I came across an article in my news feed from artnet.com regarding artist’s contracts and resale royalties. In it it describes how an artist added a clause to the sale of his art that stated royalties were to be paid to a charity if the work was resold. It also turns out that the California Resale Royalties act was repealed, which had given artists 5% of the resale value if a piece was sold.
Resale royalties an interesting idea. Let’s say I sell a painting for $1000. That person in turn sells it for $100,000 five years later. (Say Oprah mentioned my art on her show). The seller would get $95,000 and I as the artist would receive $5000. In total they make $94,000 profit and I make $6,000 ($5,000 + the original sale of $1,000). With the repeal they make $99,000 and I only make $1,000 for the original sale.
You could just call it good investing on their part but that ignores the artists additional effort subsequent to the original sale. Perhaps I spent hundreds of hours promoting my work online, or in galleries promoting my art. Without my efforts, the value of the work does not increase.
If you compare it to music or writing its a bit of a bum deal. With music, if you have a hit song, you get paid in perpetuity for that song. SOCAN the Society of Composers, Authors and Music publishers collects and distributes royalties on your behalf. This includes songs played on the radio, live performances even background music. When I got married, I had to pay a SOCAN fee to play music I had already bought from iTunes played on my own iPod because other people were listening.
Now to be fair the music industry is shitty. Artists get fucked over all the time by record labels which is why some bands like Pearl Jam and Radiohead moved to an online distribution method. One group I know of, friends of a friend got screwed when the small label they were with was purchased by a larger record label. The new label stopped the production of their album because it sounded too much like some other band they were trying to promote. Although I could totally see galleries screwed over artists because their work looked too much like some other artist they were trying to promote as well.
Writing is similar. An author presumably gets paid every time there is another printing of their book. This is how JK Rowling became a billionaire. If an author signs a multi-books deal however they may get short changed later on. They may also sign away movie rights, digital rights, etc.
In Canada, the Canadian Copyright Act gives artists the sole right to authorize the use of their work. Whether it be for public exhibition, as well as the reproduction rights for cards, posters, books, etc. As well as digital reproduction rights on websites, TV, etc. So my painting, sold for $1,000 could not be used as a back drop in a film without my consent.
One of the things I didn’t like about the article was that in the contract provided instead of the money going to the artist, the resale benefit would go to a charitable organization and the reseller would collect the tax benefit. The idea is to sweeten the pot for the seller by giving them an incentive.
So for example, if my original work sold for $1,000 was resold for $100,000 and the clause was for 15% of the profit to go to charity then the seller makes $84,000 ($100,000 – $15,000 to charity – $1,000 original cost) + tax write-off, the charity makes $15,000, and the artist still only gets $1,000 despite being the creator of the work and the only person who has actually done anything.
The art market is a thirty billion dollar a year industry. To put that into perspective, you could save $10,000 a day and it would still take you 8,219 years to save that much. Surely we can come up with a way to ensure a more equitable distribution of those funds.