All posts tagged Meaning

Art and Authority: Moral Rights and Meaning in Contemporary Visual Art by K. E. Gover
English | February 1, 2018 | ISBN: 0198768699 | PDF | 224 pages | 9.9 MB

People engage with authored works all the time. They buy paintings, read books, and download songs. They might even be artists themselves. And yet they tend to take the concept of authorship for granted. The basic idea that an artist as author maintains some kind of claim to his creation, even as it circulates in the world at large, seems natural. It is the basis for copyright law and moral rights legislation which protect the rights of authors. But what is an author, and why do artists receive special legal recognition and protection that the creators of other kinds of artifacts do not? It is often assumed that artists have a special bond with their artworks, but the nature of this bond, and its function as the source of an artist’s authority over his work, often goes unquestioned.

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