Making Value and Career Building in the Creative Economy by Melanie Fasche

Author:Melanie Fasche
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Springer International Publishing, Cham

However, high prices for contemporary artworks at auction can be increasingly mistaken for enduring value and an established career. Artists can become successful more quickly through auction sales but high prices are no guarantee for enduring value of artworks and a long stable career since neither the artist nor the artwork have passed the test of time still central in stabilizing prices (McCarthy et al. 2005). In other words, price as signal of status and value is increasingly inflated. Naturally, the sum of overall status cannot be improved (Frank 1985)—but price levels can. In this sense ever more rising price levels are primarily an expression of growing competition and aiming to keep up with the Joneses in the race for status and value among private collectors (Frank and Cook 1995). Thus, the entrepreneurial, the winner-take-all reward scheme seems to have evolved from a stylized pyramid into more of a high-spike-long-tail-end model with a very high spike of seemingly ever-rising price levels at galleries and auctions, and a long tail end lower part with self- marketing activities of artists.

The discourse has shifted from modernism to post-modernism, the absence of any dominant single theory, genre, form, or aesthetic of pre-determined higher status. The pluralization of the discourse gave way to the coexistence and competition of an unprecedented range of artistic practices such as painting, sculpture, photography, installation, performing art, and media art (Plattner 1998). Literally everything can be valued as art. The proliferation of what can be art has led pessimistic voices to speculate about a death of “real” art. Others, in turn, celebrate post-modernism as liberation from the normative ideals of the modern framework of art. Ever new forms of art and movements of resistance tried to undermine the ideals of the modern framework of art, but despite their critical stance their activities emulate the practices of the very same selection system of institutions and practices. Moreover, the works of those challenging the ideals of fine art got quickly been absorbed into the “Church of Art” and the very canons they initially meant to resist (Shiner 2001: 8). In fact, the art market seems to actively discover and support alternative, subversive and independent forms of artistic production (Hesmondhalgh 2007).

More recently public museums have started to loose power in the process of making value (Fasche 2013, Pes 2011). Public museums are increasingly challenged by financial pressure stemming foremost from higher acquisitions costs with rising price levels for artworks on the market and growing operation costs because of a recent museum extension designed by a star architect, declining revenues and support from governments and donors, and increasing competition for visitors, donations and bequests due to a global museum boom (McCarthy et al. 2005). To cope with these pressures public museums increasingly cooperate with gallerists and private collectors by loaning artworks from galleries and private collections for public museum exhibitions. This practice is contested among art world stakeholders because gallerists and private collectors are suspected to take advantage of public museums shows that may

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.