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Fashion United
26-06-2025
- Business
- Fashion United
Digital art also has legal limits: Mango condemned for rights infringement in NFTs
The Provincial Court of Barcelona issued an unprecedented ruling in the Spanish legal landscape, condemning the fashion group Mango (Punto Fa, S.L.) for the unauthorised exploitation of works of art in digital format. The ruling, issued by Section 15, specialising in commercial matters, established for the first time in Spain the infringement of copyright in the context of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and virtual environments such as the metaverse. The case, brought by the management entity VEGAP (Visual Entidad de Gestión de Artistas Plásticos) on behalf of the heirs of Joan Miró, Antoni Tàpies, and Miquel Barceló, arose from a marketing campaign that accompanied the opening of a Mango store in New York in 2022. In summary The Provincial Court of Barcelona condemned Mango for exploiting digitised artworks without authorisation in NFTs and the metaverse. The ruling sets a legal precedent in Spain, protecting copyright in virtual environments and NFTs. Mango must cease the illicit activity, destroy the NFTs, and pay compensation of 750,380.21 euros, although it plans to appeal the decision. In May 2022, Mango celebrated the opening of its flagship store on Fifth Avenue in New York with an ambitious digital campaign. The brand exhibited five original works by Spanish artists — Joan Miró, Antoni Tàpies, and Miquel Barceló — in the physical store, belonging to the private collection of Isak Andic, founder of the company. Beyond the physical exhibition, Mango took the works to a new digital dimension by transforming them into animated compositions and converting them into NFTs. These pieces were disseminated through various platforms, including the OpenSea marketplace and the Decentraland virtual universe, and were also promoted on social networks such as Instagram, TikTok, and LinkedIn. Owning painting does not give right to digitally exploit or modify it The digitisation and dissemination of these works without the express consent of their authors or heirs led to the complaint by VEGAP, the entity that represents the rights holders. In its lawsuit, VEGAP alleged the infringement of several rights protected by the Intellectual Property Law: reproduction, transformation, public communication, integrity of the work, and right of dissemination. The argument held that physically owning a painting does not imply having the right to exploit it digitally or to modify it. According to the lawsuit, the use of these works as part of a marketing strategy without prior license not only violated economic rights but also 'damaged the image and cultural legacy of the authors'. The entity claimed the immediate withdrawal of the NFTs and any digital reproduction, the publication of a public rectification, and compensation in excess of 1.3 million euros for economic and moral damages. Initial ruling in favour of Mango In January 2024, the Commercial Court number nine of Barcelona dismissed VEGAP's claim. The first instance judgment acquitted Mango, which argued that it had acted in good faith and without profit. The defence maintained that its initiative sought to enrich the public experience, promote culture, and pay tribute to the authors, all in the absence of clear regulations on NFTs in the Spanish context. Mango even invoked an interpretation similar to the Anglo-Saxon concept of 'fair use'. However, VEGAP appealed and, after months of litigation, Section 15 of the Provincial Court upheld the appeal in its judgment, and the court overturned the initial ruling, condemning Mango for copyright infringement, both economic and moral. The ruling ordered the immediate cessation of the illicit activity and the destruction of all NFTs and physical or digital materials derived from the altered works. It also obliged Mango to publish the content of the ruling on its website and social networks, as a way of publicly acknowledging that it acted without the artists' authorisation. Regarding compensation, the resolution set a total amount of 750,380.21 euros. Precedent in uncharted territory Although Mango has announced that it will appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court, the ruling already represents a turning point in Spanish legal system. It is the first time that an infringement of copyright has been recognised in the context of NFTs and the metaverse. Mango insists that its actions were never for profit or intended to commercially exploit the works. They also allege that, until that time, there were no legal precedents or specific regulations clarifying the legal limits of the use of digitised art as NFTs. For VEGAP, however, the ruling is a resounding victory. Its director general, Javier Gutiérrez, called the ruling 'historic' in extending legal protection for visual artists to the virtual environment. He stressed that this resolution reinforces the principle that copyright continues to apply even when technologies are new and disruptive. The Mango case leaves a clear lesson for the industry: although the legal framework continues to evolve, the rights of authors — their recognition, integrity, and fair remuneration — remain as fundamental pillars, also in the metaverse. This article was translated to English using an AI tool. FashionUnited uses AI language tools to speed up translating (news) articles and proofread the translations to improve the end result. This saves our human journalists time they can spend doing research and writing original articles. Articles translated with the help of AI are checked and edited by a human desk editor prior to going online. If you have questions or comments about this process email us at info@
Forbes
29-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
This Exhibit Asks Whether Surrealism Would Have Been Better Without Its Leading Men
