On the Relationship Between Economics and Arts
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A Service of Leibniz-Informationszentrum econstor Wirtschaft Leibniz Information Centre Make Your Publications Visible. zbw for Economics Klamer, Arjo (Ed.) Book — Published Version The Value of Culture: On the Relationship between Economics and Arts Provided in Cooperation with: Amsterdam University Press (AUP) Suggested Citation: Klamer, Arjo (Ed.) (1997) : The Value of Culture: On the Relationship between Economics and Arts, ISBN 978-90-5356-218-5, Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam, http://dx.doi.org/10.5117/9789053562185 This Version is available at: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/181378 Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen: Terms of use: Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Documents in EconStor may be saved and copied for your Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. personal and scholarly purposes. 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Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam Cover design: Marjolein Meijer, BEELDVORM, Leiden Typesctting: Bert Haagsman, MAGENTA, Amsterdam ISBN 90-5356-2I9-2(hardback) 90-5356-218-4 (paperback) © Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam, 1996 All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval sys tem, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photo copying, recording, or otherwise), without the written permission of both the copyright owner and the author of this book. Contents Introduction to the Conversation 7 Aria Klamer r The Value of Culture '3 Aria Klamer PART ONE: ON VALUE 2 The Value of Art: A Philosophical Perspective J' Antoon Van den Braemhussche 3 The Value of Culture: A Dialogue 44 Barendvan Heusden,Arjo Klamer 4 "The Good, the Bad and the Different": ,6 Reflections on Economic and Aesthetic Value DavidRuaio, Julie Graham, Jack Amariglio PART Two: ON THE VALUE OF ART s The Value of Public Art as Public Culture 77 JosephJ. Ccrdes; Robert S. Goldfarb 6 Market Value and Artists' Earnings 96 Ruth Towse 7 Big City, Great Art: A Myth about Art Production '08 Gerardde Vries 8 The Value of Play m MichaelHutter 9 The Artistic Conscience and the Production of Value '3 8 HansAbbing PART THREE: ON CULTURE ro Political Culture and the Economic Value of Citizenship: '5' A French-Dutch Comparison in the Nineteenth Century Prances Gouda r r The Value of National Identity ,66 ]as de Reus tz Missing Ethics in Economics "7 Deirdre McCloskey PART FOUR: ON ART '3 The Value ofWarhol 2°5 Peter Kattenberg '4 The Value of Making Art: A Conversation with the Artists 2<4 Ronald Glasbergen, Liesbeth Bik and jeep Lieshour Arja Klamer Notes 22) Index 238 Introduction to the Conversation U LTU RE does not appear to square with the economy. In particular, art does not mix well with money. When asked the question whether it matters what Cpeople are willing to pay for her art, the artist responds "To me? No, nothing. All that counts is that I can work." And what if a work of hers would fetch IQ million dollars? "It never will" she insists, "but no, it would not make a differ ence."" The artist prefers to keep the economy and whatever reminds her of it at bay and concentrate on her art. Many in the artistic community appear to distrust the operation of money, markets, and the commercial in their world. When critics note that art work is "commercial" it is a put-down. A blockbuster of any sort is artistically suspect because money is believed to co-Opt art. The value ofart is to be found in its aesthetics, in the meanings that it generates. At least those appear to be the dominant beliefs in the world of the arts. Then again, money plays a big role in that very same world. Singers will insist on being paid well, visual artists haggle with their dealers about the prices to ask, and artdealers can he as commercial as any other hard-nosed businessperson. The suspicions of many of its inhabitants notwithstanding, markets operate in the world of the arts, too, and that means that the arts get priced. Sometimes the price is set very high: in 1989 the Van Gogh painting on the cover fetched 82.5 million dollars. Who says money does not count in the world of the arts? The problematic relations between the world of the economy and that of the arts motivate this book. The immediate occasion was the inauguration of a new chair in the economics of art and culture at the Department of the Sciences of Art and Culture of the Erasmus University. As the first occupant of the chair, I had the opportunity to start the conversation, in an inaugural speech reprinted in Chapter 1. I saw it as my challenge to connect the world of the arts with economics, yet to respect the obvious tensions between the two. To that end I found myself introduc ing "culture" in its general anthropological sense and recovering the old norion of "value" in economic discourse. To explore these notions I invited scholars and artists for a series of conversations. This book is the product. Before you, the reader, join the conversation, a few preliminary remarks. Know mg some of the main themes might facilitate reading. The dominant theme is with- 8 Arja Klamer out doubt this tension between the world of the economy and that of the arts. That it preoccupies us, should not come as a great surprise. After all, it is a fact of every day life, though in the arts the contrast shows better than in other realms. In the world of art moments abound where issues of costs and price are sup pressed and avoided. The suspicion shows in the lack ofinterest In, or outright hos tility to, my own discipline, that of economics, in the circle of artists, as I have found. It often seems as if a taboo rests on the subject of money and money making. The term IS not meant to sneer: I ca!!those who hold out for a separate sacred place for the arts, where money does not interfere, the romantics. Just as Jesus chased the motley changers from the Temple the romantics close out anyone who carries the smell of money. They passionately Ignore the realists - again, I do not use the word to either praise or blame - who stress that money plays an important role in the arts anyway, and that the economic realm is an integral part of the world of the arts. The question is now what we do with these tensions between the worlds of art and economics, the romantics and realists. One possibility would be to adopt the realist sneer, and dismiss the romantic stance with its claims to the sacredness of the arts as a selfserving cover-up. This is the strategy that Tom Wolfe exemplifies in The Painted Word.2. Ruthlessly he exposes the commercial hypocrisy of American artists In the fifties and sixties. The ambitious artist, the artist who wanted Success, now had to do a bit of psy chological doubletracking. Consciously he had to dedicate himself to the anti bourgeois values of the cenaclesof whatever sort, to bohemia, to the Blooms bury life, the Left Bank life, the lower Broadway Loft life, to the sacred squalor of it all. (..) What is more, he had to be sincere about it. At the same time he had to keep his other eye cocked to see if anyone in le monde was watching. (.. ) Success was realonly when it was success III lemonde. (Ibid, pp 16-17) In their art the artists loathe everything bourgeois, including its money, yet for the sake of success they have to court le monde and that includes the bourgeoisie and its money. It makes for what Wolfe coined an "Apache dance" in which the artists try to stick to their artistic values while dancing around their enemy to get atten tion and sell their paintings. The inclination of economists is to follow Wolfe and dismiss the romantic senti ment In the world of the arts as just that, mere sentiment. Their strategy is, as in all the other subjects they tackle, to see III the world of the arts the operation of self interested behavior in market settings. In their eyes art is like any other commodity and pnce is the best indicator of its value. rhave found this strategy unsatisfactory, because it does injustice to Important characteristics of the world of art, including indeed its romantic sentiment. I propose to take seriously the awkwardness with which money figures, and the distinctive qualities attributed to the arts. (Implied is the proposal to do the same for the realms of religion, science, and personallife; hut art is the main subject here.) Introduction to the Conversation 9 Several economists join in the conversation.