Abstract
This article aims to consider the contemporary art market vis-à-vis the concept of economic freedom. Drawn from a larger study, this paper offers a glimpse of the political function of the art market, which is essentially an economic field. What I demonstrate is an inevitable clash between a free market and between political constructions that effect levels of freedom—concentrating on the parameter of inequality. The article focuses on the case of commercial art galleries, and analyzes their operation under neoliberal conditions, which represent the implementation of the idea of freedom in the economic field. Subsequently, I demonstrate the how high levels of concentration in the art market erode the levels of the equality of the players in the field. Ultimately, I argue that this case offers an example of the more general operation of the art market, which follows neoliberal principles, and thereby undermines the concept of economic freedom that is intrinsic to them.
Highlights
Before moving to its new home in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District in 2015, the Whitney Museum celebrated its last show in the Breuer building with a high-profile retrospective of works by the American celebrity artist Jeff Koons
For those acquainted with the mechanisms of the contemporary art world, the fact that a commercial gallery provides the principle financing for a museum exhibition does not seem odd
Rather than contributing to a sociological critique of the commercial financing of museum exhibitions, I aim to offer a critical perspective on the operations of the art market and the art world under economic and political conditions that hallow the principle of freedom
Summary
Before moving to its new home in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District in 2015, the Whitney Museum celebrated its last show in the Breuer building with a high-profile retrospective of works by the American celebrity artist Jeff Koons. While the current study does not offer an empirical assessment of freedom or equality levels, I show how established economic models enable us to understand the effect of art-market concentration in terms of specific political-economic categories. In order to conceptualize freedom and equality in the context of the art-world economy, a consideration of liberal and neoliberal economic thought is inevitable. Between the two World Wars, the USA gained control over the Western market; at a time of economic crises, poverty, and unemployment, the country that had declared liberty to be an “unalienable right” turned to fiscal policy and government interventions that influenced macroeconomic conditions Leading this fiscal policy was British economist John Maynard. 1980s, the neoliberal approach continues to shape the markets operating today, including the art market
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