Friday, March 29, 2024
 


Convicted Art Dealer Claims Poverty, Ask Gov’t for Help


Ex-art dealer Rocco DeSimone says his fortune has been reduced to a 2006 Honda Element valued at $12,000 and a little more than $3,000 in cash, checking and savings accounts.

Via The Boston Globe.

 

Mattel Ordered to Pay MGA $85 Million Punitive Damages in Doll Dispute


A federal judge awarded toy company MGA Entertainment Inc. more than $309 million in damages, fees and other costs in its long-running battle with Mattel Inc. over the billion-dollar Bratz doll line.?

Via the LA Times. Background here.

 

Artists’ Rights Society Pushes for Right of Resale in the U.S.


Fresh on the heels of Frank Stella’s plight for resale rights, the Artists’ Rights Society, the main copyright and licensing collecting agency in the US, is pushing for legislation that would see droit de suite, or artists’ resale rights, become federal law.

 

Frank Stella on Resale Rights: “American visual artist is low man on the totem pole”


Frank Stella takes on art institutions and their dependence on, and exploitation of, visual artists in his new article for The Art Newspaper. Stella comments that after he attended this year’s World Copyright Summit in Brussels this past June, he realized how far behind, and below, visual artists are economically compared to other artists (musicians, filmmakers, writers). Stella believes copyright provides a valid and suitable form of protection to artists, but would like to add national resale rights (“droit de suite”) in the U.S.

Given the art world in its current state, the American visual artist is low man on the totem pole. In the larger, more sophisticated world of intellectual property rights and creative copyright enforcement—in literature, music, film, computer programming and patent protection—the American visual artist is again way behind.

The artists’ depressed position in the copyright world makes an unpleasant image. Massed above the artist in the art world are museums, exhibition halls, educational institutions, auction houses, art dealers, collectors, speculators, forgers and—the most recent menace—art fairs. Why is this community so reluctant to help those on whom they are ultimately dependent?

Stella’s comparison of visual artists to other artists is one we have championed for quite some time, analogizing it to the radical artistic and economic structure that musicians set up thanks to the rise of the internet. Presented with different problems, the visual art community would be wise to learn from the autonomous space created by musicians, and the freedom (and problems) it engendered.

Via The Art Newspaper.

 

50 Get Naked for Art, 3 Arrested


Last Tuesday, fifty participants in a performance art project by Zefrey Throwell, Ocularpation: Wall Street, get naked in NYC and three are arrested.

Via our friends over at Hyperallergic.

 

Union Handlers In Labor Dispute With Sotheby’s


Members of Teamsters Local 814 allege they are being locked out over a contract dispute with Sotheby’s. They also allege Sotheby’s is asking for pay cuts and wants to change seniority rules even after posting profits of close to $700 million. Sotheby’s has hired temporary employees to take their place.

Via NY1.

 

37 Years After: The Linda Benglis Artforum Ad


Artinfo has an interesting recap on Linda Benglis’ famous ad in the November 1974 issue of Artforum.

 
 
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