Journal ARS 37 (2004) 1-2

Mária ORIŠKOVÁ

Umelecké dielo a trh: minulosť a prítomnosť (Niekoľko poznámok ku kolokviu)
[Artwork throught the Market: The Past and the Present (Several Remarks on International Colloquium in Bratislava)]

(Summary)

During the last fifteen years our society has been changed a lot and even though market economy became a part of our lives, the notion of market only rarely interconnects with the notion of art. Probably the legacy of the previous regime caused that we still separate aesthetic values from financial motivations. The discipline of art history only grudgingly focuses on social and economic context of art. Nonetheless, art history traditionally avoids questions of art and market as if the agenda of our discipline should not concern "low" interests of money, business and market but some "higher" values. However, a range of notions as commission, patron, art dealer, commodity, trade or exhibition have already been examined by social history of art since 1940s and 1950s (Frederick Antal, Arnold Hauser). From narrowly Marxist oriented towards the economic base and its cultural superstructure, since 1970s social art history has been more developed using more sophisticated models and more detailed examinations of historical, social and political circumstances (T. J. Clark, Michael Baxandall, Svetlana Alpers, Hans Belting, etc.). The new art historians shifted the attention towards specific social functions and the particular context within which an artwork functions. A lot of new approaches based on the idea of social power/social context not only casted doubts on traditional issues as canon, genius, quality or style but broadened the academic discipline of art history towards visual/cultural studies, as well. In the late 1980s and in the early 1990s new inquiries focused on instrumentality of art institutions, its public, politics of display, specific visual experience, the issue of value and commodity, art market, etc.

For the first time in Slovakia the issue of art market was raised within the international colloquium held in Bratislava in December 2003. The colloquium was initiated and organized by Professor Ján Bakoš, the director of the Institute of Art History at the Slovak Academy of Sciences and the Foundation - Center for Contemporary Arts in Bratislava. Several sections of the colloquium included the problematics of the contexts and implications of art/market dialectics as well as historical dimensions and metamorphosis of art/market relations. Ján Bakoš opened the colloquium with his paper named Art History: from ideology critique to the apology of the market. Afterwards, a lot of interesting papers were delivered by outstanding experts in this field from the different parts of the world.

The first group of papers could be described as historical surveys related to the development and specifics of art market, e.g. Peter Burke as cultural historian focused on relations between art, social institutions, collecting and art market. Michael North as a specialist in monetary and financial history and of the history of commerce and culture paid attention to the history of Western European art market from 13th century Italy onwards. As survey papers could be considered papers of several East European participants: Russian Byzantinist Michael Bibikov and two Hungarian curators and critics Gábor Ébli and András Zwickl. Both Hungarian participants focused on relations between the ideology and market in the former Eastern bloc. The attempt to plead for secret and passionate collecting of "forbidden" art was obvious; however, the immense reservoir of data prevailed over deeper analysis. From different perspective approached the same issue the Hungarian art critic Éva Forgács (since 1994 living in the US) taking in account Eastern European concept of art as "sacred and secret" and differences between "art making and money making" during totalitarian era and afterwards. She also opened the issue of success which had acquired an entirely different meaning from what it had been in the West. Among survey papers a distinct position belonged French sociologist Allain S. Quemin. Examining the main art institutions of the contemporary art world, he put the question whether a hierarchy between countries does exist. In his conclusion he argued that even though various players within a vast international art network declare that geographical borders and nationalities are of negligible importance, the equality is largely an illusion and there are two geographical core zones which are still made up of a small number of Western European countries and US.

The second group of papers could be considered monographic essays. Swiss art historian Oskar Bätschmann examined the conflict between artistic self- expression and the market in his case study of Paul Cézanne and Ambroise Vollard, young Austrian scholar and curator Christian Huemer focused on relations between artist (Mihály Munkácsy) and dealer (Charles Sedelmeyer). Case studies like these revealed commercial practices as circumstances of the career of the artist. Then the market is taken in account as a dynamic mechanism which cannot be separated from a creative process. Not only the person of an art dealer or exhibitionary strategies but fine art publishing and dealing through the houses as Maison Goupil — the paper delivered by the American independent scholar DeCourcy McIntosh — became influential factor within the commercial life of the works of art and the careers of the artists, as well.

