Siegelaub’s 1971 Artist Contract — Will we see widespread adoption in the contemporary and digital art space in 2022?
The vision to align artist, dealer and collector interest through a mutually beneficial agreement while safeguarding artists’ long-term economic participation in their creative work is still as relevant as in the 1970s. New technology and a cultural change might help Siegelaub’s Artist Contract into widespread adoption for the first time.
“ALL artists sell, trade and give their work to only two kinds of people: those who are their friends, and those who are not their friends.” This sentence from Seth Siegelaub’s introduction to “The Artist’s Reserved Rights Transfer and Sale Agreement” (1971) is typical in its clarity and simplicity, embedded in a number of pragmatic instructions for how to use his contract template. In an attempt to bring transparency and fairness to the fine arts market, curator and former dealer Siegelaub, together with New York lawyer Bob Projansky, designed the agreement to overcome the artist’s “lack of control over the use of their work and participation in its economics after they no longer own it”.
Safeguarding artist’s economic rights in the secondary art market
At the heart of Siegelaub’s work, often simply referred to as “The Artist’s Contract”, is the contractually binding participation of the artist in the profit their artwork generates in the secondary market. It was this clause in particular which fuelled many controversial discussions around its impact on the market’s balance, whether it was designed to benefit the right actors, and not least whether the 15% share of value appreciation was simply too much or too little, depending on who you asked.
More than half a century later, the problems around the dynamics of the secondary art market that Siegelaub tried to address are just as relevant as they were back in 1971, and their economic impact has grown manifold with the 2021 fine art market celebrating yet another all-time-high in terms of revenue.
Today, the Artist’s Contract is not the industry standard it once set out to become. It did, however, serve as the foundation to important and everlasting conversations about the good, the bad and the ugly of the art market, and has made its way in various shapes and forms into a number of legislations around the world, aiming to empower artists and letting them benefit financially from an increase in their artworks’ economic worth.
Long-term relationships, provenance and transparency
What’s often overlooked in those discussions, however, are two additional, clearly stated intentions of The Artist’s Contract besides the direct economic participation mentioned above: the agreement is designed “to create […] a one-to-one relationship between the artist and the owner”. This is in stark contrast to today’s reality, where we see artwork being sold at auctions over the phone to anonymous buyers and stored in warehouses hidden from the public, and even hidden from the new owner.
In a manner of speaking, this Agreement will help you discover who your friends are. — Seth Siegelaub
Moreover, the agreement aimed “to give each owner the formalized right to receive from the artist […] a certified history and provenance of the work”. In short, Siegelaub’s contract is really trying to solve a much broader set of problems in the market than just the artist’s lack of financial participation in the value increase of their work.
Silver lining for widespread adoption
There were, and still are, obvious hurdles to overcome for The Artist’s Agreement to ever be adopted as the standard. Giving power to the artists means taking power from other, financially potent and influential players in the game. While this is still widely the case in the top-heavy, illiquid and opaque market we see today, there are other factors at play that have indeed changed over the decades and give reason to believe that the time is ripe for a renaissance of Siegelaub’s vision. These factors are technology, the cultural changes it brings along, and an emerging generation of artists and their self-conception it fuels.
If we look at the provenance tracking methods suggested in the contract, we quickly see challenges at least around convenience, if not around practical feasibility. It explains the process involving steps like copying, printing, cutting, glueing, affixing, coating and, not least, postal mailing. Today, we are able to track provenance and verify authenticity through automated and tamper-proof digital means and processes.
Upcoming artists are showing never-before-seen skills in building their brand, fostering their community of supporters and generating reach, often without the help of dealers and gallerists, and enabled by social media platforms and other digital channels.
Looking at creators of digital art in particular, we witness an overwhelming presence and direct participation of artists in online marketplaces without the involvement of intermediaries, sometimes with sales agreements, not too different from Siegelaub’s, attached directly as the artwork’s metadata.
Is 2022 the year of resurrection of the Artist Contract?
In other words, when we discuss The Artist’s Contract in today’s context and if it could indeed help to shift the balance in the market in favour of the artists, let us not forget that today’s artists are already more empowered than any generation before them — thus, in today’s negotiations over resales agreements, it is the artist who negotiates from a position of power.
Siegelaub’s vision is still relevant, the problems he tried to overcome are real and still present, but the technological and cultural landscape has changed in favour of the empowerment of artists. Perhaps soon all artists will sell, trade and give their work to only two kinds of people: those who are their friends, and those who are in it for the love of art.
