This seminar addresses how visual artists have negotiated legal doctrines, structures and images as an integral part of their immediate and overall practices. Focusing on artists working in East Asia from 1960s to the present, our discussion explores such topics as counterfeit cases and materiality, censorship, the use of contracts in art, the impact of changing property laws and the legal implications of collaboration. Artists to be discussed include Zhang Huan, Shin Hak-cheol, Akasegawa Genpei, and Tehching Hsieh. Taking into special consideration the significance of the viewer and of his or her apprehension of form, this course focuses on what visual artists, and by extension, art has to say about the law rather than on what has law done to art.
Please register online through email at learnart@taikwun.hk attention Melissa Lee, education and public programs curator
Joan Kee is an Associate Professor in the History of Art at the University of Michigan. Her research interests include modern and contemporary art in East and Southeast Asia from the late 18th century to the present and "applied art history”, where art historical methods are used to consider a wide range of non-art subjects, from law to digital communication. Formerly a lawyer based in Hong Kong and currently a contributing editor to Artforum, her books include Contemporary Korean Art: Tansaekhwa and the Urgency of Method (2013) and Models of Integrity: Art and Law in Post-Sixties America (2019). Current research projects include a history of Afro-Asian artistic engagements, an essay on North Korean ink painting and a short book on the rise (and rise) of emojis.
