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Money Painting And The Duplicitous Multiple: The Interdependence Of American Copyright Legislation And Artistic Production, Jaclyn N. Siemers

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

In this thesis I investigate the interworking and influences of the United States’ federal copyright legislation, specifically its relationship to the history of artistic production from the late nineteenth-century to the present. A detailed analysis of the evolving copyright statute, the social and legal impact of the multiple (including the counterfeit copy), and the progressive recurrence of representational money paintings will reveal the mutually dependent relationship of copyright legislation and artistic production. The progression of styles in America art—nineteenth-century trompe l’oeil illusionism, mid-century Abstract Expressionism, Pop art, and contemporary appropriation art—provides an illustrated roadmap of the complex relationship between the …