Archive of Henry Lydiate‘s Artlaw column, published in Art Monthly since 1976. Have a legal question about your career? Check our Directory or send us a query.
This Is Not by Me
Keith Haring’s last canvas painting continues to be the focus of intense social media controversy in these first months of 2024, triggered by an X tweeted image of the work’s purported completion using generative AI…
Freedom and Creativity
2024 started with publication of a seminal judicial decision confirming that UK copyright law’s originality test – for creating a copyright protected new artwork – requires the expression of personal creativity by the author; and that this…
To Have and Not To Hold
In November 2023 art market media focused on an original street artwork attributed to Banksy, and particularly on doubts cast over the legality of the work’s fractionalisation scheme, its true authorship and provenance of…
Dealers/Agents/Advisors: Beware
During summer 2023, a saga began to unfold concerning the art business of a prominent contemporary art market professional, based in New York City. The story raises significant legal and ethical issues for the art ecosystem. Lisa Schiff…
Cash In Your Face
In August 2023, within hours of Donald Trump’s police booking photograph being published by the Fulton County Sheriff in Atlanta, Georgia, his campaign website was selling his mugshot branded mugs, T shirts, drink coolers, bumper stickers,…
Fair Appropriation Practices
Warholisation was explored in the previous column, in which reported on the US Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in May 2023 that Andy Warhol’s appropriation of a photographer’s copyright image in his artwork, used without prior permission, was…
Warholisation
In May 2023, a landmark court decision was published addressing the lawfulness of artists appropriating into their works other artists’ pre existing images. The Supreme Court of the United States decided the case, which was brought by the Andy…
Structurally F-cked
A new code of practice for UK’s artists and the visual arts sector is currently being prepared, and will soon be published by, a n The Artists Information Company. This unique initiative is the next step in a…
AI Authorship
Do Androids Dream of Electric Copyright? This allusion to the title of Philip K Dick’s 1968 dystopian novel, on which the 1982 film Blade Runner was based, is the playful title of a scholarly paper about authorship of…
Digital Rights Management
The French Ministry of Culture is currently embarking on research into ‘the permanence of artistic royalties through smart contracts and other means, and on how blockchains communicate with each other’. Launched in January 2023, this initiative focuses…
AI Art Tools
In January 2023 an unprecedented lawsuit was filed in a US Federal Court by three US based visual artists. It is a ‘class action’ comprising separate claims by three artists, who bound themselves into a single lawsuit…
Trademark or Copyright?
Towards the end of 2022, a significant judicial decision tackled a longstanding discussion within intellectual property law circles: whether copyright and registered trademark protections can apply simultaneously to the same image. Such questioning was the focus of…
Collecting
In surveying the contemporary art ecosystem in 2022 at its close, a novel initiative appears to have been largely overlooked, which merits wider exposure and consideration: a Code of Conduct for Contemporary Art Collectors (CCCAC). Primarily adopting a professional…
On Freedom to Protest
On the morning of 14 October 2022 Van Gogh’s Sunflowers, 1888, was vandalised by two environmental protestors throwing the contents of two tomato soup cans over most of the painting exhibited in Room 43 at UK’s…
Trust
It is remarkable to hear of a dealer absconding with the proceeds of numerous artists’ sales, and of victim artists bringing remedial legal action. Artists often complain they have not received in good time – sometimes not at all…
Selling Art Now
In August 2022 a first sale of recent work by emerging artists via an innovative live virtual public auction was launched by veteran art market professional Simon de Pury, drawing upon his vast experience as both public…
The Unasked Question
‘Where there’s a hit, there’s a writ’ – so goes an old music business saying that may also apply in the art business. Significant financial gains by hit makers in the art world sometimes trigger lawsuits by…
Brexit Bites
The UK’s art market is now feeling the effects of post Brexit laws that handicap domestic and international trading activities, chiefly involving physical shipping of artwork. In 2020 the EU was the second largest global art market behind…