Art in the Service of Generating Surplus Value – On the Work of Art as a (Specific) Form of Capital

Abstract

According to one of Marx’s classifications, human labour can be divided into productive and unproductive: productive labour produces and accumulates surplus value, while unproductive does not. In his analysis of the field theory, Pierre Bourdieu implied that, by its very existence, a work of art possesses value that generates the accumulation of capital on the market. In this sense, an artistic artefact is considered to be the result of productive labour. Bourdieu writes that, in the intellectual (artistic, scientific) field, priority is given to the symbolic capital, which can be converted into the economic one at any time. Although it is derived from Marx’s theses, Bourdieu’s concept of capital is not consistently based on the Marxist idea of the exploitation of surplus value. However, the French sociologist admits that all capital is essentially based on the economic one, because all other types of capital can be converted into the economic one, which brings Bourdieu’s theory back into the framework of Marxist economism. Fields are arenas in which participants clash over different types of capital, but they are also spaces of struggle for legitimacy and the right to monopolise. On the basis of insights into the relationships of gallerists, curators and critics with the work of artists belonging to the new artistic practice in Croatia in the late 1960s and 1970s, this article will examine the extent to which Marx’s theses on productive and unproductive labour correlate to Bourdieu’s concept of the artistic field and its capital, and how artistic products of the new artistic practice can justify their existence as products of productive labour.