The figure of the artist as we know it —independent, irreverent, often economically insecure—is a product of industrial capitalism. Art, likewise, exists within the same system of production and circulation as any other manufactured object or informational commodity. Yet, we assign it a special status and regularly distinguish between artists and other producers. Art is both the pinnacle of conspicuous consumption and a great investment opportunity. At the same time, it appears in public spaces, strange locations, and contexts that raise entirely different questions about value. Art may either enlist or actively disavow politics, look beautiful or consciously reject aesthetic pleasure, but it always raises questions about the status and definition of beauty, utility, luxury, and need. How are we to understand this overdetermined but undefinable commodity?
In this course, we will set out to understand the work of art as it exists in the aggregate conditions of its production, consumption, and circulation. We will consider the long-cherished precept of art’s “uselessness” alongside its purposeful, avant-garde counterparts and ask what these different versions of extra-economic production are doing. What social and economic relations characterize the contemporary art market, and why does capitalism seem to need this margin of “non-economic” activity? More concretely, we will spend time trying to understand the nuts and bolts of the economic transactions that circumscribe art’s circulation and the institutions that support its production and create its value. We will examine the institutional infrastructure of artistic production: graduate schools and residency programs, for-profit and non-profit galleries, fellowships, museums, and biennials. We will also learn how art moves across national borders, acquires and stores value, and evades taxes. We will ask whether art can retain intellectual or political value when it behaves, in almost every way, like a financial instrument. Is there a point at which art becomes so fully assimilated to the logic of the market that it loses any critical capacity? How, under market conditions, do we determine and evaluate such things as beauty, utility, luxury, and necessity? What is the effect of a global market on culturally specific aesthetic strategies and traditions? What political imperatives does the current market serve? Whose interests do we want art to serve, and what are the conditions for such a transformation?
“The Political Economy of Art” will also run online on Thursdays, starting March 6th
