#Artistic licences license#

Chapter 1 offers examples ranging from Shia LeBeouf to blues music, hip-hop culture to college plagiarism, to make a point that I doubt will surprise anyone willing to read a book-length study on copyright and appropriation: namely, that while artistic making has long been bound up with artistic taking, 'remix culture' seems to have accelerated with modern technology. The next two chapters are similarly introductory. First comes an Introduction devoted to Hick's terrific cover image: commercial artist Mick Haggerty's mash-up of Mondrian and Mickey Mouse - an example I would have loved Hick to reconsider at the end of the book as a test of his account of what appropriation is appropriate. Somewhat disconcertingly, the agenda-setting passage above doesn't appear until page 48. This, then, is the agenda for Hick's book, or at least most of it. (1) the nature of the works in question, (2) the relationship of the author to the work, (3) the rights of the author and how they arise from this relationship, (4) the relationship holding between the original work and the potentially infringing work, and (5) the rights of nonauthors - if any - with regard to a given work (48). Hick's central question - Is it wrong for one work to copy another? - requires him to consider five 'interdependent metaphysical and ethical issues' within 'the institutional, cultural, and legal framework of intellectual property' (48). But deciding exactly what lessons the law, with its own distinctive interests, should take away from an account like Hick's - focused as it is on philosophical clarity and responsiveness to current artistic practice - is itself a philosophically interesting question, and one I wish Hick's book went even further in answering. Hick's account of copyright is sometimes descriptive, sometimes revisionary, and thus has something to teach lawyers as well. Philosophers of art who care about artistic practice can learn, not only from Hick's rich and varied examples, but also from his account of one of the great forces shaping that practice.

His new book has a lot to teach philosophers about how the law both protects authors' rights and limits them, often to protect others who want to sample, quote, adapt, or appropriate existing works within their own.

#Artistic licences license#

Ultimately, Artistic License provides a critical and systematic analysis of the key philosophical issues that underlie copyright policy, rethinking the relationship between artist, artwork, and the law.Darren Hudson Hick is a rarity: a sophisticated philosopher of art who understands and cares about the law. Using real-life examples of artists who have incorporated copyrighted works into their art, he explores issues of artistic creation and the nature of infringement as they are informed by analytical aesthetics and legal and critical theory. Engaging with long-standing debates about the nature of originality, authorship, and artists’ rights, Hick examines the philosophical challenges presented by the role of intellectual property in the artworld and vice versa.

In this up-to-date, thorough, and accessible analysis of the right to copyright, Darren Hudson Hick works to reconcile the growing practice of artistic appropriation with innovative views of artists’ rights, both legal and moral. From the musical mash-ups of Girl Talk to the pop-culture borrowings of Damien Hirst and Jeff Koons, it’s clear that the artistic landscape is shifting-which leads to some tricky legal and philosophical questions.

The art scene today is one of appropriation-of remixing, reusing, and recombining the works of other artists.