On October 15, 1924, André Breton published a manifesto that was as notable for its belligerence as its egotism. Striving to define one of the most influential artistic movements of the 20th century, his Surrealist Manifesto laid claim to 'the actual functioning of thought… exempt from any aesthetic or moral concern.' Together with eighteen collaborators – predominantly poets and painters – Breton declared 'the omnipotence of dream' and provided a scheme for trouncing the 'reign of logic' through the practice of 'psychic automatism'. Leonora Carrington. Darvaux, 1950. Oil on canvas. 80 × 65 cm. Colección particular. © 2025, Estate of Leonora Carrington / VEGAP. Photo: Willem Schalkwijk Willem Schalkwijk But Breton was not the only one with designs on surrealism. Earlier in the same month, a poet named Yvan Goll published his own Surrealist Manifesto, backed by a completely different group of artistic confederates, standing for a completely different ideal. 'Reality is the basis of all great art,' he proclaimed. 'Without it there is no life, no substance.' The terms of disagreement were no mere coincidence. Goll set 'the emanation of life' in opposition to the exaltation of 'the dream and the random play of thought' that he attributed to 'ex-Dadaists' such as Breton. Goll's vision of Surrealism was situated in 'the ground under our feet and the sky over our head'. Even though Goll was the first to publish a manifesto of Surrealism – and in spite of the care he took to align himself with Guillaume Apollinaire, the poet who coined the term surreal in 1917 – Breton took such a forceful position that he effectively ousted Goll from art history. Breton's victory can partially be attributed to the relative novelty of his project (which transplanted Freud from the clinic to the gallery), in contrast to Goll's vaguer claims to radical change. To an even greater extent, Breton's triumph was achieved with aggressive ambition. (Concurrent with the publication of his manifesto, he and his collaborators established a Bureau for Surrealist Research in Paris. Ostensibly set up to study the 'unconscious activity of the mind', the bureau also issued letters to perceived enemies who called themselves Surrealists without permission, threatening to track them down and beat them to a pulp.) A century after the publication of Breton's manifesto, the identification of Surrealism with Breton's circle is scarcely questioned, even by the select few who know about his rivalry with Goll. Without challenging these historical facts, a major exhibition at the Fundación MAPFRE in Madrid beguilingly sets out to explore 'Surrealism without Breton'. It should be stated upfront that 1924. Other Surrealisms is hardly a work of alternative history. The museum does not ask visitors to imagine that Breton had never been born, or to ask what would have happened if Goll had somehow outmaneuvered him. (Consistent with his historical erasure, Goll doesn't rank a single mention in the Fundación MAPFRE's 300-page exhibition catalogue.) Instead the exhibition curator emphasizes much of what Breton ignored or squelched within the realm of psychic automatism. In that sense, 1924 continues the efforts art historians have made since at least the 1980s, notably advanced several years ago in the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Surrealism Beyond Borders. As scholarship becomes more encyclopedic, Surrealism benefits from greater inclusiveness. Approached as a phenomenon instead of a movement, Surrealism can encompass the work of artists who never enrolled in Breton's program (such as Joan Miró), those who were 'excommunicated' (such as Salvador Dalí), and those who were marginalized (such as Remedios Varo). Remedios Varo. Icon, 1945. Oil, mother-of-pearl inlay and gold leaf on panel. 60 × 70 × 35 cm. Colección MALBA. Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires 1997.02 © Remedios Varo; VEGAP, Madrid, 2025 Photo: Nicolás Beraza Nicolás Beraza There is real merit to this curatorial reconsideration of the artistic activity surrounding André Breton and his Bureau for Surrealist Research. His myopia was at least as deleterious to the liberation of the unconscious mind as his charisma were beneficial. Much is achieved through the simple act of exhibiting the numinous paintings of Varo and those of other women such as Leonora Carrington and Dorothea Tanning, who the misogynist Breton counted as muses rather than artists. Their work rewards the eye and mind to a greater extent than many of the more familiar paintings of more famous Surrealist men. And yet the invitation to explore Surrealism without Breton has the potential to be more generative than curators have heretofore allowed (even without entering into fantasies that his adversaries beat him up and chased him out of town). During the rivalry of 1924, Goll's ally Paul Dermée justly chastised Breton for 'monopoliz[ing] a movement of literary and artistic renewal that dates from well before his time and that in scope goes far beyond his fidgety little person'. The question that naturally arises is this: What might Surrealists have achieved had Surrealism been more inclusive while the Surrealists were alive? Breton presented Surrealism as pure and restrictive. Whereas Dada had upset the artistic and sociopolitical status quo with a panoply of absurdist antics, Surrealism was approached as a research and development program that would leverage Dadaist gains to complete the societal revolution that Apollinaire and his fellow agitators started. Logic would be supplanted in favor of a deeper truth revealed through Freudian psychology. For Breton, art was operational. Artists were enlisted to plumb surreality and to popularize it. The inherent orthodoxy of his premise excluded all other alternatives to narrow-minded rationalism and its ethical constraints. Goll's position is far too amorphous to extrapolate what his allies would have attempted (though his inclusion of the arch-Dadaist Tristan Tzara was auspicious). One reason why Breton's Surrealism ultimately proved so facile on aesthetic and moral grounds is that his methodology amounted to pseudo-science yet lacked the self-awareness to embrace its own phoniness (in contrast, for instance, to the performative irony of Dadaist pataphysics). Another reason is that it was built on the contradictory impulses to liberate the unconscious and to police those whose psyches were freed. Other Surrealisms that were genuinely different might have enriched Breton's project. They might have realized the potential he identified in his Manifesto to an even greater degree than the Surrealist works of women who proved better at pursuing his premises than the men he anointed. Dorothea Tanning. Birthday, 1942. Oil on canvas 102,2 × 64,8 cm. Philadelphia Museum of Art. 125th Anniversary Acquisition. Adquirido con fondos aportados por C. K. Williams, II, 1999 1999-50-1. © Dorothéa Tanning; VEGAP, Madrid, 2025 ©Philadelphia Museum of Art Philadelphia Museum of Art When he sought surreality in 'the ground under our feet and the sky over our head', Yvan Goll provided at least one hint about what might be found there. 'Everything the artist creates has its point of departure in nature,' he wrote in his Manifesto. The strangeness that nature was already revealing as he wrote – from Einstein's General Relativity to the first inklings of quantum reality – has proven at least as unsettling as Freud's ideas about the human mind. The interaction of a Surrealism born out of physical phenomena with one emanating from psychology might have achieved the revolution sought by Breton and by the Dadaists before him. Otherness is the most potent quality of art as a sociopolitical proposition. Only a fidgety little person would seek to control it.
