In several simple, the old adage "Possession is 90% of the law" was the rule. If you owned the artwork, you also owned the copyright. Although it meant little to the vast majority of art collectors and institutions who had iconic images as the "Mona Lisa" or "Starry Night" by Van Gogh often raised huge sums of money by selling the reproduction rights.
As brilliantly shown in the television series Robert Hughes "The Mona Lisa Curse," huge profits made by a new breed of speculator collectors on the works of art they bought for a song bread struggling artists provoked cries of foul play led by major artists such as Robert Rauschenberg. He demanded that the creator-artist also receive a share of windfall profits from their intellectual property.
While some countries, such as Holland, enacted new laws which stipulated that living artists receive a percentage of future sales of their works, for the most part, the old methods have continued unchanged. There is one exception regarding the intellectual property right as many countries have laws saying that if a work of art was sold by the artist with a contract stating that he had sold both the artwork and copyright, the copyright remains with the artist. These laws were based largely on those governing the rights of authors and their heirs, unless otherwise contractually extended up to 50 years after the death of the writer. Similar legislation exists in Indonesia.
Although noble intention, as many laws, few artists ever get their legitimate copyright simply because apart from a handful of works more known by the most famous artists, he there is almost no demand. Ironically artists are often delighted to have their work reproduced in the media for absolutely nothing, because it is a form of promotion. Furthermore, even if they have decided to exercise their rights, court costs, and time required, are so prohibitive that it would become a futile exercise.
The War Two painters and sculptors modernist pre-World are a good illustration of this phenomenon. Produced for the foreign market, the vast majority of these outstanding original works of art were exported long. Although the association of artists Pita Maha regulated both the quality of work and transparently sought to ensure not only that they were sold at a fair price, but also that the majority of the sum paid ended up in the pockets of the artist, in many cases the artists have received little for their art, much less their original ideas. So, too, the prices of these artworks remarkably increased incredibly in recent years and have been the subject of many books. Copyright certainly has not been paid and it is even doubtful that the heirs have even received copies of the publications.
National governments, including Indonesia, have also claimed copyrights iconic artworks such as Buddhas and Prajnaparamita of Borobudur, the Buddhist goddess of Supreme Wisdom, who appeared on many book covers. again, while these ideas are noble and well-intentioned, the results are often messy and cons-productive because serious publications honor the great art and artists are an important element in maintaining their heritage alive.
for example, although I wrote a book on the art and life of the Dutch artist Willem Hofker, which can be described as one of the most poignant of expatriate artists who lived and worked on the island before World war II war Copyright was used to prevent my publication of a new edition incorporating extensive new information that I have gathered in the past decade.
The problem is that the family was not satisfied with the information I included, about his relationship with his models in an essay published in the catalog on Hofker 2009 Pasifika Museum Bali . I had learned there are years when I interviewed Gusti Mawar, one of its most beautiful models, her love of Balinese women, and in this case their torrid affair, which certainly helps explain the heavy stream eroticism in his his paintings.
Therefore, the family decided to exclude me from a forthcoming book on Hofker which will not only sanitized and censored, but is also the author of a newcomer to the self-important Gianni Orsini, who has ever spent time in Bali or Indonesia and appears however as a major expert in the field. In particular, he has never met Maria Hofker or other major actors of the time. His lengthy digressions recently published in the catalogs of two Christies are predictable full of speculative fluff, effusively romantic odes in Bali and very little content, because knowledge is limited at best. My attempt to produce a book based on over 20 years of research in Bali and Holland was prevented by using their control of copyright to prevent further publication. I guess it does not matter since few, if any, ever read the texts anyway!