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Art Law - How To Avoid Forgeries When Buying Fine Art

Please check out Paul Sullivan’s column Wealth Matters titled How to Avoid Forgeries When Buying Fine Art in today’s New York Times, link below:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/03/your-money/is-that-a-real-motherwell-better-make-sure-before-buying.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all

For those with an interest in art law, I will be speaking at a panel on March 9 at The Armory Show 2012.  Christie’sFine Art Storage Services (CFASS) presents The Complexities Surrounding Authentication.

 With the recent disbanding of high-profile authentication committees, the market is forced to react.  This panel explores the process of authentication, both from a scientific and emperical perspective, and why authentication has become such a litigious topic that often results in committee termination.

Panelists include:

-Dr. Magdalena Dabrowski,  Independent Scholar/Curator and Art Consultant.

-Raymond Dowd, Partner, Dunnington, Bartholow & Miller LLP

-Dorit Strauss, Vice President, Worldwide Specialty Fine Art Manager, Chubb Group of Insurance

Companies

-Jennifer L. Mass, Ph.D. Senior Scientist, Winterthur Museum

Moderated by Joseph Stasko, International Managing Director, Christie’s Fine Art StorageServices.

Friday, March 9^th, 2012, 3:30pm.

More information on The Armory Show 2012 programming here.

www.dunnington.com
 Purchase Copyright Litigation Handbook 2011 by Raymond J. Dowd from West here  

Art Litigation: Artist Richard Prince and Gagosian Gallery Lose Copyright Infringement Case

Work from Prince's infringing series incorporating Cariou's photographs



In Cariou v. Richard Prince, Gagosian Gallery, et al 08 CV 11327 (S.D.N.Y. March 18, 2011)(Batts, J.), the court issued a decision finding Richard Prince's artworks to be copyright infringements.   Prince, known as an "appropriation artist" took Cariou's photographs from a book called Yes, Rasta.

The opinion is noteworthy and will basically EXPLODE the contemporary art world, which has invested heavily in Richard Prince and his appropriations. The opinion notes that Prince thinks his artworks are pretty meaningless, but the owners of his artworks will probably mobilize art and cultural critics to supply a deeper meaning pronto.    Perhaps in future litigation Prince will become more articulate about the nature of his artistic vision, as did artist Jeff Koons whose early losses have now been turned into wins based in part by affidavits certifying that his art does indeed have a message more pleasing to judicial ears.

More on this case, including images here.   More on appropriation art here.  A Photo Editor opines here. 

Clancco is outraged  delighted that the decision includes an order to impound and destroy Richard Prince's artworks, which Larry Gagosian made over $10 million dollars in selling, read Clancco here.

Does the price of a Prince work go up after this decision?

Here is the decision:

Cariou v Richard Prince

March 22, 2011 update:

More commentary from Ruling Imagination here.

 http://www.dunnington.com/rdowd_bio.html
 Purchase Copyright Litigation Handbook 2010 by Raymond J. Dowd from West here  

A New Form of 3D Copying: Sculptures From Scans Using Microsoft Kinect

Thanks to BoingBoing video showing use of Microsoft Kinect as a 3d scanner to sculpt portraits.

 Purchase Copyright Litigation Handbook 2010 by Raymond J. Dowd from West here  

Seventh Circuit: No Moral Rights In Flower Gardens Under VARA

In Chapman Kelly v. Chicago Park District, 2011 WL 501161 (7th Cir. Feb 15, 2011), the Seventh Circuit rejected a claim of moral rights in a public garden in Chicago.

What is a painting?  What is a sculpture?   What is original and what is fixation?   All interesting questions tackled by the Seventh Circuit in determining whether an artist had moral rights in a garden under the Visual Artists Rights Act.

From the decision (linked below)

Simply put, gardens are planted and cultivated, not authored. A garden’s constituent elements are alive and inherently changeable, not fixed. Most of what we see and experience in a garden—the colors, shapes, textures,and scents of the plants—originates in nature, not in the mind of the gardener. At any given moment in time, a garden owes most of its form and appearance to natural forces, though the gardener who plants and tends it obviously assists. All this is true of Wildflower Works, even though it was designed and planted by an artist.

Of course, a human “author”—whether an artist, a professional landscape designer, or an amateur backyard gardener—determines the initial arrangement of the plants in a garden. This is not the kind of authorship required for copyright. To the extent that seeds or seedlings can be considered a “medium of expression,” they originate in nature, and natural forces—not the intellect of the gardener—determine their form, growth, and appearance. Moreover, a garden is simply too changeable to satisfy the primary purpose of fixation; its appearance is too inherently variable to supply a baseline for determining questions of copyright creation and infringement. If a garden can qualify as a “work of authorship” sufficiently “embodied in a copy,” at what point has fixation occurred? When the garden is newly planted? When its first blossoms appear? When it is in full bloom? How—and at what point in time—is a court to determine whether infringing copying has occurred?

Chapman Kelly v Chicago Park District


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Copyright and Fine Art: Rave Reviews at New York County Lawyers' Association

Corot's Portrait of a Girl

Last week I gave a three-hour CLE program at New York County Lawyers' Association on Copyright and Fine Art, together with the Hon. Stephen G. Crane of JAMS who acted as moderator:



Some nice words from NYCLA's Executive Director Bari Chase:

We just compiled the comments from Tuesday’s program and as you can see you got rave reviews.

“Speaker knew exactly what he was talking about. Very good job!”

“Loved it. Wonderful. Very interesting. (Please consider holding another art law symposium, too)”

“It was really interesting—pleasantly surprised”

“Perhaps the best seminar I’ve attended at NYCLA”

“The information was very interesting, and the speaker was clear, dynamic, and knowledgeable”



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