The art market is a very fickle environment that is fuelled, no
doubt, by those who have a vested interest in promoting certain
art that appeals to prevailing taste and sentiment. Art dealers,
and investors, in spite of that, make a handsome profit every
time an artwork is bought or sold no matter how often.
Most visual artists on the other hand, sell an artwork but once
and don't profit from it after that.

This anomaly is especially evident in the case of some
indigenous artists who mostly live a very basic and subsistent
life and often die penniless while their paintings change hands
for hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The beneficiaries are, of course, those savvy investors and
dealers who greatly benefit from someone else's talent and
reap what they have never sawn; the creator of the work gets
absolutely nothing once he/she have parted with it.

A scheme has been conceived recently to try to address the
shortcomings of the current laws and if adopted, will be a step
in the right direction towards more equitable arrangements
that takes the artist in consideration as well.
That new scheme in it's simplest form, suggests that a small
percentage of all subsequent sales of an artwork should be
payable to the original artist or her/his beneficiaries, as a
perpetual tribute and acknowledgment of their artistic merit.