What is Art? - Southwestern Law School

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114 J. INT’L MEDIA &ENTERTAINMENT LAW VOL. 4,NO. 2sent they have entered the tradition as if by simple chronologicaldistance.” 8C. ArtistsEven though there is ample evidence of surviving art and artefactsand architecture from the dawn of civilisation, there is little knowledgeof the identity of their authors. 9 It was not until the 17th century, chieflyduring the Golden Age of art and architecture in the Netherlands andduring the Qing Dynasty in China, that surviving records began to identifyartists as we have come to know them today—creating works on aspeculative basis and offering them for sale in the open market.The interaction of social and economic changes, over time, provideskeys to our understanding of why societies gradually embraced thepractice of artist as a distinct career—“of men who spend all theirtime in the production of useless things . . . who are exempted fromgrowing food.” 10 Urban dwellers have always relied on buying surplusesproduced by rural labour, and especially in cities where a significantmass of wealthy and powerful people—high net worth individuals—can also afford to patronise original creations of the ‘artist’.D. Art BusinessDirect patronage of the wealthy and powerful was the principalsource of income for creators of art and artefacts and architectureuntil the 17th century, or so. Scientific, technical, and industrial inventionsand developments from around this era (and beyond, to date) increasinglyfacilitated the creation of artworks that were moveable andtransportable objects. This led to: the practice of collecting uniqueand desirable art objects, also and increasingly by the newly rising8. Id.9. “In the Middle Ages the individual artist remains invisible behind the corporatefacades of church and guild. Greco-Roman and Chinese histories alone report in anydetail the conditions of individual artists’ lives. A few names and lines of text are allwe have about Egyptian dynastic artisans. The records of the other civilisations of antiquityin America, Africa, and India tell nothing of artists’ lives. Yet the archaeologicalrecord repeatedly shows the presence of connected series of rapidly changingmanufactures in the cities, and slower ones in the provinces and in the countryside,all manifesting the presence of persons whom we call artists.” KUBLER, note 6 supra.10. The Tomb of the Unknown Craftsman was an exhibition held at The British Museumin London in 2012. It was an installation of new works by Turner Prize winnerGrayson Perry, comprising objects made by unknown men and women throughout historyfrom the British Museum’s collection alongside new works by Perry; who explained:“This is a memorial to all the anonymous craftsmen that over the centurieshave fashioned the manmade wonders of the world. . .The craftsman’s anonymityI find especially resonant in an age of the celebrity artist.” See http://www.britishmuseum.org/whats_on/exhibitions/grayson_perry/introduction.
WHAT IS ART? 115merchant classes; re-sales of works, and the establishment of the artmarket place of auction houses 11 and dealers; the foundation of national/statemuseums and galleries to curate and publicly exhibit artand other cultural objects acquired from other states as symbols ofconquest. 12 Such activities involved many and various transactionswe now describe as the art business, most requiring legal form or regulation:commissioning contracts; sales contracts; deeds of gift orloan; import taxes and export restrictions; establishment of trustsand foundations for collections and related endowments; and the creationof statutory public authorities.New technologies and techniques were avidly embraced by artistskeen to extend their market place, by making reproductions of theirunique works and selling them at much lower and affordable pricesto the general public: our next consideration.E. Art Practice: Gutenberg to the Celestial Jukebox 13The Western printing press was invented around 1440 by Gutenberg.14 This seminal technology not only revolutionised and facilitatedindustrial production of literary texts, but also mass dissemination ofcopies of unique paintings and drawings. During the following twocenturies the printing press became widely used throughout the thendeveloped world. A variety of visual images—technical drawings andinstructions, humorous cartoons, illustrated advertisements—became increasinglypopular, especially with the largely illiterate masses, andadded a new option alongside the existing fine art prints produced bymore limited autographic reproductive processes.Writers and their publishers then became concerned that unauthorisedcopying and publication of their original literary workswas seriously damaging their sales income, and eventually persuadedgovernments to legislate through a limited form of what we now call11. Sotheby’s auction house was established in 1744 (see http://www.sothebys.com/en/inside/about-us.html; Christie’s in 1766 (see http://www.christies.com/about/company/history.aspx, both in London, England; and Drouot in 1852, in Paris, France(see http://www.drouot.com/static/drouot_historique_enchere.html?lang=en.12. The British Museum, London, England, was opened to the public in 1759;Musée du Louvre, Paris, France, in 1793; Nationale Kunst-Gallerij, The Hague, Netherlands,in 1800 (relocated to a new building in Amsterdam and renamed The Rijksmuseumin 1885); Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid, Spain, in 1819; The NationalGallery, London, England, in 1824; and the State Hermitage, Saint Petersburg, Russia,in 1852.13. The Celestial Jukebox was originated by Paul Goldstein in PAUL GOLDSTEIN,COPYRIGHT’S HIGHWAY (2003).14. Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg (1398–1468).
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