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Making Cents and Nonsense of Art

Sun, August 17, 8:30 to 10:10am, TBA

Abstract

This paper investigates artists’ valuation of their own practices by looking at artists’ investments and expectations around returns on investment. Using data from 80 in-depth interviews and ethnographic observation in four regionally defined art communities, the author explores patterns in artists’ accounts of expected ‘returns’ on investments of money, time, space, energy, and other finite goods. While all artists make investments in their artistic practice, it is in expected returns that we find real variation. Two analytical frameworks – speculation, best represented by sales, and credentialing, best understood through teaching and commercial work – allow artists to account for investments in artistic practice in economically calculative terms, while a third framework – commitment, with both vocationalist and communitarian forms – allows artists to account for investments evaluatively. Interactions between the frameworks influence valuation, and such interactions are shown to allow multiple routes to the commensuration of the value of artistic practice with market value, but to commensurations with meaningful differences.

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