1st Edition
Posthumous Art, Law and the Art Market The Afterlife of Art
This book takes an interdisciplinary, transnational and cross-cultural approach to reflect on, critically examine and challenge the surprisingly robust practice of making art after death in an artist's name, through the lenses of scholars from the fields of art history, economics and law, as well as practicing artists.
Works of art conceived as multiples, such as sculptures, etchings, prints, photographs and conceptual art, can be—and often are—remade from original models and plans long after the artist has passed. Recent sales have suggested a growing market embrace of posthumous works, contemporaneous with questioning on the part of art history. Legal norms seem unready for this surge in posthumous production and are beset by conflict across jurisdictions. Non-Western approaches to posthumous art, from Chinese emulations of non-living artists to Native American performances, take into account rituals of generational passage at odds with contemporary, market-driven approaches.
The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, the art market, art law, art management, museum studies and economics.
Introduction
Sharon Hecker and Peter J. Karol
Part One: Stage Setting
1. Posthumous Casts in the Twentieth Century: An Overview of the Wide Range of Situations
Elisabeth Lebon and Eve Turbat, Translated by Cole Swensen
2. The Challenges of Posthumous Moral Rights
Guy A. Rub
3. Posthumous Editions: Does the Market Value the Presence of the Artist?
Sharon Chrust and Amy R. Jebrine
Part Two: Intentions and (Mis)understandings
4. Behind the Scenes: Legitimation and Marketing Strategies of Brancusi’s Posthumous Bronze Casts
Alexandra Parigoris
5. Dead-Hand Guidance: A Preferable Testamentary Approach for Artists
Eva E. Subotnik
6. Collaborations in Absentia: An Artist’s/Founder’s View of the Posthumous Cast
Andrew Lacey
Part Three: Museum Stewardship
7. Condition Issues
Martha Buskirk
8. The Cost of Decommissioning
Peter J. Karol
9. Patterns on Maya’s Veil: The Distinction Between ‘Lifetime’ and ‘Posthumous’ Casts as Fetish
Arie Hartog, Translated by Deborah Shannon
Part Four: Unruly Afterlives
10. Forged of Paper: The Busy Afterlives of Xuande Incense Burners
Bruce Rusk
11. Unique Forms & Different Versions: Cataloging Boccioni’s Sculptures
Rosalind McKever
12. Medardo Rosso’s The Emperor Vitellius: An Artist’s Posthumous Copy (of a Copy) of an (Unknown) Original
Sharon Hecker
13. AI, IP, and Artistic Legacies
Andrew Gilden and Taylor Hurwitz
14. An Economic Strategy to Exploit the Rent of Notoriety in an Emblematic Case Study: François Pompon
Nathalie Moureau and Dominique Sagot-Duvauroux
Part Five: Continuity and Community
15. Reproductions of Michelangelo Buonarroti’s Vatican Pietà as Experiential Mediators
Lisa M. Rafanelli
16. Lineages and the Posthumous Lives of Chinese Paintings
Michael J. Hatch
17. Indigeneity and the Posthumous Condition
Lara M. Evans and Mique’l Dangeli
Epilogue. Personal Reflections on NFTs & the Death of Art
Brian Frye
Biography
Sharon Hecker is an independent art historian and curator specializing in modern and contemporary Italian sculpture.
Peter J. Karol is Professor of Law at New England Law | Boston, where he is also Director of the school’s Intellectual Property Law Certificate Program.
