Forgery of artists’ signatures on paintings or print from the perspective of Polish law
Olivia Rybak-Karkosz
University of Silesia in Katowice , Polandhttps://orcid.org/0000-0001-5335-1216
Abstract
The protection granted by law to art buyers ensures safe trade and confidence in the art market. It is also a crucial factor whenever a purchased piece turns out to be a forgery. Having a single legal act instead of various provisions spread across many of them is essential for the judiciary because it enables the correct legal qualification of the perpetrator’s action. Unfortunately, Polish legislation lacks a regulation that would directly penalize the forgery of an artist’s signature. This is a crucial issue because a signature is one of the elements verified during complex analyses that aim to establish the authenticity of an art piece. However, a signature is deemed to be separate from the art piece itself. Its authenticity does not mean that the whole artwork is authentic. There have been cases where authentic paintings or prints have been marked with fake signatures (placed, for instance, by the artist’s family member to confirm the authorship), and the affixing of an authentic signature on a forged painting or print is also within the realm of possibility. This proves the importance of considering a signature and an art piece to be two separate items. This paper aims to establish the most suitable regulation for signature forgery to provide a universal penalization. The methodology analysed legal acts that penalize forged trademarks, identification labels and logos. However, as established in the paper, the Industrial Property Law and Act on Fair Trading do not apply to contemporary artistic creativity. The reason is that a signature would have to be registered in the Patent Office of the Republic of Poland as a trademark. As such, in the author’s opinion, Article 306 of the Polish Criminal Code would be the most suitable option. It offers universal protection – if we deem a signature to be a standalone identification label. Nonetheless, this is merely a placeholder solution and the author proposes the implementation of a regulation that would directly penalize the forgery of an artist’s signature. The Dutch or French rules could be used as a model in this regard.
Keywords:
artist's signature, art forgery, counterfeit product markingReferences
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University of Silesia in Katowice https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5335-1216
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