Rights and Obligations

What right does an artist have to their own artwork? Once an artwork is bought, should the artist have any say to how it should be presented or kept? What legal responsibility does an artist have to society?


An artist has the full right to their work, however to protect it from the rest of the world (whether through variants, re-mixes, copiers etc.) you have to go through the proper legal channels for copyrighting. Luckily the passage of Creative Commons 2.0 makes this a fairly easy means of protecting your work. As a new media artist, very little of my work manifests itself in the physical realm. So I am quite used to not have the ability to sell my work, as it is usually produced with a group for pay. However, in the instances where this applies, the terms should be agreed upon at the point of purchase. If the artist had special request for how the piece was to be displayed and where, then he/she should ensure that it is included in the contract.

The Pepsi-Cola incident at The Pavilion is indeed unfortunate, but immediately made clear that the artist must lay down terms of their work at the point of purchase. Once the money is laid down, I believe the power the artist can have over their art quickly diminishes. Not to mention how much these options vary by country's law.

The legal responsibility is naught for the artist. I think we have an obligation, if the artist is exploring new frontiers, to break laws. The only real limit of an artist should be their own moral boundaries. Of course this is a dangerous idea, as morality is relative to individual people. However art is often dangerous, all new things are. We have an obligation to society to forge new territory and ideas. A responsible artist would know how to bend the rules and expose new truths and viewpoints without endangering anyone. Because of the fluid nature of law, considering it often varies from state to country, it can't be an ultimate reference point for where artists should stop. I think there is at least a certain degree of common sense that an artist must employ when making and showing art. It would be desirable to be libertarian about this, and set this limits to whatever doesn't disturb others. However the power of art lies in it's ability to expose people to concepts, ideas, and aesthetics they haven't seen before.