Why artists miss out on profit from art resales

HostWe often hear those stories about an old painting found in a dusty attic that ends up selling for millions of dollars at a big auction. It's a massive win for the person who found it, but usually, the person who actually painted it doesn't see a single cent of that new money. Why is it that in the art world, the artist gets left out once the work leaves their hands for the first time?

GuestIt really comes down to how the law looks at stuff versus ideas. If you write a song and it gets played on the radio a million times, you get a small check every single time. That's because you own the rights to that specific tune. But for a long time, the law has looked at a painting more like a car or a chair. Once I sell you my car, I can't come back five years later and ask for more money just because you sold it to a collector for double the price. Most countries use a rule that says once the first sale happens, the artist loses their right to control where the piece goes or how much it sells for. The first sale is the only one that counts for the person who made it.

HostBut a chair is just a tool. A painting feels different. It's more like a piece of the artist's life. If the value goes up because the artist got famous, it seems like they should get a piece of that success.

GuestYou would think so, and artists have been pretty loud about it for a long time. There was this famous moment back in the seventies that really brought this to a head. A big collector sold off a bunch of his art at a high-end auction house in New York. He had bought a piece from an artist named Robert Rauschenberg for about nine hundred dollars several years earlier. At the auction, that same piece sold for eighty-five thousand. Rauschenberg was actually there in the room watching. He got so mad he walked up to the collector after the sale, pushed him, and yelled about how he had been working his tail off just so the guy could make a fortune. He felt like the collector was getting rich off his hard work while he got nothing.

HostThat's wild. I mean, eighty-five thousand back then was a huge amount of money. Did that fight actually change how the art world works?

GuestIt started a huge debate that's still going on. Some places, like France, already had a rule for this. They call it the right of follow-up. The idea is that the artist should get a small cut, maybe three or four percent, every time the work is sold again. In Europe, this is pretty normal now. But in the United States, it's a different story. California tried to pass a law like that, but the courts eventually blocked it. The big auction houses and the people who run the galleries fought it for years. They didn't want to change the old way of doing things because they were worried it would drive buyers away.

HostWhy would they fight it so hard? It seems fair to give the artist a tiny slice, especially if the price is in the millions. Is it just about the money?

GuestWell, they argue it would actually end up hurting the artists in the long run. Their reasoning is that if a buyer knows they'll have to pay an extra fee years down the road, they'll just offer the artist less money right now, when the artist might really need it to buy supplies or pay rent. There's also the problem of how you track it. If a painting moves from a private home in one city to a secret collection in another country, how do you even know it was sold? Most of these sales aren't public. They happen behind closed doors between two private people. It's a nightmare to track.

HostSo it's a tracking problem as much as a money problem. But we track everything now. Surely we can keep tabs on a famous painting?

GuestThat's where things are starting to shift. Some people are trying to use new tech to bake these rules into the art itself. There are digital files now where the code says that every time the file is sold, ten percent goes back to the person who made it. It happens on its own. No lawyers, no chasing people down. The computer handles the math and sends the money to the artist's digital wallet the moment the sale goes through.

HostBut that only works for digital art. If I have a physical frame on my wall, there's no code attached to the paint.

GuestRight. For physical art, some artists try to use paperwork. They make the first buyer sign a deal saying if they ever sell it, they owe the artist a cut. But collectors usually hate those. It makes the art harder to sell later because not everyone wants to deal with those rules. Many collectors just won't buy a piece if it comes with strings attached. They want to own it fully, with no one else involved in their business or looking at their bank account.

HostIt feels like a clash between the artist’s right and the buyer's right to their own stuff. But does this even help the artists who actually need the money?

GuestThat's the big catch. Most of the money from these resale rules ends up going to the families of artists who are already dead or the tiny group of stars at the very top. The artist who's still struggling to pay rent rarely sees their work resell for a huge profit. Usually, by the time a work is worth millions, that artist has been famous for decades. So, these laws might just be making the rich even richer while adding a bunch of rules that make it harder for new artists just starting out.

HostSo it might not be the fix for the starving painter that it looks like. It's more about a shift in how we value work over time.

GuestSome artists are now refusing to sell to certain collectors unless they promise to donate a cut of any future sale to a museum or a charity, which is a new way to keep the money moving in the right direction without needing a new law.

HostThe pile of money at those big auctions keeps growing, but the hands that first held the brush still usually come up empty once the work leaves the attic.