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University of California Press

About the Book

This is the first sourcebook to trace the emergence and evolution of art markets in the Western economy, framing them within the larger narrative of the ascendancy of capitalist markets. Selected writings from across academic disciplines present compelling evidence of art's inherent commercial dimension and show how artists, dealers, and collectors have interacted over time, from the city-states of Quattrocento Italy to the high-stakes markets of postmillennial New York and Beijing. This approach casts a startling new light on the traditional concerns of art history and aesthetics, revealing much that is provocative, profound, and occasionally even comic. This volume's unique historical perspective makes it appropriate for use in college courses and postgraduate and professional programs, as well as for professionals working in art-related environments such as museums, galleries, and auction houses.


This is the first sourcebook to trace the emergence and evolution of art markets in the Western economy, framing them within the larger narrative of the ascendancy of capitalist markets. Selected writings from across academic disciplines present compellin

About the Author

Titia Hulst is a modern and contemporary art historian. She holds a PhD from the Institute of Fine Arts and an MBA from New York University. In addition, she teaches art history at Purchase College in New York.

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Table of Contents

A Note to Readers
Introduction

1. ART IN A COMMERCIAL WORLD

I. Art in Society

Illusions of Disinterest
Paul Mattick

Marx on Ideology and Art
O. K. Werckmeister

Avant-Garde and Kitsch
Clement Greenberg

The Artworld
Arthur Danto

Culture Industry Reconsidered
Theodor W. Adorno

II. The Value of Art

The Cultural Biography of Things
Igor Kopytoff

Aura
Walter Benjamin

Varieties of Artistic Value in Contemporary Aesthetics
Michael Hutter and Richard Shusterman

The Production of Belief
Pierre Bourdieu

The Paradox of Rarity: Photography
Raymonde Moulin

Symbolic Meanings of Prices
Olav Velthuis

Art . . . Contemporary of Itself
Jean Baudrillard

2. ARTISTS AND COLLECTORS IN THE MARKET FOR ART

I. The Supply of and Demand for Works of Art

Two Paradigms of Artistic Activity
Xavier Greffe
Arts Markets
James Heilbrun and Charles M. Gray

II. The Nature of the Demand for Works of Art
The Synchronization of Social Change in Europe
Fernand Braudel

Economic Value as the Objectification of Subjective Values
Georg Simmel

Conspicuous Consumption and Pecuniary Canons of Taste
Thorstein Veblen

Collectors and Collecting
Russell W. Belk

Connoisseurs and Experts
Jonathan Brown

III. The Artist: Homo Economicus / Femina Economica

Art, Honor, and Excellence
Elizabeth Honig

Determining Value on the Art Market in the Golden Age
Eric Jan Sluijter

Reference, Deference, and Difference
Griselda Pollock

The Trademark Tracey Emin
Ulrich Lehmann

Notes on the Mythic Being I–III
Adrian Piper

Whose Image Is It?
Barbara Hoffman

IV. The Art Market

Property and Exhibition Rights
Walter Santagata

Informational Efficiency of the Art Market
William N. Goetzmann

The Market for Modern Prints
James E. Pesando

3. THE ITALIAN CITY-STATES

The Culture of Consumption
Richard A. Goldthwaite
Conditions of Trade

Michael Baxandall
Italian Artists in Sixteenth-Century England
Cinzia Maria Sicca

Leonardo and Leonardism
Luke Syson

Marketing
Richard E. Spear

The Market for Paintings in Italy
Federico Etro and Laura Pagani

The Gender and Internationalism of Rosalba Carriera
Shearer West

Letters to Isabella Stewart Gardner
Bernard Berenson

4. ANTWERP

The Business of Art: Patrons, Clients, and Markets
Maryan W. Ainsworth

Marketing Art in Antwerp
Dan Ewing

Pieter Aertsen’s Meat Stall as Contemporary Art
Charlotte Houghton

Second Bosch
Larry Silver

A Sixteenth-Century Master-Pupil Contract
Exporting Art across the Globe
Filip Vermeylen

Trade and Art in Seventeenth-Century Antwerp
Elizabeth Alice Honig

Rubens’s Studio Practice
Hans Vlieghe

5. AMSTERDAM

On Brabant Rubbish, Economic Competition, Artistic Rivalry, and the Growth of the Market for Paintings
Eric Jan Sluijter

Cost and Value in Dutch Art
John Michael Montias

Art Dealers in the Netherlands
John Michael Montias

Italian Paintings in Holland
Bert W. Meijer

Freedom, Art, and Money
Svetlana Alpers

Letters to Constantijn Huygens, ca. 1639
Rembrandt

Attributions in Auction Catalogs
Koenraad Jonckheere

The Solliciteur-Culturel
Koenraad Jonckheere

6. GERMANY AND SPAIN

I. Germany

The Reformation and the Decline of German Art
Carl C. Christensen

Art Auctions in Germany during the Eighteenth Century
Thomas Ketelsen

II. Spain

Painting in Spain, 1500–1700
Jonathan Brown

Exploring Markets in Spain and Nueva España
Neil De Marchi and Hans J. van Miegroet

