Subversion in the Fine Print: 'The Artist’s Reserved Rights Transfer and Sale Agreement' at Auction

Auction records are primarily associated with tracking art prices, tracing ownership history, and assessing the market’s shifting geographical loci. This information is evident in standard data fields for provenance, hammer and reserve price, sale location, and more. But auction records sometimes also include non-standard details beneath the subtly sidelined section “Other Information,” where there is occasionally another sort of ‘fine print’: notices to potential purchasers that the artist is entitled to a resale royalty under legislation, or, by contract. The appearance of such a notice stirred controversy in 1987, when Hans Haacke’s On Social Grease was auctioned at Christie’s New York. The sale was subject to terms in the notorious The Artist’s Reserved Rights Transfer and Sale Agreement by conceptual art curator-dealer Seth Siegelaub and lawyer Robert Projansky in 1971, which grants artists 15% of collectors’ resale profit, among other rights. Auctioned works affected by the so-called "Artist’s Contract" since are listed with similar notices. This paper examines the language and aesthetics of these notifications of the Artist’s Contract in auction listings, where sometimes it appears antagonistic, and at other times suspiciously innocuous. These notices form a topography of artists’ resistance to secondary market speculation, and reveal a further subversive layer: While the Artist's Contract is signed between artist and collector at first sale, in subsequent sales it is signed between seller and buyer, thereby tacitly calling upon buyers, sellers, and auction houses to honor – and self-enforce – the document's greater political mission of establishing market equity for artists.