ABSTRACT
Artists are not renowned for their business acumen, and it is not just a romantic notion that artists are usually oblivious to the law and their rights. Copyright inheres in created objects automatically, right from the moment of their physical manifestation. Artists are therefore saved the trouble of formally registering their central intellectual property right by courtesy of this deliberately helpful and paternalistic gesture on the part of the law. In other respects, it is arguable that, although artists who achieve some popular acclaim are frequently lauded for their creativity, they are habitually denied financial benefits commensurate with such encomium. In the postmodern environment, this is not the case with multi-millionaire artists such as Damien Hirst, but it certainly was the case with earlier artists like Van Gogh, who famously sold only one painting during his lifetime, and who would now be considerably wealthier given the extravagant sums paid nowadays for his works. Why acknowledged art ultimately possesses significant fiscal worth as well as social allure is a matter of debate, but, as a matter of popular sociology, 1 it is sometimes alleged that artistic creation is understood in terms of some kind of magical process, which consequently attracts great attention. To pursue sociological assumptions further, it is also commonplace to generalize about the personal nature of artists as a distinct breed. They are alleged to be unconventional creatures living on a higher plane of reality than ordinary folk, an image that rehabilitates them in the eyes of society, which might otherwise protest about their radical individualism. This almost surreal mystique acts as an excuse for the liberties artists tend to take, and justifies them ontologically as having a common essence housing all manner of peculiarity, that is fortuitously offset by a sort of charismatic, intangible, transcendent power.
