Capital Culture: a Reader on Modernist Legacies, State Institutions, and the Value(s) of Art

The status of art has undergone a tremendous shift in the last twenty years. While the value of a work of art once came from a dynamic but fundamentally stable consensus regarding its social and aesthetic status within its culture, this has increasingly been replaced by a more controversial role for art as a high-priced commodity in international markets - we live in a world where French-owned Van Goghs are sold in London to the Japanese for tens of millions of American dollars. In...
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The status of art has undergone a tremendous shift in the last twenty years. While the value of a work of art once came from a dynamic but fundamentally stable consensus regarding its social and aesthetic status within its culture, this has increasingly been replaced by a more controversial role for art as a high-priced commodity in international markets - we live in a world where French-owned Van Goghs are sold in London to the Japanese for tens of millions of American dollars. In Capital Culture leading cultural critics, art theorists and artists re-examine the nature of artistic value, bringing historical and critical perspectives to bear on contemporary controversies surrounding national identity, political economy, and government policy.