2013

four-fold printed matter on paper stock

43.5" x 12"

unlimited edition (digital version)

 

The Art & Law Codex consists of portable letter-size file boxes (approximately 11.5” x 14” x 18” each), which can be stacked with other similar file boxes, allowing for the collection to grow in size and expand in content with time. Artist and lawyer Sérgio Muñoz Sarmiento, Director of the Art & Law Program in New York City, asked a group of artists, writers, curators, lawyers, and legal scholars to contribute. Independent Curators International stewards the project. For the initial, definitional volume, participants were asked to submit a document that they think defines art and law.

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The artist submitted a foldout document that historically contextualizes the landmark US Supreme Court decision Bleistein v. Donaldson Lithographic of 1903. In securing copyright for advertisements, the ruling effectively lowered the threshold for authorial validation, thus foreshadowing the “death of authorial originality” critique postmodernist authors and artists would raise many decades later.

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