Visit to the Museu da Gente Sergipana: there is truth in the art of cordel literature - a copyright view of the visual artist

Abstract

Drawing on a visit to the Museu da Gente Sergipana, the text discusses cordel literature as a work of art and the copyright of its creator. It starts from the account of an encounter with a cordel pamphlet at the Thales Ferraz Market in Aracaju and combines the repertoire of copyright law — moral rights, which are inalienable, imprescriptible and unwaivable, the right of disclosure, the resale right and the absence of formalities imposed by the Berne Convention — with the philosophical discussion of truth in art in Nietzsche, Heidegger, Gadamer and Merleau-Ponty. It addresses the constitutionalisation of private law, the social function of copyright and the conflict between protection of the creator and the rights to culture, education and information, settled through reasonableness and balancing. It describes the organisation and production of exhibitions, the curator's tasks and the loan, insurance and transport contracts for the works, as well as woodcut illustration and the poetic form of cordel. It holds that popular works of art carry truth and that cordel, as an intellectual creation, attracts copyright protection in both its moral and its economic dimensions.