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 legal query.
Management Of Creativity 30 Years On
In October 1976 the first issue of Art Monthly carried the first Artlaw column. Have things improved, worsened, or stayed pretty much the same over the last 30 years? From Jennie Lee’s appointment as…
Collective Bargaining
Last month's column focused on the selling power of those few artists whose works have established a strong market value, and their ability to pick and choose – or blacklist – their purchasers or dealers. To redress the…
Working as an artist: part II
On the evening of October 4 1979, in London, Eduardo Paolozzi (EP), his assistant Marlee Robinson (MR), John Hoyland (JH) and Brian Clarke (BC) met and recorded a discussion with lawyer Henry Lydiate (HL)…
Tyson, Hirst and Hogbens Dunphy
Reliable evidence of the way living artists work with dealers to develop their careers has always been hard, if not impossible, to find. There is an understandable reluctance of both artists and art market professionals…
Infinity goes up on Trial
The visual art market place has two essential facets, distinct but clearly interrelated, especially over recent generations: exhibiting and selling. Dealers usually occupy ‘gallery’ premises: partly for their principal object (making profits from sales); partly…
Postbag
There has been a mountain of correspondence from readers who have written to me, each with a different problem. First, I must apologise for not yet having replied to the less urgent enquirers (I will, shortly); second, let me…
Working as an artist: part I
On the evening of October 4 1979, in London, Eduardo Paolozzi (EP), his assistant Marlee Robinson (MR), John Hoyland (JH) and Brian Clarke (BC) met and recorded a discussion with lawyer Henry Lydiate (HL)…
The Creative Act 2007
In April 1957 at the American Federation of Arts in Houston, Texas, Marcel Duchamp gave his now celebrated and all too brief talk ‘The Creative Act’: ‘Let us consider two important factors, the two poles of…