed at the time of his death. Thus, the plaster sculpture was still in the process of development and no final original by Rodin existed that could have served as a model for the bronze casts. She also criticises that the casts were made only years after Rodin’s death, and therefore could not have taken up the style of his period. She calls the bronze casts reproductions without an original.

On the other hand, one could also argue that since the casts are based on Rodin’s ideas the sculpture could still be said to be original. Since there was no uniform sculptural style in the 19th century, Rodin wanted to create something new, which he achieved with his Gates of Hell. It is unique for its time and ground-breaking for the subsequent development of sculpturing. The figures of the Gates of Hell are characterised by their three-dimensionality and Rodin’s peculiar treatment of the material. Consequently, the artist’s original creative accomplishments in the development of the work are evident.

Whether the posthumous cast can be said to be an original by Rodin is therefore, just like the concept of originality itself, disputed from an art-historical perspective.

With the multimedia work "The Barragán Archives" (2013-2016), the US-American conceptual artist Jill Magid continued her examination of various forms of power structures, as realised in earlier projects. "The Barragán Archives" materialises Magid's preoccupation with the estate of the award-winning Mexican architect Luis Barragán (1902-1988) and sheds light on the actors involved in it, their relationship to each other and the legal, economic and social conditions of their interaction.

After Barragán's death, his personal legacy became the property of the Mexican state of Jalisco. His artistic archive was acquired by the Swiss furniture company Vitra in 1995 and has since been administered under the auspices of the "Barragan Foundation". The impetus for Magid's interest in the theme was the inaccessibility and thus impossible public engagement with Barragán's archive materials, which are protected by Swiss copyright.

Magid developed a conceptual language for her project that always moves along the border of the legal. The resulting work-internal logic of the sculptures and installations explicitly points to their legal conditions of origin and plays with their compliance. For example, the artist was prohibited from reproducing photographs from the artistic archive as part of her exhibition "Woman with Sombrero" (2013). In order to nevertheless present images of Barragán's works, Magid framed pictures that were on books on Barragán published by Vitra and hung them on the wall, like readymades. In Europe - in contrast to the USA - she had to hide a reproduction of the lectern designed by Barragán ("Facistol") with a blanket in order to avoid prosecution. With these well thought-out "tightrope walks", Magid succeeded in pointing the recipients to her central questions with visual means: Who should be allowed to dispose of an artist's legacy and determine its survival in the public sphere? And: Who does copyright protect, who does it benefit?

Jean-Michel Basquiat's (1960-1988) drawing "Free Comb with Pagoda", which he created in 1986, was offered for sale as an NFT on the OpenSea trading platform. NFTs (non-fungible tokens) are non-exchangeable digital files that can be traded as image files, for example. The NFT is stored on the blockchain, a database, in the form of a code. Information about current and past owners and purchase values can be viewed. This new technology thus facilitates provenance research.

The greed for the ownership and trade of digital goods becomes clear in the case of the Basquiat NFT. What is unusual about this case is that the provider of the NFT advertised the possibility of destroying the original if the purchase was successful. This raises the question of the extent to which the deceased artist's drawing may be destroyed and a new original created from it without his consent. It seems that the seller's sole intention was to make as high a profit as possible through his offer. The buyer is given the choice of how the drawing should continue to exist. This approach seems to be similar to conceptual art, in which artists suggest to buyers how to deal with their art. Just as conceptual artists issue certificates of authenticity for their works to create private property, NFTs offer the possibility of digital confirmation of ownership.

It is questionable whether a digital copy of Basquiat's work could be declared a new original, but the NFT's entry in the blockchain makes it unique. It undoubtedly would have assumed a controversial status in the NFT world, which would have been reflected in a rising price in the face of the hype. The duplicate, which is technologically unique, certainly fits into the philosophy of concept art; on the other hand, the monetary and materialistic aspect of the NFT contradicts an art that tends to be critical of capitalism.

On 5 October 2018, a queue of people of considerable length formed outside the Thaddaeus Ropac Gallery in London. The destination of those waiting was the "Swiss Passport Office", which had been installed in the gallery by US artist Tom Sachs as part of Frieze Week. The project promised visitors a double attraction: for 24 hours, anyone could purchase a Swiss passport for 20 euros and thus take home an original work by Sachs.

As it is common for the issuance of genuine Swiss passports, the acquisition of the little red book at the "Swiss Passport Office" was also associated with bureaucratic effort. After hours of waiting, the aspirants of the Swiss identity were called to one of the desks with the help of a number display. In seemingly typical Swiss fashion, the office in the sterile room was meticulously tidy, the materials numbered, and the individual desk ensembles symmetrically juxtaposed. Under the watchful eye of numerous surveillance cameras, the visitors had to fill out a form with their details and have their picture taken by a Polaroid camera. Sachs then stuck a prepared copy of the passport into his typewriter, typed in the data and pasted in the photo - the new Swiss identity was ready.

Although presumably difficult to use for traveling, various details such as watermarks, writing, and the machine-readable zone emphasized the similarity of the issued passports to their Swiss originals. Why did (and still does) this Swiss identity hold such appeal? With his installation, Sachs referred to Swiss "virtues" such as exactitude, professionalism, and, by extension, to the country's desirable prosperity. In theory, he made a share of this available to all, while at the same time he subtly parodied these values, thus putting the concept of states and borders to the test. And yet one could wonder if this did not create (perhaps deliberately) a new, exclusive status symbol.

The Pucará figure, scholars agree, dates between 200 BC and 200 AD and comes from the centre of the pre-Columbian Pukara culture, in what is now the state of Peru. While travelling in Bolivia, the Swiss naturalist Johann Jakob von Tschudi acquired the Pucará figure in unfair conditions in 1858. As Tschudi's travelogues, published in 1869, describe, although the former owner initially resisted the sale, he eventually agreed to it under the influence of alcohol offered by Tschudi.

According to the Aymara, an indigenous people of the high Andes of Bolivia, the 16 cm tall stone sculpture is the embodiment of the spirit of the god of prosperity "Ekeko". Scientists disagree about the identification and meaning of the figure. When the Bolivian government formally applied for restitution for the first time in 2013, there was great skepticism on the part of Berne. Based on the age and origin of the figure, both interested parties, the Bernisches Historisches Museum (BHM) and the Museo Nacional de Arqueología de Bolivia (MUNARQ), concluded that the stone figure was a cultural heritage of humanity and that both were equally committed to bearing responsibility for the stone figure. Finally, in 2014, the BHM handed over the figure to MUNARQ together with a binding agreement of joint cooperation, following the ethical guidelines of the International Council of Museums (ICOM).

As in the aftermath of the restitution the figure was used in the context of political and religious events, the BHM declared in its 2014 annual report that the agreement with MUNARQ had been violated. The case of the Pucará figure raises questions regarding ongoing power relations. In the future, it must be critically questioned who actually bears the power to decide on legal claims to ownership, who has the authority to interpret the destination of an object and to what extent the law perpetuates asymmetrical power relations.