When art cannot be removed

, 01 September 1998 - [ E-mail a Friend ]

On 26th August 1998 the Deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott, issued a ruling that works of art, including a world-renowned Henry Moore sculpture and a Ben Nicholson painting, must be returned to the Grade II listed Time & Life Building in New Bond Street, London. It is a landmark ruling which will have implications for works of art in all UK listed buildings.

The ruling should be the end of a six year battle between Westminster City Council and the US corporation Time Life which has seen two public enquiries and a legal battle under which Westminster City Council appealed after losing a High Court case to keep the works of art in place four years ago. In March 1997 the Court of Appeal quashed the original decision and ordered a new enquiry by the Department of the Environment, which is a department now headed by John Prescott in his role as Secretary of State for Transport, the Environment and the Regions. Time Life has a right of appeal against the ruling; however, because of the guidance issued by the Court of Appeal on what constitutes "fixtures and fittings" in law and the extreme care taken over the past eighteen months by the new enquiry, it is generally considered that an appeal would be unlikely to succeed.

For Michael Lowndes, the conservation and urban design officer for Westminster City Council, it has been a painstaking task to research the full story on the Time & Life building even though it is comparatively recent having been the first major piece of architecture to be constructed in London after World War II. It was designed by the Austrian architect Michael Rosenauer and reflected his passion for marrying art and architecture which he was able to do to a remarkable degree because of the availability of the dollar funds from Time Life. As Lowndes concedes "The new building punched a hole in the austere postwar reconstruction process. Time Life and Pearl Assurance owned the site and the Americans bankrolled it. They were able to overcome restrictions at the time on materials through the use of the dollar as the building was regarded as an investment in the country. It was built by Pearl, the UK insurance group, which still owns it but with Time Life's money which was reflected in the lease arrangements."

Westminster City Council are delighted with the ruling. Lowndes sees it as a decision of "tremendous importance not only to the special architectural and artistic interest of the Time & Life Building but also in the national interpretation of fixtures and fittings law relating to listed buildings in the United Kingdom". Referring to the long battle, councillor Alan Bradley, chairman of Westminster's environment and planning committee said "We were determined. It is an important landmark decision. It means that key works of public art that are integral to a building cannot just be treated like a set of plaster ducks and taken with you when you move".

Reaction to the ruling has been predictably mixed. Conservationists saying "great as far as it goes" but now lobbying for provisions for sculpture of significant interest to be protected regardless of the merit of the surrounding building. Those in real estate development are suggesting that it will discourage them from commissioning work that they may subsequently wish to move. It is also clear that many people are reading too much into the ruling seeing it as inconsistent with the right to remove one's own possessions.

The reality is that every case will rest on its own special facts and for such a ruling to apply there has to be both a listed building and a notable work of art which is integral to that listed building. Integral means that the work of art must constitute a fixture and fitting for which it is necessary to demonstrate annexation to the building in question, for which either or both of degree or purpose of annexation can be relevant. It is useful to examine the Time & Life building ruling.

For example, the Nicholson painting, "The Spirit of Architecture" currently said to be worth around +400,000 is no ordinary painting. It is extremely large, painted on board, firmly affixed to the wall by special battons and then the edges overlaid with the same marble as the walls to secure it and form a sort of frame. Michael Lowndes confirms that the painting was specifically commissioned for the staircase and that both the colour treatment and the image was informed by the building and that samples of the marble were sent to Nicholson's studio. Therefore the Nicholson painting (or should it be mural?) meets the criteria as a fixture both on degree of physical attachment and on the purpose of annexation.

The Henry Moore sculpture, a reclining bronze female figure valued at around +1 million, is currently on display at the National Gallery in Scotland. Richard Calvocoressi, the keeper of the gallery in Edinburgh where the Moore has been on loan for the last four years admits that he will be sad to lose her and notes that the bronze has been seen by well over 750,000 people during its exhibition at the gallery. But again there is a strong case to regard the Henry Moore bronze as integral to the Time & Life Building which was a free-standing building on a bombsite, separated from the adjacent building by a first floor terrace. The architect Michael Rosenauer had sought the advice of leading British architects, artists and craftsman (including Sir Hugh Casson) on the internal spaces; out of this Moore was commissioned to create the bronze as the centerpiece of the first-floor terrace - as a climax to a grand sequence of spaces which were enlivened by contemporary works of art and craft. Moore was also commissioned to create a first floor screen - four abstract reliefs set in a stonewall - which are also protected by the ruling as was another sculpture, the Complexities of Man, by Geoffrey Clarke.

Then there was the astralobe, a symbolic clock commissioned from the Ironside Brothers which designed encompassed the British Lion and the American Eagle to denote the ties of the Time & Life Building to both the United Kingdom and United States.\r\n\r\nIt can be argued that any one of the these items would, by themselves, have met the criteria for a ruling as an important work of art integral to the listed building in which it was placed. But there can be little doubt that the expressed intention of Rosenauer to marry art with architecture for the Time & Life building and his success in bringing together such an array of leading artists and craftsmen of the time resulted in a particularly persuasive case for an example of art being integral to architecture.

The wider implications of the ruling will take time to assess. But those interested will at least have some useful guidance from the Court of Appeal's decision and the Deputy Prime Minister's careful ruling on the Time & Life Building.