Peter Anderson investigates the paradoxical relationship between copyright law and postmodern practice
The great traditions of art upon art, the techniques of collage, forms of biting parody and satire, of provocation, all of these that have been accomplished by the camera, by the brush and by the other tools of artistic vision, all are in fact impaired by a moral rights regime. Jon A. Baumgarten
Despite the rhetorical force of much that has been said and done in the name of "appropriation" over the past decade, it has produced few changes in the way that the law deals with artistic property. If anything, the possibility of a totally free economy of images, of texts without origin, has become yet another post-modern myth, as increasing numbers of visual artists become aware of their rights within the framework of copyright law. For while "image scavenging" may at times have appeared to be the dominant international style of the 1980s, the tensions between the blatant unauthorised reproduction of images and the constraints of copyright law were always present.
Within the Australian context the intersection of postmodern theory and contemporary practice has been equally ambiguous, for at the same time as local artists were being drawn into the international theoretical debates, the local visual arts infrastructure was becoming more highly developed. Thus, in addition to their critical role in relation to visual culture, artists began to be seen as workers in an important national industry. So while there may be a need for a flexible attitude to visual property within the framework of "post-modern critical practice", as professionals, artists must also consider the management of their products within an increasingly complex cultural economy.
For those working predominantly within the gallery system, income from the production... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline