“Legs”: Art Law Issues Stand Out in a New Documentary

By Adelaide Dunn

In Sag Harbor, NY, a fiery local debate over a prominent artwork, which started in 2008 and still rages on, has led residents to consider exactly what it means to live in a small town with a big personality. Legs: A Big Issue in a Small Town (2015) is a documentary by Sag Harbor-based filmmaking power couple Beatrice Alda and Jennifer Brooke, which tells the heartfelt and amusing story of a giant pair of legs and a multilayered community struggling to define its identity (See trailer: https://vimeo.com/162895102). 

A haven for artists, intellectuals and freethinkers, Sag Harbor is situated at the center of New York’s Hamptons – where a long list of creatives, including Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning, have lived and worked. But, as the documentary reveals, the town also has a rich whaling history and toytown vibe that its self-described “natives” strive to preserve.

The sculpture at the heart of the issue is a large pair of legs, created by Larry Rivers (1923-2002). A known provocateur, Rivers “had the audacity to challenge abstract expressionism” by combining figuration with abstraction and parodying the old masters. (Jackson Pollock once tried to run over one of Rivers' sculptures in East Hampton.) Visitors had to walk through the middle of the Legs to enter Rivers’ studio nearby in the town of Southampton. Some were amused and others annoyed, sowing the early seeds of discord surrounding the Legs.