Aesthetics

Art Market

Global aesthetics developed as part of the institutionalization of art and the globalization of the art market. The global city required branding that was provided by a destination museum built, or renovated and extended, by a globally recognized architect. The network of relationships between a global art market center and the museum facilitated the establishment of aesthetic values and financial values, or price, through the art world relationships in the city. The links between the art market and other financial markets, and the process for price formation that developed as a result of the use of art as an investment commodity, also changed the activities and relationships that determine changes in aesthetic value.

Since changes were made in the U.S. Revenue Code in 1954—allowing art donations to public galleries, nonprofit foundations, and educational institutions to be tax deductible for up to 30% of the donor's tax liability—tax legislation and museum donation in developed economies has been inextricably linked to the art market. The most direct effects of record-breaking auction sales in the second half of the 20th century were on the prices for particular artists and the social status that collectors acquired, but record prices also affected public art collections and the aesthetic values that audiences experienced. In the market that developed in the late 20th century, the exhibition value of the work of art became more important to collectors and museums than ever before and often determined its price.

Most works of art take a physical form as an object or the documentation of a concept, performance, or event. However, the status of the work of art is not determined by its physicality, or even the art that it represents, but rather by its exhibition and exchange value. The art worlds of the postwar period analyzed by Diana Crane, Howard S. Becker, and Raymonde Moulin were not the same as the art worlds of the 1980s and 1990s. There was a change in the relationships between national art worlds and the global market. All art worlds and markets became part of the same system for artists' reputation and price formation. The multinational auction houses Christie's and Sotheby's integrated national markets with global centers in New York and London through their competitive practices and the public prices they established for art. After the Scull collection of Pop Art was sold in New York in 1977, contemporary art was offered at auction, creating increasingly speculative markets. The sale of contemporary art at auction, rather than through dealers who had created the 20th-century market for contemporary art, changed the situation for living artists as well as for their estates.

...