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.
The Emperor’s New Code
‘NFT artists and collectors and traders take care,’ was last month’s envoi concluding a selected survey of the current state of the art NFT landscape. Key emerging legal issues include copyright infringement, stealing then minting and…
War Sanctions
The Property of a Lady is a 1963 short story by Ian Fleming, in which 007 is tasked by M with rooting out a London based Soviet spymaster and his espionage activities to justify his expulsion from the…
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…
Automatic for the Beeple
Two inter connected lawsuits about the recent sale of a non fungible token (NFT) representing a born digital artwork were filed in July and September 2021, in the US and UK respectively. Both suits concern US…
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…
Crypto Art Business
Free Comb with Pagoda, 1986, is a mixed media work on paper signed with Jean Michel Basquiat’s oft used pseudonym Lenny at the lower right. Bought in 2015 by a private buyer, the physical work together with…
Don’t You Trust Me?
Artists and dealers rarely if ever discuss in public their professional business relationships. Much praise, therefore, is due to London based artist Alvaro Barrington and his gallery dealer Sadie Coles for recently speaking publicly about the…
Don’t Delete Art
Given the understandable reliance by most of the world on digital technology for communications throughout the annus horribilis of 2020 (and its continuation into 2021, with no certain prospect of escape from Covid restrictions), social media platforms…
Exhibition Relief Funding
Museums and Galleries Exhibition Tax Relief (MEGTR) came temporarily into UK law to give financial support for mounting and/or touring new public facing exhibitions in the five years from 1 April 2017 to 31 March 2022, after…
Brexit Begins
Post Brexit future relations between the UK and the EU are contained in a document signed on 24 December 2020: the EU UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA). On 30 December 2020 UK Parliament ratified TCA by passing…
Private Parties
Is there legal validity in ‘the well known custom and practice in the art world that the identity of a private buyer or owner of a painting is not revealed’? A recent trial held at London’s High Court…
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…
Anti-Flipping
‘Say It Loud (I’m Black and I’m Proud)’ is the title of a remarkable and unique online selling exhibition held by Christie’s from 21 July to 21 August 2020. Dedicated to the promotion of works by ‘22 young, emerging…
Christo & Jeanne-Claude
Christo Vladimirov Javacheff died on 31 May 2020 in New York City, a decade after his spouse Jeanne Claude Denat de Guillebon also died there: they were astrological twins (both born on 13 June 1935) and for…
Things Have Changed
Covid 19’s devastating impact on the visual art world has required lockdown of artists at home; closure of art schools, galleries, museums, art fairs and auction rooms; and, in common with most of the rest of the…