Even if it is not possible to lot the delivered papers exactly into sections according to the art-historical genres, periods, themes or approaches, there were some which could be considered challenging in a sense of critical theory and the new art history. E.g. American art historian Patricia Mainardi disclosed modernist taboo of originality. In her paper with the title Impressionist Replication and the Market she opened the question how Impressionist painters made replicas of their own works (for different reasons) but in the era of photography when exact copy of the earlier work or repetition meant the conflict with the concept of originality. The modernist concept of originality caused major problems in evaluating the repetitions that were common in nineteenth-century art production. Moreover, curators and art historians celebrating artist as genius during the whole twentieth century avoided acknowledging repetition of a theme, fearing that their existence would harm artists’ reputation. Masking commercial aims of the works of art and elevating aesthetic values above financial have been sustaining the myth of artist. According to Mainardi it is our post-modernist swing away from the modernist fetishizing of the art object as unique and original that at least partially accounts for our willingness to look at the work of earlier nineteenth-century artists in this new light. As the new social art history emphasize the work of art is the deposit of a social relationship and some of the economic practices are concretely embodied in the works of art (Baxandall).

Socio-economic approach was represented at the colloquium by two American scholars Mariet Westermann and Martha Woodmansee. Westermann in her paper Playing the Market: The Artist as Agent in the Dutch Golden Age focused on the works of seventeenth-century Dutch painter Adriaen van der Venne examining how market mechanisms directed artistic decisions which used to be called lately artistic innovation. Martha Woodmansee works on the intersection of the aesthetics, economics and law. In her paper Copyright as Dis/Incentive to Creative Production she discussed the issue of "using" the cultural heritage in the creation of new works, the modernist concept of originality and creative production as well as the issue of property, authorship and copyright law in the production of art in the late twentieth century.

Extraordinary complex and articulated towards social functions of art was the paper Art after Culture by American philosopher Paul Mattick. The starting point of his thoughts was the historical nature of art as a phenomenon of modern society. Focusing on one hand on modern industrial society and its social practices (including money making) and on the other hand on Kantian concept of art and its defining artistic activity as "free" and not performed for wages but governed only by the genius of the artist, he articulated the idea of changed centrality of the "cult of art" to the bourgeois "art of living". Mattick pointed out that since 1960s the image of the artist (and the perception of art) has been altered by the knowledge of prices and possible gain through art and since 1980s glamour, success, scandal and money are integral parts of art making. Taking in account current cultural practices (art institutions, art investments or "art industry") Mattick articulated the striking idea of art function today as upper-middle class entertainment as well as "the idea of fading not art but the idea of culture as a sphere of experience transcending (everyday) or (ordinary) life".

At the colloquium there was one more paper I would like to pay attention to. The German curator and art historian Ursula Frohne in her paper New Economies: Art and Value focused on value, price and money in contemporary art world. She claimed this issue deserves "closer examination particularly under the premises of an increasingly influential system of value-defining agents, consisting of galleries, museums, private collectors, artists, curators, critics, art journals, art historians, cultural managers and other instances responsible for the mediation of art and its cultural self-preservation". Pursuing the circulation of artworks as commodities in an ever-expanding art market in Europe and in the United States since the late nineteenth century and the development of the aesthetics of display since the early twentieth century Frohne offered an insight into dialectics of the aesthetic and economic value under the conditions of postmodernity and global marketing methods. Her final comment on the representation of value through art works (e.g. Sylvie Fleury, Maria Eichhorn) opened the issue about money itself as the work of art considered the latest artistic strategies totally merging value and price, art and money.

English by Mária Orišková