Earlier this summer, a heated dispute erupted between a Manhattan gallerist and a private art advisory business, in a case that raises issues regarding the roles of galleries and advisors at the high end of the art market.

Back in August, the New York Times ran a story about a heated dispute between actor Alec Baldwin and gallerist Mary Boone over a painting by Ross Bleckner.  Baldwin has now commenced a lawsuit in New York state court against Boone and her eponymous gallery, claiming that she defrauded him into buying a different version of the painting he wanted.  See Docket No. 654807/2016 (Sup. Ct. N.Y. Co.).

We have written before about a long-running legal battle between the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, California, and the heir to a Jewish Dutch art dealer who fled the Netherlands in 1940.  The focus of the dispute is a diptych (two painted panels) titled Adam and Eve, painted around 1530 by German Renaissance artist Lucas Cranach the Elder.  A recent district court decision dealt a possibly fatal blow to the claims by plaintiff Marei Von Saher, although she plans to appeal.

An amended complaint has been filed in a case against art dealer David Zwirner, adding claims for violation of New York’s Arts and Cultural Affairs Law.  As we recently discussed, Zwirner has been sued by UK entity Blue Art Limited over a $2 million deal gone bad.   The initial complaint concealed the description of the artwork to avoid “possible further damage to the Work’s value,” but the amended complaint clarifies that the sculpture at the center of the dispute is Gazing Ball (Centaur and Lapith Maiden), by Jeff Koons.

Prominent art dealer David Zwirner and his eponymous gallery have been sued by a buyer over a $ 2million deal gone bad, in a case that should serve as a reminder about the importance of clear contracting regarding the timing of art transactions.

Two pending cases present opposite but equally curious issues of art authentication by a living artist.  In one, the artist Peter Doig is being sued because he disavowed authorship of a work that a collector says is by Doig; in the other, an artist claims authorship over works that another man claims to have forged.  Both cases pose interesting questions about who, if not the artist, is the final say on whether an artwork is by the artist’s hand.

Fast-fashion-brand Zara is facing a potential lawsuit—as well as an ongoing publicity battle—over accusations by a growing number of independent artists claiming Zara copied their designs. The firestorm began in mid-July when LA-based artist and designer Tuesday Bassen went public on Twitter with her belief that Zara had ripped off her designs for a series of pins and patches by reproducing them on Zara’s own line of iron-on patches.

A recent settlement involving several major art-world players raises some important points about contracting in art transactions.

A dispute between two powerful figures in the international art world has been playing out on a global stage for months.  Now, a major auction house has been dragged into the fray, sparking even more debate about the role of confidentiality in a market that often operates with minimal transparency and places a premium on secrecy.

Appropriation art is back in the news, as two of the biggest names in the field navigate the latest legal claims filed against them.
A few months ago, we wrote about a new lawsuit filed against Jeff Koons over his appropriation of a photograph from a 1980s liquor advertisement.  The defendants in the case (Koons and auction house Phillips) filed answers to the complaint, but in mid-April, the parties informed the court that they had reached a settlement, and the case is now closed.  But shortly after the Koons complaint was filed, another giant of appropriation art, Richard Prince, was haled into court for his latest dance on the line between fair use and copyright infringement. 

This blog has previously covered the ongoing litigation concerning California’s Resale Royalties Act (CRRA).  A federal district court recently struck down the state statute on the grounds that it is preempted by federal copyright law, dealing a heavy blow to artists seeking royalties in connection with the resales of their artworks.

After much legal wrangling, a jury heard testimony last month in the first civil trial arising out of the art forgery scandal that took down one of New York’s most prominent galleries.  The story began in 2011 when word spread that, over the course of more than a decade, the once-venerable Knoedler Gallery had sold about $60 million worth of artworks—purported to be by Pollock, Motherwell, Rothko, de Kooning, and other giants of the Abstract Expressionist movement—that later turned out to be forgeries.  Since then, more details have emerged.

Back in 2013, this blog covered the dismissal of a libel case against the New Yorker over its portrayal of an art authenticator.  The Second Circuit has now affirmed that decision, signaling the likely end of this dispute—even as the art world continues to struggle with the complex problem of authentication.

Around this time last year, our blog wrote about the history of two works by Austrian Expressionist Egon Schiele.  Both were once owned by Fritz Grünbaum, a Jewish Austrian cabaret performer and art collector who was imprisoned by the Nazis in 1938 and died in Dachau in 1941; it’s unclear what happened to his art during and immediately after World War II, but a handful of the works have surfaced over the years since, sometimes leading to competing claims of ownership.

As the interest in graffiti art has grown, so too have discussions in artistic and legal circles—including in the courts.  Graffiti was back in the news this summer, highlighted by an interesting trio of court cases involving various issues impacting this unique body of art.

Conceptual sculptor and artist Cady Noland’s works have garnered international acclaim and set records at auction.  She has also, however, received attention for her complex and sometimes-fraught relationship with her past works.  Last fall, she pointedly refused to endorse a show containing some of her work, and she has in the past expressed her concerns with how her creations are installed, maintained, exhibited, and sold on the secondary market.  Her vigorous oversight of works has even resulted in litigation.  Last week, her purported disavowal of one of her works that had been restored without her permission sparked a new lawsuit, and raised more questions about the scope of an artist’s right to disclaim authorship of her own works.

Famed “appropriation artist” Richard Prince has spent much of his career testing the boundaries of fair use.  He was the defendant in the high-profile case of Cariou v. Prince, which revolved around a 2008 exhibit at the Gagosian Gallery called “Canal Zone,” in which Prince extensively appropriated works from Yes Rasta, a book of works by photographer Patrick Cariou.  Cariou’s ensuing copyright-infringement lawsuit culminated in a 2013 Second Circuit opinion, which held that the majority of Prince’s works constituted fair use of Cariou’s photographs under federal copyright law. 

This blog has previously covered the twisting tale of the Gurlitt Collection, a cache of hundreds of artworks discovered in Germany and Austria a few years ago in the possession of Cornelius Gurlitt, the son of an art dealer authorized by the Nazis to deal in art confiscated, looted, or deemed “degenerate art” by Hitler’s regime. The art world has fiercely debated the best way to handle the collection, a daunting task that was further complicated when Gurlitt himself died last May and bequeathed his entire estate to the Kunstmuseum Bern in Switzerland.

Shareholders filed a class-action suit against online marketplace Etsy last week for allegedly failing to disclose in its initial public offering documents that millions of items for sale on the site were either counterfeit or potentially infringing trademarks and copyrights.  Etsy is a peer-to-peer e-commence website that allows artists to create their own stores and sell their creations for a small listing fee and a percentage of their sales revenue.  It provides an important platform for artisans without the following or the means to market and sell their works independently.

Earlier this year, this blog covered a case examining the constitutionality of California Civil Code § 986, known as the California Resale Royalties Act (CRRA).  This week, an en banc panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals struck down part of the CRRA as unconstitutional but severed the objectionable portions from the rest of the statutory regime.  The ruling has potentially complex legal and economic implications for those who buy, sell, and trade in high-end art—and places the spotlight on current efforts in Congress to enact a nationwide resale royalty law.