Actually, I've worked on 12 separate 7 hour art history documentaries, have a sister that is a professional fine artist, and have a legal interest in these areas via ownership of some nice art.
That's pretty much my point actually: the art world keeps repeating some things as true, while the general population completely disagrees. It's like how architects keep saying "ornament is a crime", while most people want it.
I don't doubt your competence nor your intentions, but do you not agree that marketing to billionaires is not a strong correlation of the value of a piece of art?
Nope, my art is of the classical religious type. I just understand that the idea is the art, and not the object. The idea was that this unrecognized trash media had merit, while the unrecognized trash media publishers were happy to just publish and market within their existing channels that treated their product as disposable rags, fit for wrapping fish.
It's the same issue with the beatnik authors: until they wrote their thoughts down, they were considered cultural dropout trash human beings. It's all marketing. Roy successfully marketed the comic industry's own media - as totems no less, not as the stories they originated - to an audience that would have never considered them, and in effect was pivotal to modern culture.
Even if there was a copyright claim (not convinced there was), the owner of the copyright (not the artist as they sold that to the publisher) never took action. Don’t you have to defend your copyrights in order for them to be considered not public domain?
You need to sue in order for anything to happen. Laws do not enforce themselves. But no, you do not need to do anything to be considered "not public domain" but rather the opposite.
>Don’t you have to defend your copyrights in order for them to be considered not public domain
No. That's more a matter of trademark law. In general (IANAL) I assume an artist's estate could decide to start suing people even though the artist didn't. Though there may be some other wrinkles to them actually collecting money.
It's almost a trope in the art world, and the fact that many unoriginal artists use it has made it a usable argument by simple repetition.
It might not be "stealing", but something ok it also is not.