Copyright and conceptual art

This chapter focuses on language as a signature style of conceptual art and how copyright law struggles to protect the artistic authorship inherent in text instructions. It primarily focuses on the early works of Sol LeWitt and seeks to argue that, irrespective of whether more traditional or progressive approaches to the legal definition of art are employed, more systemic forms of artistic production, particularly those that involve a literary to visual 'translation' of the work as part of that process of production will struggle to be protected by copyright law