Article Order from Chaos: the Rule of Art
| Publication year | 2015 |
| Pages | 34 |
May, 2015
Courtney R. Davis, J.
Art law is becoming more visible in the legal domain, from cases of art looting and smuggling to copyright infringement, forgeries, and tax assessment. As art and technology develop, legal theories likewise expand to address new concerns related to digital licensing, resale rights, street art, art investment funds, and even rights over the ubiquitous selfle. But unless one practices intellectual property law or follows the arts page of the New York Times, the connection between law and the visual arts might go overlooked. Yet, there is much to be learned by lawyers through the language of art, outside of numerical figures on insurance and estate-planning documents.
Interestingly, art history has been named by some admissions experts as one of the best preparatory undergraduate degrees for law school. Why? Far from simply focusing on aesthetics or subjective reactions, the study of art helps one make visual, theoretical, and historical connections. Art historians are trained to isolate patterns, spot narratives, and interpret facts - skills paramount to the practice of law. Indeed, artworks can be construed as texts of visual language. Whether Renaissance masters or postmodern innovators, artists create visual works wherein the sum equals more than the parts, much like a lawyer crafting a written document or an oral argument.
Interestingly, many of the most noted and influential early twentieth centuries artists were trained as lawyers. Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944), celebrated for his abstract paintings based on musical symphonies and expressive color harmonies, first studied law and economics at the University of Moscow. At the age of thirty, he refused a professorship in law at the University of Durpat, endeavoring to become an artist instead. Henri Matisse (1869-1954), a contemporary of Kandinsky, also studied the law in Paris, even working as a court administer in Le Cateau-Cambresis before turning his attention to the creation of vibrant, harmonious, and abstracted images of women and interiors that would characterize the fauve style. While it isn't difficult to imagine the lure of an artist's studio as an escape from the law office, even pre-billable hours and e-filing, the relevant query is not why these artists changed career paths but what the connection is between their legal training and their artistic...
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