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Over the past decade the intersections of art and the law seem to have become more frequent, and more formalised. As Tad Crawford puts it in his Legal Guide for the Visual Artist (first published in the USA in 1977), "art law, although drawn from many areas of the law, is developing more and more into a distinct entity" (Crawford 1987 p.1 ). While in Australia, 'arts law' might have emerged as a legal field a little later than in the USA, its profile has grown significantly since the formation of The Arts Law Centre of Australia in 1982-also the year the first edition of Shane Simpson's The Visual Artist and the Law was published (a second edition of this Australian legal handbook was published in 1989 and reviewed in Eyeline No. 13). As the visual arts infrastructure 'firmed up' during the eighties, arts law issues took a significant place within the new found 'professionalism' of visual arts organisations and publications: there were regular arts law columns in journals and newsletters, high profile lobbying for legal change (particularly around copyright), and a recognition by many art educators that at least some knowledge of the law was necessary if graduates were to engage in 'professional practice'.
At the same time as this practical concern with arts law has brought art and the law together-with the law being treated primarily as a 'technical' support to art practice-postmodern art practice and art theory have explicitly, or by implication, been engaged in a 'critique' of legal structures. Practices of 'appropriation' clearly questioned the law of copyright, while many artists have produced work that pushes at the boundaries of obscenity law. In such circumstances... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline