Something is rotten in the Guggenheim Museum. The spiraling rotunda that usually has beautiful painted art work or artifacts is empty. Spotless. Sterile. Except for the sprawling couple on the floor embraced in a kiss. These aren’t protestors. These aren’t real life lovers. They are dancers. Dancers interpreting the instructions of an artist in three hour increments on the Guggenheim floor.

What is this nonsense? Is this really art and more importantly, does it belong in the Guggenheim?

According to the Guggenheim and the artist, Tino Sehgal, it is most definitely art—hip, alive, fresh and boundary pushing—art. Except that this art is not what typically comes to mind when we think of art at a museum. This is a “live” art—one with slow and frequent motions, changing spacial relationships between bodies, enacting or interpreting some famous works such sculptures by Rodin (read: The kiss) and Courbet. 

The European born artist, himself a dancer, creates this art full of balletic montages and sexy, sensual human interactions. It is dance. It is theater. To Sehgal himself, his main goal is “to make something (a situation) from virtually nothing (actions, words) and then let that something disappear, leaving no potentially marketable physical trace.”

This has been called “material free art.” This“material free art” still apparently has a price tag, ownership rights, and one would think—insurance. For example, Sehgal’s “Kiss” at the Guggenheim is owned by the Museum of Modern Art. Legally speaking, only MOMA can sell or loan the“Kiss.” As a lawyer, this concept is troubling. First, how does one buy an original Sehgal? Second, how does MOMA enforce its rights over what is essentially, a dance piece. Further, how does MOMA prosecute or control the unauthorized reproductions of the “Kiss”?

According to the artist, to buy an original Sehgal,you will have to verbally contract with him in the presence of a notary. Theartist has five stipulations: (1) that the work be established by someone authorized by Sehgal himself with the proper training and collaboration; (2)that the people enacting the work be paid a certain sum; (3) that the work be shown over a six week period; (4) that the piece will not be photographed; (5)and if the work would like to be resold, that these same conditions apply.

After all this is said and done, how does one enforce his rights to an original Sehgal? This is troublesome not only against Sehgal himself (that he doesn’t resell ten ‘original’ “Kiss” art pieces to ten different people) but against, say, another artist setting up a similar art,borrowing from, being influenced by or outright copying Sehgal?

Though ultimately Sehgal’s work is definitely some sort of art in my mind, it arguably belongs on a theatric stage rather than in the halls of a famed fine art museum.

Here’s a link to the Guggenheim exhibit: www.guggenheim.org/new-york/exhibitions/on-view-now/tino-sehgal