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Unsurprisingly, catalogues raisonnes are a hotbed of legal activity and controversy. Many scholars will now not offer opinions on the authenticity of a work for

by yarrel 8y ago

Unsurprisingly, catalogues raisonnes are a hotbed of legal activity and controversy. Many scholars will now not offer opinions on the authenticity of a work for fear of getting sued: https://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/20/arts/design/art-scholars-fear-lawsuits-in-declaring-works-real-or-fake.html https://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/20/arts/design/art-scholars-... And works with supposedly excellent provenance still end up being repudiated by authentication committees: https://www.antiquestradegazette.com/news/2011/double-denied-the-dispute-that-closed-the-warhol-authentication-service/ https://www.antiquestradegazette.com/news/2011/double-denied... Due to the misaligned incentives in the art authentication world, I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that a blockchain would be a good way of tracking records in the artworld, particularly if artists register works directly on it.

nosuchthing 8y ago
https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2018/06/how-i-became-leonardo-da-vinci-on-the-blockchain/ https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2018/06/how-i-became-leonardo-da-vi... By putting your artwork on the "BitCoin Blockchain", Verisart will hand wavy magic increase the trust in art dealers and reduce fraud. That's a pretty neat idea. A distributed public ledger of who I have sold my art to. And, if they sell it, they have a cryptographically signed certificate proving its provenance. The seller can sign the certificate with their private key to say they've sold it to the new owner of a specific public key. Nifty! Except… and I hate to bring the art industry into disrepute… what if I sell a fake and keep the original in my Underground Vault? There's no way to permanently attach a digital certificate to a physical work of art. Incidentally, this is the problem with all the startups claiming the blockchain will revolutionise the integrity of global logistics markets. Sure, you can slap a QR code on a crate - but nothing stops an unscrupulous middle-man from replacing or adulterating the contents of the crate. Let's get back to Verisart's other issue. Proving that I am the creator or owner of a piece of artwork. Long story short, I convinced them that I painted the Mona Lisa.

by yarrel 8y ago

nosuchthing 8y ago

https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2018/06/how-i-became-leonardo-da-vinci-on-the-blockchain/ https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2018/06/how-i-became-leonardo-da-vi... By putting your artwork on the "BitCoin Blockchain", Verisart will hand wavy magic increase the trust in art dealers and reduce fraud. That's a pretty neat idea. A distributed public ledger of who I have sold my art to. And, if they sell it, they have a cryptographically signed certificate proving its provenance. The seller can sign the certificate with their private key to say they've sold it to the new owner of a specific public key. Nifty! Except… and I hate to bring the art industry into disrepute… what if I sell a fake and keep the original in my Underground Vault? There's no way to permanently attach a digital certificate to a physical work of art. Incidentally, this is the problem with all the startups claiming the blockchain will revolutionise the integrity of global logistics markets. Sure, you can slap a QR code on a crate - but nothing stops an unscrupulous middle-man from replacing or adulterating the contents of the crate. Let's get back to Verisart's other issue. Proving that I am the creator or owner of a piece of artwork. Long story short, I convinced them that I painted the Mona Lisa.