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Buying a physical painting doesn’t give you any licenses to the artwork itself either. Just because you buy a modern painting at auction for $30 million doesn’t give you rights to start printing T-shirts of the art.

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Yes it does. You own the art. (?)

For that price, you're getting all the rights to it in perpetuity.

That is incorrect. You own the physical piece of art, not the copyright to the art. if I own an original sketch by Charles Shultz of Charlie Brown, that doesn’t give me any rights to the character of Charlie Brown. If an author gives me a handwritten, first draft manuscript of a new novel, I may be able to sell that physical manuscript but it doesn’t give me any rights to the work itself.

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