"Foreword" [2020] ELECD 87; in McCutcheon, Jani; McGaughey, Fiona (eds), "Research Handbook on Art and Law" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2020) xiv

Book Title: Research Handbook on Art and Law

Editor(s): McCutcheon, Jani; McGaughey, Fiona

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

Section Title: Foreword

Number of pages: 2

Extract:

Foreword
The Hon Robert French AC


Exploration of interceptions between different fields of human creativity often yields a
richness of experience and depth of perception that no field by itself can offer. Art and
science, for example, intersect in many ways ­ mathematical patterns and symmetries,
biological and botanical forms and the geometries of space and time. Each enlivens
aesthetic insights. So Einstein said of Newton:

In one person he combined the experimenter, the theorist, the mechanic ­ and, not least, the
artist . . . his joy in creation and his minute precision are evident in every word and every
figure.

Law is best viewed in intersection with everything else. By itself it is a gray phantasm. It
is only in its engagement with the multiple concrete realities of human action that it gains
solidity. Law crossing with art yields intellectual delights and even occasional flashes of
beauty. This book, exploring many of its crossings, provides us, as the editors observe,
with `a walk through a gallery'.
One of the pieces in the gallery reflects on the relationship between the state of
mind of the creator of a work and its interpretation by the viewer. Sonia Katyal in
her chapter entitled `The public good in poetic justice: on the art (and law) of Felix
Gonzalez-Torres' reflects upon `the space between the artist's intent and the audi-
ence's interpretation'. This has a resonance with the fine art of statutory interpreta-
tion which involves extracting meaning from a text and applying it to ...