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Rejecting the works of Dan Flavin and Bill Viola: Revisiting the boundaries of copyright protection for post-modern art
... Or, let's take On Kawara project "I Got Up" which consists of postcards sent by On Kawara routinely everyday with indication of exact time of his awakening The series was recently represented in Guggenheim Museum in New York, and we can say with a degree of certainty that it does represent a work of art, but can we protect by copyright something that basically represents a regular normal human activity if you omit an idea that author put behind it? This is difficult to find an final answer to the above since existing legal concepts seem to be is insufficient to cover new ways of artistic expression, court practice both in EU 10 and US 11 reflects that courts still do not know exactly how to deal with and interpret objects of contemporary art. ...
Despite being a form of art that dates back in time, the work of video art still struggles today to find a shared legal framework. There is a risk to associate video art with other more traditional artistic forms and this risk has prevented video art from attributing its own autonomy, independence and expressive specificity. Artists’ videos are not listed among the works expressly protected by Italian Law no. 633/1941 (Law on protection of copyright and moral rights), with all the consequences in terms of determining the holders of the moral and patrimonial rights of the author and the division of these rights between the various persons who, in various ways, contribute to their realization (artist, director, screenwriter, interpreters, music authors, etc.), especially if the video works result from the indissoluble creative contribution and the collective work of a group of people. Finally, video art inevitably suffers the limits of digital art: it is easily reproducible, perishable, not limited and numbered in its editions, subject to obsolescence resulting from technological development; these factors causes the arising of various difficulties in terms of claiming the status of a work of art in the essence of its uniqueness, originality and authenticity. The relevance of issues related to legal regulation and the conservation of video art is also relevant for the possible recognition as a cultural asset that audiovisual media of a rare and valuable nature can obtain under the Italian Legislative Decree no. 42/2004 (Code of Cultural Heritage). Of extreme importance, therefore, is the legal analysis aimed at qualifying such a medium, through which to frame its expressive nature and understand how to manage the circulation of such works of art, how to ensure their protection and preservation and ensure their authenticity and paternity.
This article argues that, with respect to the copyright protection of works of visual art, the general uneasiness that has always pervaded the relationship between copyright law and concepts of creativity produces three anomalous results. One of these is that copyright lacks much in the way of a central concept of 'visual art' and, to the extent that it embraces any concept of the 'visual', it is rooted in the rhetorical discourse of the Renaissance. This means that copyright is poorly equipped to deal with modern developments in the visual arts. Secondly, the pervasive effect of rhetorical discourse appears to have made it particularly difficult for copyright law to strike a meaningful balance between protecting creativity and permitting its use in further creative works. Thirdly, just when rhetorical discourse might have been useful in identifying the significance and materiality of the unique one-off work of visual art, copyright law chooses to ignore its implications.
What Legal Protection(s) for Contemporary Art?
- E Treppoz
European Definition of art is Absurd
- P Valentin