5 highlights
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Of course, releasing or completing work after the death of the creator isn’t a new phenomenon. But are posthumous releases a true reflection of their creator’s intent? They may be unfinished, never meant for wide release, or completed by someone else. That work is then attributed to the deceased, but should it be?
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Scholars already acknowledge that nothing is truly created alone.
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But that idea of collaboration gets tricky when one of the collaborators isn’t actively participating. While the authors believe that, in most cases, posthumous work can be done without appropriation and with care, others view it quite differently. One may see the completed work as something wholly new.
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There is an argument that no matter what, the work will always remain, in some way, unfinished: even if someone who knows the artist’s work intimately completes it, the original creator might not have consented to its release.
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This ordinary practice, known as secondary agency, is used liberally in the art world—from ghostwriters to crews assisting artists in large-scale exhibitions—and the authors argue that “posthumously completed works are merely a special case of secondary agency.”