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.
Get Minted
2021 saw NFTs flooding into the contemporary art ecosystem; but will 2022 see their arrival as a welcome cornucopia of plenty or an unwanted pandora’s box of unforeseen pestilence? A selected survey of the current NFT landscape, keeping…
It’s a Wrap
Until 3 October 2021 a live stream from Paris shows the Arc de Triomphe entirely wrapped in fabric: a project conceived by artists Christo and Jeanne Claude over 60 years ago, which they developed and financed, but…
No Heirs Apparent
‘Millions of artists create; only a few thousands are discussed or accepted by the spectator and many less again are consecrated by posterity.’ So contended Marcel Duchamp in his talk on ‘the creative act’ in 1957 at…
A Curious Act of Vandalism
In June 2021 an accused vandal, who admitted spray painting a publicly sited sculpture by Antony Gormley, was found not guilty of committing an offence of criminal damage because the jury accepted the accused’s defence…
Online Image
The art world’s general manoeuvring towards online exhibiting and selling because of physical distancing restrictions during the Covid 19 pandemic has seen increased use of digital technologies to communicate images of artwork to spectators prevented from physical viewing.…
Flower Thrower Law Report
Banksy’s guarding of his personal identity suffered a set back on 14 September 2020, when the EU Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) cancelled Banksy’s 2014 registration as an EU trade mark of the renowned stencil image of…
Tattoo You
‘Where there’s a hit, there’s a writ’ is an old music business saying, which perhaps applies to legal responses in recent times to the rise in popularity of body art, tattooing in particular. In March 2020 landmark court…
Legal Drivers
Banksy began his practice as a freehand street graffiti artist, subsequently using stencils to facilitate the swifter execution of work – and thus avoidance of detection and arrest for criminal damage or trespass to other people’s property. He…
Ownership
When is a ‘work’ completed? Is it when the artist releases it for public viewing, and/or only if released for sale? What is the status of a work an artist (or a deceased artist’s estate) disowns after its release?…
Afterlife of Photographs
On 16 May 2019 the fifth edition of the international photography fair, Photo London, opens at Somerset House. 100 or so specialist galleries from around the world will exhibit for sale photographic works by over 400 artists…
Digital Single Market
On 13 February 2019 in Strasbourg the EU agreed to introduce new copyright rules to create a fair, transparent and predictable business environment for users of online platforms. Key features of these rules include new exceptions to…
Love & Money
There has been an unprecedented amount of media coverage of Banksy’s Girl with Balloon (2006) shredding incident since it took place at Sotheby’s London’s evening sale of contemporary art on 5 October 2018. But none of this…
Conservation Questions
Ethical practices of art conservation have become a renewed subject of debate following publication of a pre conservation image of Salvator Mundi, c1500, which was recently attributed to Leonardo da Vinci and subsequently sold for $450m at auction…
Fair Image Use Fees
Just as the industrial revolution radically transformed the world during the 18th and 19th centuries, the digital revolution is affecting most areas of life in the 21st century. Keeping pace with the exponential growth and global…
Idea/Expression Dichotomy
This year marks the centenary of the creation of a work widely accepted as the most influential of the 20th century: Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain, 1917. This readymade and its reception heralded the transformation of modern and contemporary art…
A Landmark Case?
Can the integrity of publicly sited sculpture be damaged by siting another object close to it? Think of landmark works such as Antony Gormley’s Angel of the North, 1988, or Andy Scott’s Kelpies, 2013: would their integrity…
Fair Use
The Robert Rauschenberg Foundation recently announced a new Fair Use policy to make images of the artist’s work more accessible to museums, scholars, artists and the public (Artnotes AM395). This enlightened and innovative approach represents the first artist’s…
Dire Straits: in the gallery
Although great strength and power can be drawn from legal information and knowledge, the processes of applying and using the law are often regarded as too cumbersome, complex and costly to be of any real…