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.
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…
Legacy
There has been significant recent growth in representation by art market professionals of the estates of artists who died in recent times, and such activity is fast becoming an established business specialism within the contemporary art ecosystem. Agents and…
Living Legacies
Two interesting new tools have recently been published to help artists plan their legacies. In October 2018 the UK’s Art360 Foundation launched a free app designed ‘to make archiving and cultural preservation skills available to all’, and the…
Artists’ Estate Management
During their early careers, planning for posterity is a low priority for most artists. But as careers develop, especially if market and/or critical successes are achieved, what should happen to works after death becomes an increasingly important…
The Artist’s Estate
A tale of an ill drawn Will and 798 paintings was told in this column 40 years ago following a New York State court’s 1975 decision in favour of Mark Rothko’s children, who had contested their father’s…
Suing Art Experts
Last month’s consideration of art after death suggested that artists might adopt straightforward and sensible practices to authenticate and inventorise their works, to avoid difficulty and complication after death as well as during their lifetimes. This month…
Death of an Artist
Artistic legacies emerged as a theme in art news reports towards the end of 2013. For example, UK courts ruled that drawings sold as Francis Bacons were inauthentic, and US court documents revealed that 35 paintings…
Catch-22 Inheritance Tax
The absolute certainty of death and taxes poses an unavoidable estate planning question for owners of artworks: how will they be valued for inheritance tax purposes? A recent valuation dispute between the US Government’s Inland Revenue Service…
The Bacon Estate (1)
The new year ushered in several important judicial decisions dealing with artlaw matters, including the Bacon Estate; the Sotheby’s and Christie’s so called ‘price fixing’ case; payments to artists of royalty fees by UK Universities; and…
Attribution of Authorship: Warhol
On 15 January 2010 another federal lawsuit was filed in New York City against The Andy Warhol Art Authentication Board. The first lawsuit was filed in 2007 by a London based collector, Joe Simon; the recent…
The Dali Wrangle
Salvador Dali, a master of Surrealism died in 1989. A dozen or so years later his legacy has caused substantial legal problems of an equally surrealist nature. The litigants are the Gala Salvador Dali Foundation established by…
Posthumous Artworks
Blinky Palermo’s reputation was given a major boost through retrospective exhibitions in Barcelona and at London’s Serpentine Gallery in 2003. This, in turn, has led to funding recently being achieved by Edinburgh College of Art to ‘rescue’ one…
The Bacon Estate (2)
On February 6, 2002, the High Court in London dismissed the claims brought by Brian Clarke against the Marlborough Gallery, on behalf of the Estate of Francis Bacon, who had decided not to pursue the matter.…
Who cares about art after death?
Turner did: Rothko did. But apart from that question, the Rothko case raises an equally serious and more practical question for artists: how to ensure that their art is dealt with, after death, according…
Rothko Revisited
There occurred in Sandy, London, Cardiff and Anglesey last month an important event for the visual arts which went largely unnoticed. That brief statement – rather like the ‘Who, When, Where, Why?’ newspaper adverts – hardly tells the…
The Rothko Wrangle
ONE A tale of an ill drawn Will and 798 paintings told in two parts. ‘Silence is so accurate’. Mark Rothko once stated in a conversation with Elaine de Kooning. A bitter irony indeed when we consider…
Art after Death
For practitioners, what happens to their art after their death can be a significant issue. This section looks at some of the steps artists can take to plan for and protect the future of their artworks. What…