Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=19122307
It’s Christmas all over again in January! An avalanche of music, novels, films, and works of art first published in the U.S. in 1923 will enter the public domain this year. Public domain means anyone can sell those works without incurring any costs, but it also means that anyone can give them away for free. For those works of art falling into public domain this year, that means anyone can re-publish or chop them up and repurpose them in other projects. We can remix and repurpose old art into new works of art, which will then enter the public domain of future generations.
Because of the complicated history of U.S. copyright law—especially the 1998 “Sonny Bono Act” that successfully extended a copyright law from 50 to 70 years, it has been 20 years since such a massive collection of material has become available all at once. But now, and for several decades from 2019 forward, a full year’s worth of works published 95 years earlier will be unleashed.
Just a few examples of artwork coming into public domain this year are:
- Constantin Brâncuși – Bird in Space (sculpture; first version)
- Felice Casorati – Meriggio (Noon)
- Tamara de Lempicka – Les Deux amies
- Robert Delaunay – Portrait of Tristan Tzara
- Marcel Duchamp – The Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass) (completed)
- Max Ernst – Pietà or Revolution by Night
- M. C. Escher – Dolphins (woodcut)
- George Grosz – Ecce Homo (portfolio of lithographs)
- Auguste Herbin – Bowls Players
- Marguerite Huré – Stained glass windows at Église Notre-Dame du Raincy
- Wassily Kandinsky – On White II
- Ernst Ludwig Kirchner – The Sleigh Ride
- Sir John Lavery – The Red Rose
- Sir Bertram Mackennal
- Phoebus Driving the Horses of the Sun (Australia House, London)
- Mother Courage (war memorial, Caledonian Club, London)
- Eton College War Memorial (male nude, now National Gallery of Victoria, Australia)
- Henri Matisse
- Mikhail Nesterov – Girl by the Pool
- William Orpen – To the Unknown British Soldier in France
- Pablo Picasso
- The Pipes of Pan
- Paulo on a Donkey
- Man Ray – Object to Be Destroyed (destroyed 1957)
- Gerrit Rietveld – Red and Blue Chair (colours added in De Stijl style at about this date)
- Stanley Royle – Sheffield from Wincobank Wood
- Stanley Spencer – The Betrayal
- Lorado Taft – The Recording Angel (sculpture, Waupun, Wisconsin)[3]
- Suzanne Valadon – Blue Room
- World War I Memorial (Berwick, Pennsylvania)
- Yokoyama Taikan – Metempsychosis (生々流転, Seisei ruten, “The Wheel of Life”, Nihonga scroll painting)
We are so jazzed for free access to (and to draw inspiration from) the very best (or the worst, and weirdest!) of 1923. And of 1924 in 2020, and 1925 and 2021, and the beat goes on and on …