ARTH 42.04 Art and Law
This course examines the complicated and often adversarial relationship between art and law, focusing not only on how artistic outputs are regulated by legal systems, but also on how artists actively appropriate, manipulate, and aestheticize legal frameworks as a medium of practice. From copyright disputes and censorship battles to conceptual works that function as legal interventions, the course investigates how law structures visibility, authorship, ownership, and truth. We will study artists and cases in which law operates as a site of constraint—through censorship, obscenity, and moral regulation—as well as a field of contestation around copyright, appropriation, and authorship, and increasingly as a material and conceptual medium encompassing contracts, litigation, testimony, and evidence. Central to the course is the proposition that law is not external to art, but has become one of its operative materials. Key case studies will examine how the law shapes artistic practice across multiple domains, including copyright infringement and appropriation, privacy and surveillance, customs regulations and the cross-border movement of cultural objects, restitution and the return of looted or contested works, and disputes over artist estates, authorship, and posthumous control. We will also examine the legal frameworks governing art market transactions, including the fiduciary obligations of dealers and advisors, the structure and enforcement of contracts, and the regulatory and ethical issues that shape the buying, selling, and circulation of artworks.
Department-Specific Course Categories
Art History