A Danish artist who delivered two framed clean canvases titled “Take the Money and Run” should repay the Kunsten Museum of Modern Art about $70,000 it had given him to breed artworks involving bodily forex, a Copenhagen courtroom dominated on Monday.

The museum had commissioned the artist, Jens Haaning, to recreate two of his earlier works, “An Average Austrian Year Income” (2007) and “An Average Danish Annual Income” (2010), which displayed money in euros and Danish kroner. For the objective of his new artworks, Haaning was given 532,549 kroner, based on the museum director, plus charges and bills.

But Haaning surprised the museum by sending it “Take the Money and Run,” which was included in an exhibition from September 2021 to January 2022. When the exhibition closed, Haaning didn’t return the cash, prompting the museum, which is in the northern metropolis of Aalborg, to file a lawsuit.

The Copenhagen courtroom pointed to the contract and the disbursement receipt, which each said that the kroner have been to be repaid after the exhibition. Though Haaning has mentioned he didn’t intend to return the cash, the courtroom added, the museum by no means agreed to these phrases.

In figuring out what Haaning owed, the courtroom allowed him to maintain nearly $6,000 from the museum’s mortgage to compensate him for the exhibiting of “Take the Money and Run.”

Haaning mentioned in an interview on Tuesday that the ruling was what he anticipated and that he has not repaid the cash as a result of, he argued, conserving the cash is itself the artwork.

“I will go so far to say that the piece is that I have taken the money,” he mentioned. “The two empty frames is actually a representation of the concept. So more important than the absence of money is that I’ve taken the money.”

He acknowledged that he didn’t fulfill the authentic fee.

“I completed something else,” he mentioned. “You’re asked to show a 10- and a 12-year-old work, and suddenly you have a better concept.”

In a statement responding to the decision, Lasse Andersson, the director of the Kunsten Museum, mentioned he would haven’t any remark whereas the case was continuing, noting that there was a four-week interval for appeals.

As a part of the authentic exhibition, the museum posted on its website that “Take the Money and Run” was in a convention of artwork “that leaves materials as a trace left behind or a framework for an idea or an action,” and in contrast it to works by Banksy and Bjorn Norgaard.

At the time, the museum added, “Even the lack of money in the work has a monetary value when it is designated as art and thus shows how the value of money is an abstract quantity.”

Lisa Abend and Torben Brooks contributed translation.