Category: Writing

Igor Stramignoni (London School of Economics – Law Department) has posted Seizing Truths: Art, Politics, Law on SSRN. This is a longer version of Stramignoni’s presentation at the Tate Modern in March. Here is the abstract:

The work of French philosopher Alain Badiou has been described as the most powerful alternative yet conceived in France to the various forms of postmodernism that arose after the collapse of the Marxist project. Art interests Badiou in its own right but also as both that which, in the twentieth century, eclipsed philosophy and as that which today philosophy, increasingly de-sutured from art, must imitate in order to make clear that there are truths after all. Badiou conceives of law, on the other hand, as part and parcel of a specific political machine that must continuously perform certain problematic exclusions if it is to keep the fiction of parliamentary democracy together. So how is the relationship between art and law, between the poet and the city, in Badiou’s oeuvre?

Joseph Fishman, Clerk for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit has posted Locating the International Interest in Intranational Cultural Property Disputes Yale Journal of International Law, Vol. 35, No. 2, 2010.

This Article considers the extent to which there may be an international interest in how intranational disputes over cultural property are settled. Drawing on the norms underlying recent global scrutiny of states’ destruction of cultural objects located within their own territory, I identify two factors that may justify internationalizing otherwise domestic conflicts over cultural property: discriminatory intent and harm to cultural diversity. I argue that where neither of these concerns is implicated, the international community should pursue a policy of non-intervention, both because local authorities are likely to be more competent adjudicators and because eliciting a global referendum on cultural identity risks sapping that identity of its fluidity. At the same time, maintaining neutrality is inappropriate when one claimant’s asserted right would actually undermine this legal regime’s multiculturalist goals. The claim of group ownership over a cultural object acquired through persecution of minority communities abuses a property right whose ostensible rationale is promotion of cultural diversity. This frustration of purpose ought to give the international community a significantly higher interest in ensuring that a claim does not untether the property right from the theory that justifies it. The Article concludes by calling for recognition of cultural property rights as a purposive legal scheme that is susceptible to exploitation, in domestic and international arenas alike.

It is a very interesting piece, Fishman uses as an example, the St. Ninian’s Isle Treasure in the United Kingdom.  Highly Recommended.

The Spring issue of the Journal of Art Crime has been published, I’ve posted the table of contents below.  This is the third volume of the journal, which has some terrific contributions from fellow bloggers David Gill, Donn Zaretsky, and others in the field like Ton Cremers and Giovanni Pastore.

This issue has pieces on forgery, the Getty Kouros, vandalism, the antiquities trade, underwater heritage, and other topics.  Noah Charney edits the journal, which is a very fine source of writing on art and antiquities crime, with serious academic pieces, regular columns and other interviews and extra features. Highly recommended.

Subscriptions are reasonable, with the funds supporting ARCA and its publishing and educational mission.  A subscription includes two 150-page issues every year with some terrific contributions.  You can subscribe here. 

Cultural Heritage 87
“The Defense of Underwater Archaeological Heritage”
Colonel Giovanni Pastore

Donn Zaretsky

EDITORIAL ESSAYS

REVIEWS

EXTRAS

Acknowledgements 133

Randall Bezanson and Andrew Finkelman have posted on SSRN Trespassory Art, here is the abstract:

The history of art is replete with examples of artists who have broken from existing conventions and genres, redefining the meaning of art and its function in society. Our interest is in emerging forms of art that trespass – occupy space, place, and time as part of their aesthetic identity. These new forms of art, which we call trespassory art, are creatures of a movement that seeks to appropriate cultural norms and cultural signals, reinterpreting them to create new meaning. Marcel DuChamp produced such a result when, in the early twentieth century, he took a urinal, signed his name to it, titled it Fountain, and called it art.

Whether they employ 21st century technologies, such as lasers, or painting, sculpture and mosaic, music, theatre, or merely the human body, these new artists share one thing in common. Integral to their art is the physical invasion of space, the trespass, often challenging our conventional ideas of location, time, ownership, and artistic expression. Their art requires not only borrowing the intellectual assets of others, but their physical assets. This is trespassory art – art that redefines and reinterprets space – art that gives new meaning to a park bench, to a billboard, to a wall, to space itself.

Our purpose is to propose a modified regime in the law of trespass to make room for the many new forms of art with which we are concerned – art that is locationally dependent or site specific. We begin by briefly describing and characterizing these often-new artistic forms. This provides a jumping off point for addressing the basic question this article seeks to address – should the law accommodate these new types of art, and if so, to what degree? We first turn to the law of trespass, with particular focus on real property, both public and private, but also with an eye to personal and intellectual property. We conclude that adjusting trespass remedies for artistic trespass through a set of common law privileges would better balance the competing interests of owners and artists than do current trespass rules. We then turn to a set of constitutional issues and conclude that our common law proposal is consistent with, and in some ways perhaps required by, the First Amendment. Finally, we summarize our proposal and then revisit the value of trespassory art as art in our creative culture.

 They are arguing for an increase on the rights of artists to trespass to make art, an interesting and topical subject.  This kind of art challenges our ideas of what art is; what museums are; and about how art should be viewed.  Highly recommended.