Author: Juan A. Esteban
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Catalogue raisonné: what it is and how to start your own
An explanation of what a catalogue raisonné entails, its distinction from the authentication of a work, the methodology for commencing your own, and the policies required for the receipt and examination of works.
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Bluesky, mu and AT Protocol for artists: your own domain, verification and portability
A practical guide to AT Protocol for artists: your domain as your handle, what each verification certifies, what the European app mu offers and how far portability goes.
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Asset of Cultural Interest and export bans: how Spain protects its heritage
What distinguishes the refusal of an export permit, precautionary non-exportability and declaration as an Asset of Cultural Interest, and what obligations the owner takes on.
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Authorship and works made with AI under Spanish law
What Spanish law says about the authorship of works made with AI, where the line of human contribution lies and what to document in practice.
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The novel read before it existed
In May 2026, an as-yet unpublished novel by Olga Tokarczuk had already been read, judged, and partially condemned. Not for its pages, which were unavailable and would remain so until the autumn, but for translated fragments of a conversation in which the author discussed the use of artificial intelligence...
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No longer banned
La imagen que tenemos de la censura es antigua: un funcionario que lee, tacha, prohíbe. Un sello de «no autorizado» sobre un guion, una obra retirada de la pared, un libro que no llega a imprenta. El censor es visible, la prohibición explícita y por eso discutible: hay algo que señalar, alguien a quien acusar,…
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They may be right
There is a sentence, within a 2024 United States federal court ruling, that encapsulates the chasm which may open between the just and the legal more effectively than any essay. A court, reviewing the claim of a Jewish collector’s heirs regarding a painting which, according to the account accepted for procedural purposes,...
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Doubt is a choice
En octubre de 1940, cinco meses después de la invasión alemana de los Países Bajos, se subastó en Ámsterdam «Mujer con abanico», un cuadro cubista de Jean Metzinger pintado en 1913. Había pertenecido a Emanuel Lewenstein, coleccionista judío que dirigía una fábrica de máquinas de coser. Nadie sabe hoy quién lo puso a la venta…
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The needle in the haystack: how scale dilutes individual attribution
A painter discovers that an artificial intelligence model was trained on their paintings, without permission or remuneration, and initiates legal action. Should a portion of their claim depend upon linking a generated image to their specific works, they may face an exceptionally arduous task: demonstrating that those works causally influenced what the machine produced...
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Reserving your rights in a language the machine understands
A German photographer, Robert Kneschke, brought a claim against the organisation LAION regarding the downloading of one of his photographs during the creation of an image-text pair dataset usable for training generative artificial intelligence systems. In December 2025, the Hanseatic Higher Regional Court of Hamburg dismissed his appeal. Among the grounds for the...