Who does the art belong to?

Lawyers can fight for virtually rights, justice (ideally) on just about anything, from pharmaceuticals, corporate, criminal, divorce, and even my favorite art. It is always a question of appropriation, what belongs to whom. In the case of art, this is going to go unnoticed by anyone because no one has a clear definition of art (this changes all the time) and then there is the question of who owns the art.

Is it the creator? Does the artist really own the art since he doesn’t really have anything appropriate for the artwork once he has left the studio? In terms of appropriation, there is something like artist resale rights (or droit de suite in French, the origin of the term) where the artist can claim royalties, a percentage of the final sale price when a public transaction has taken place. However, artist resale rights only exist in certain countries (not the US for the most part), so whether the art belongs to the original creator might depend on the nationality of the original creator. It seems a bit manipulative.

Then there is the artist-gallery relationship. The artist produces the work, but the gallery that represents the artist has some property rights in the work; they typically get a generous 50% reduction off the final sale price for all the work they do to make the artwork stand out. But then, if ownership changes through transactions if the art is purchased, then does the buyer own the art? Is it an object with interchangeable rights dependent on that monetary exchange? Some people might even argue that art should belong to the people, this view of the proletariat seems the easiest to defend, but private viewing minimizes belonging to the person with the biggest pocketbook.

Let’s say that art does belong to everyone, to the world, art is a child of the world and therefore it is property and belongs to everyone.

They also say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. It is sometimes argued that art only exists to serve when there is a viewer at hand (meaning that art belongs to itself for art’s sake). This cliché statement raises many problems, for example, not all art is beautiful, aesthetics does not imply beauty. If art is so subjective that ownership changes depending on the viewer, then the appropriation of art is practically impossible, so why fight and create laws for it?

So why is it that every time there is a conversation between works of art, if too much is ‘borrowed’ from a work, a copyright lawsuit arises?

Examples are Shephard Fairey and the Associated Press on the Obama Hope posters. The Associated Press is suing Fairey for copyright infringement, among other things, because he mass-produced an image originally owned by the AP without permission (using his artist rendering, of course, not the exact photograph). The truth is that his posters made no such statement and if some small-scale artist had done the same without as much exposure, conversation, money… it probably would have gone unnoticed and treated as a compliment. Jealousy is a dangerous and vicious creature.

Then there is someone like Richard Prince, where the work is mostly a collage of advertisement photographs with brands and recognizable figures for these brands. He has been sued by many of the original ‘producers’ of these ad creatives. He generally uses these photographs out of his original intent and context to create his own collages without, of course, claiming the right to use them. But did these originals belong to anyone in the first place?

It is true that a lot of initial work goes into creating these photographs, especially if a photographer has worked 10 years earning the trust of Rastafarians in the mountains to produce a body of work with a specific intent. But does it end there? Art is not a conversation between existing works of art, it would be limiting if appropriation ended any potential discourse. Perhaps credit should be given to influence and inspiration and perhaps explain a bit instead of claiming an entire work as completely original in every possible way.

Then there is what the commission can do for the appropriation. If a work is commissioned, does the artwork then belong to the decisions of the owner of the paperback? Richard Serra found this out the hard way when he filed a $30 million lawsuit against the General Services Administration (GSA) over a sculpture he had created called “Leaning Arch” at 26 Federal Plaza in Lower Manhattan and it had significant significance. very specific. the creation of the piece was tailored and largely dependent on its physical location. It would make no sense if it had been transferred unlike a painting from one gallery to another. The GSA that had commissioned the job was adamant about changing the location and unfortunately got away with it.

Art Law is a growing segment to represent art rights in many ways. But the question is even more complicated than before because if you give art a main headline, its meaning (which is already intertwined and convoluted) can be affected simply by giving it an owner.