The Value of Culture: On the Relationship between Economics and Arts

244 Pages·1997·5.62 MB·English

by  Arjo Klamer

The Value of Culture
On the relationship between
economics and arts
edited by Arjo Klamer
AMSTERDAM UNIVERSITY PRESS
The Value ofC ulture

The Value of Culture
On the Relationship
between Economics and Arts
Edited by Arjo Klamer
AMSTERDAM UNIVERSITY PRESS
Cover illustration: Vincent van Gogh, Le docteur Paul Gachet.
Coll. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam
Cover design: Marjolein Meijer, BEELDVORM, Leiden
Typesetting: Bert Haagsman, MAGENTA, Amsterdam
ISBN 90-5356-2I9-2 (hardback)
90-5356-2t8-4 (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
Ario Klamer
,
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
Barend van Heusden, Arja Klamer
4 "The Good, the Bad and the Different": 56
Reflections on Economic and Aesthetic Value
David Ruccio, Julie Graham, Jack Amariglio
PART Two: ON THE VALUE OF ART
5 The Value of Public Art as Public Culture 77
Joseph J. Cordes, Robert S. Goldfarb
6 Market Value and Artists' Earnings 96
Ruth Tawse
7 Big City, Great Art: A Myth about Art Production '08
Gerard de Vries
8 The Value of Play m
Michael Hutter
9 The Artistic Conscience and the Production of Value '38
Hans Abbing
PART THREE: ON CULTURE
w Political Culture and the Economic Value of Citizenship: '5'
A French-Dutch Comparison in the Nineteenth Century
Frances Gouda
n The Value of National Identity ,66
Jas de Reus
u Missing Ethics in Economics "7
Deirdre McCloskey
PART FOUR: ON ART
'3 The Value of Warhol 205
Peter Kattenberg
'4 The Value of Making Art: A Conversation with the Artists 2<4
Ronald Glasbergen, Liesheth Bik andJoep Lieshout
Arja Klamer
Notes
22)
Index 238
Introduction to the Conversation
CULTURE 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
people 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
IO million dollars? "It never will" she insists, "but no, it would not make a differ
ence,"I 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 of art tS to be
found tn 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
susplCions 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 mauguration 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
I. 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 ''(.'Ulture'' in its general anthropological sense and recovering the old notion 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 arc sup
pressed and avoided. The suspicion shows in the lack of interest 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 cal! those who hold out for a separate .~acred place
for the arts, where money does not interfere, the romantics. Just as Jesus chased the
money 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 cenades of 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 real only when it was success III Ie monde. (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 Ie 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 disnllSs the romantic senti
ment In the world of the arts as just that, mere sentiment. Their strategy is, as in ali
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
r
and pnce is the best indicator of its value. have 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 propo~al to do the same for the realms of religion, science, and personal life; but
art is the main subject here.)
Introduction to the Conversation
9
Several economists join in the conversation. Not all agree with my suggestion that
the study of art calls for a change in strategy. Robert Goldfarb and Joseph Cordes
stick to the economic strategy in their investigation of the value of public sculp
ture. Ruth Towse IS most vehement in her opposition. She wants economists to
stick to their conventional, well-tested tools when they venture out. r don't, at
least not when the tools don't help me understand phenomena such as the ten
sions between the realms of economics and the arts. That does not render their
economic analysis useless or uninteresting. As always, economists excel in sorting
out motives and pointing out constraints in the choices people face, in this case
those that artists face.
Hans Abbing is another economist who prefers to think of art as just any other
commodity. Yet he IS an artist as well. Here he exploits his intimate knowledge of
the world of art and tells us about how artists sustain the magic of art. According to
him the crux is the construC[ion of an artistic conscience, which implants the dis
trust of the commercial in the arts and generates the values that are necessary to
play the game of art and dance the Apache dance. His interpretation supports the
claim that the world of art has distinctive processes by which artists and their
entourage interact, deliberate, negotiate, and exchange. Although he claims to
remain faithful to the dominant economic dogma by reading in aU this behavior the
pursuit of self-reward, he acknowledges that the artistic conscience is strongly dri
ven by group interest. Many young artists disregard their own interests for the sake
of the magic of art, and thus serve the interests of the art world as a whole - which
partly can exist because of that very magic. Implicitly, Abbing comes around to
recognising the need to identify and characterise the culture, that is, the shared val
ues that distinguish the world of art.
Abbing's interpretation supports Michael Hutter's suggestion to look for the
workings of a play in the world of art. Hutter, who is also an economist, develops
a framework that goes beyond conventional economic analysis and enables us to
figure out what is going on when different games get tangled up, as when the eco
nomic game interferes with the artistic game. The tensions the arts generate among
us economists are creative.
The disagreement among economists about the economICs m the world of art,
strikes the core of our discipline, and calls the modernism of the core into question.
At least that is my perception. The modernist core consists of a series of dualities.
A square may represent one side of these dualities and a circle the other3: