Art and Value
ArtÂ’s Economic Exceptionalism in Classical, Neoclassical and Marxist Economics
Shortlisted for the 2015 Deutscher Memorial Prize.
Art and Value is the first comprehensive analysis of art's political economy to be found in classical, neoclassical and Marxist economics. It provides a critical-historical survey of the theories of art's economic exceptionalism, of art as a merit good, and of the theories of art's commodification, the culture industry and real subsumption.
Key debates on the economics of art, from the high prices artworks fetch at auction, to the controversies over public subsidy of the arts, the 'cost disease' of artistic production, and neoliberal and post-Marxist theories of art's incorporation into capitalism, are examined in detail.
Through this exacting critique of mainstream and Marxist theories of art's economics, the book arrives at a new and highly origianl Marxist theory of art's economic exceptionalism.
Dave Beech is an artist in the collective Freee and teaches Art at Valand Academy, Gothenburg University. His work has been exhibited at the Liverpool Biennial (2010) and the Istanbul Biennial (2013). He has co-authored The Philistine Controversy (Verso, 2002), edited Beauty (MIT/Whitechapel, 2009), contributed essays to Locating the Producers (Valiz, 2011), and Curating and the Educational Turn (Open Editions, 2010).
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