Spanish Art and Global Discourse
Miguel A. Hernández-Navarro

7. LONDON

Picture Consumption in London
Carol Gibson-Wood

The Art Market
Iain Pears

England and the Netherlands Compared
David Ormrod

Engraving
Tobias Smollett

Hogarth
Ronald Paulson

Portrait Painting as a Business Enterprise
Marcia Pointon

Christie’s Auction House
Thomas M. Bayer and John R. Page

Art Collecting and Victorian Middle-Class Taste
Dianne Sachko MacLeod

David Thomson and the Goupil Gallery
Anne Helmreich

Whistler and the English Print Market
Martha Tedeschi

Roger Fry’s Commercial Exhibitions
Anna Gruetzner Robins

8. PARIS

Gersaint and the Marketing of Art
Andrew McClellan

David and the “Exposition Payante”
Oskar Bätschmann

Noising Things Abroad
Steven R. Adams

An Italian Patron of French Neo-Classic Art
Francis Haskell

Circuits of Production, Circuits of Consumption
Nicholas Green

Dealing in Temperaments
Nicholas Green

Courbet’s Landscapes and Their Market
Anne M. Wagner

The Retrospective Exhibition
Robert Jensen

Entrepreneurial Patronage in Nineteenth-Century France
Albert Boime

Ambroise Vollard Correspondence
Paul Gauguin

Vollard’s Bronzes
Una Johnson

La Peau de l’Ours and Galerie Berthe Weill
Michael Cowan Fitzgerald

The Steins’ Early Years in Paris
Rebecca Rabinow

The Avant-Garde, Order, and the Art Market
Malcolm Gee

Galeries Georges Petit
Michael C. Fitzgerald

Painting as a Safe Investment
Raymonde Moulin

9. ART CONSUMPTION IN INDUSTRIAL AMERICA

Touching Pictures by William Harnett
Michael Leja

Winslow Homer as Entrepreneur
Kevin M. Murphy

J. P. Morgan’s Renaissance Bronzes
Flaminia Gennari-Santori

The Armory Show
Katherine S. Dreier

Alfred Stieglitz
Sarah Greenough

Diary of an Art Dealer
René Gimpel

Vollard
Edith Halpert

Press Release, Art of This Century
The Exhibitions at Art of This Century
Jasper Sharp

10. NEW YORK

Artists and Dealers
Dore Ashton

Mark Rothko
James E. B. Breslin

The New York Art Market ca. 1960
A. Deirdre Robson

Clement Greenberg
André Emmerich

Mike Wallace Interviews Marcel Duchamp
Leo Castelli Gallery
Richard Brown Baker

Mr. Andy Warhol
Arthur Danto

The Gutman Letter
Michael Benedikt

Unpublished Notes
Ad Reinhardt

Revaluing Minimalism
Anna C. Chave

Land Artists and Art Markets
Victor Ginsburgh and A. F. Penders

Unpackaging Simulationism
Alison Pearlman

11. THE GLOBAL ART MARKET

The Art Market in the 1980s
Paul Ardenne

Video Art
Noah Horowitz

Money Is No Object
Francis M. Naumann

The Internationalization of the Contemporary Art World
Alain Quemin

Neo-modernity, Neo-biennalism, Neo-fairism
Paco Barragán

Acknowledgments
Bibliography
Index

Reviews

“…an extraordinary compendium about the business of art.… A History of the Western Art Market will be a golden go-to reference for inquisitive artists, collectors, curators and dealers. It would also be a great resource for journalists and historians who wish to have a more informed perspective.”
Forbes
"Highly recommended for museum and academic libraries that support the study of fine and decorative arts; it will also complement certain public and special library collections."
Art Libraries Society of North America
“This astutely assembled and highly readable compendium brings its vital subject, nothing less than the circulation of art works in the world, to a new level of intellectual maturity and accessibility.”—Thomas E. Crow, author of The Long March of Pop: Art, Music, and Design, 1930-1995

"Hulst’s first-of-its-kind treatment delineates an elusive and impenetrable subject—the art market. These precisely selected essays by leading art historians, philosophers, sociologists, and economists collectively offer a point of view regarding the operation, structure, and disposition of art markets even as they provide a splendid overview of historical patterns over five centuries."—Adam D. Weinberg, Alice Pratt Brown Director, Whitney Museum of American Art

“This is an important anthology and one that will allow great flexibility and breadth in how it can be used in classrooms. It will also be a very useful introduction to the field for scholars who would like to understand the market as an aid to their own research.”—Pamela Fletcher, Professor of Art History, Bowdoin College