No, bullfighting is not art

Debate has raged over the centuries as to whether bullfighting is an art-form. The Spanish, it seems, have always referred to bullfighting as ‘arte’, but this goes back to the times when many activities requiring technique and expertise were accorded that status.

Now, the Civil Chamber of Spain’s Supreme Tribunal has ruled that a faena cannot be considered a work of art - the apparent end of a long-running legal case in which Miguel Ángel Perera sought to be awarded the intellectual property rights to his two-ear faena with the Garcigrande bull Curioso during Badajoz’s 2014 Feria de San Juan. Perera’s lawyer had argued that toreo was an art-form and, although individual passes - unless totally new in concept and execution - could not be considered as such, this faena (amongst others), indeed the lidia as a whole, should be considered an original artistic creation.

However, the Tribunal, taking into account EU jurisprudence that artistic intellectual property rights must involve an original object that constitutes an intellectual creation typical of its author, ruled that: “In the lidia of a bull, it is not possible to identify [such a circumstance exists], because it is not possible to express objectively what the artistic creation of the bullfighter would consist of when performing a concrete work, beyond the feeling that transmits to those who witness it through the beauty of the forms generated in the dramatic context in question.”

According to the judgment, an intellectual creation attributable to the bullfighter would have to be reflected in an original formal expression, which in this case could become the sequence of movements and passes made by the matador, which, to be original, “should respond to free and creative options, or to a combination of options” with an aesthetic reflection that projected the torero’s personality. The Tribunal added that, in any case, this original formal expression should be able to be accurately and objectively identifiable.

In reaching its judgement, the Tribunal compared bullfighting to dance choreography. With choreography, it pointed out, it was possible to identify “with precision and objectivity” what had been created and who had created it and consequently who should enjoy the intellectual property rights. However, “the same is not true of the work of a bullfighter, in which - beyond the concrete deployment of passes, lances and suertes (which are not unique) - it is very difficult to identify objectively what the original artistic creation would consist of in order to recognize the exclusive rights of a work of intellectual property." The Tribunal also appeared to think that any given faena was as much the bull’s creation as the matador’s.

So, next time you witness a wonderful faena by Miguel Ángel Perera, see him exercising choice as to which suertes to perform and perhaps indulging in some passes that could be considered characteristic of the extremeño, don’t be misguided enough to think that it’s art you’re watching. The authorities have spoken.