Articles by Guillermo Labarca

1:1photo magazine, number 4 Autumm 2009

“A work of art is a social fact with a material and symbolic value constructed by a set of individuals and institutions. This implies clearing the romantic myth of art as an emanation of the soul or the spirit of the individual artist. For a human product to become a work of art many social agents that work in a chain must concur: in literature writers, editorials, bookstores, literary critics, the academia that elaborates theses and analyses, the media, diffusion magazines, etc. In visual arts, painters, photographers and other specialists, galleries, critics, academia, specialized and diffusion magazines, many Internet portals and pages, publicity, etc. And so with any art form.

A work in any of these fields does not become a work of art until all the other actors that define it as such have concurred. A work is only potentially art if it remains in the private sphere of its author. Besides, like in any production, there must be a continuous flow of works of a same author; there is no unique, isolated, work of art. A work of art belongs and get meaning within a life work. With these arguments we consider the question about royalties: whose are they? In most cases they belong formally to the authors, those who painted, wrote, photographed or composed. In truth they are of those who decide on the circulation of works. That is to say, in practice they are of a collection of persons and institutions, no matter whose name they belong to.

Paradoxically then, those who get more symbolical and material benefit of the circulation of a work of art are not the authors but the institutions that concur to their diffusion.”