What role do artists play in the valuation of their activities? Theoretical perspectives on art have assumed that such value is closely linked to the prices of art objects and have minimized the place of content providers in the creation and definition of value. Through analysis of the writings of American, Canadian, and Swedish artists from 1967 to 2015, we find that artists move discursively from an object-oriented market logic to a market logic based in the provision of services, promoting new ways of accounting for value as they do so. Our findings suggest new ways to look at extant literature: 1) dominant theories treat artists as either structurally or intentionally insulated from the pricing of their work, while we show how artists act to define the value of artistic practice; 2) we show how terminology may remain stable while underlying meanings and institutionalized strategies aimed toward the accomplishment of goals evolve, and argue for the analysis of discursive practices beyond the search for stability or change in the usage of key terms; and finally, 3) we argue that analysts should look beyond price when aiming to understand the valuation of artistic practice.
AgnelloR (2010) Race and art: Prices for African American painters and their contemporaries. Journal of Black Studies41(1): 56–70.
2.
AllenG (2011) Artists’ Magazines: An Alternative Space for Art. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
3.
AlmelingR (2007) Selling genes, selling gender: Egg agencies, sperm banks, and the medical market in genetic material. American Sociological Review72(3): 319–340.
4.
AmundsonD (1982) New York New York New York … Copyright and more from the CIAGP conference in New York. CARFAC News7(1): 10–11.
5.
AntebyM (2010) Markets, morals, and practices of trade: Jurisdictional disputes in the US commerce in cadavers. Administrative Science Quarterly55(4): 606–638.
6.
ArendtH (1998) The Human Condition, 2nd edn.Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
BainA (2005) Constructing an artistic identity. Work, Employment and Society19(1): 25–46.
9.
BanksMJ (2015) The Writers: A History of American Screenwriters and Their Guild. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
10.
BanksPA (2010) Conceptions of art ownership as a form of wealth accumulation among the black middle-class. Qualitative Sociology33(3): 333–348.
11.
BattaniM (1999) Organizational fields, cultural fields and art worlds: The early effort to make photographs and make photographers in the 19th-century United States of America. Media, Culture & Society21(5): 601–626.
12.
BaumannS (2007) A general theory of artistic legitimation: How art worlds are like social movements. Poetics35(1): 47–65.
13.
BaxandallM (1972) Painting and Experience in Fifteenth Century Italy: A Primer in the Social History of Pictorial Style. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
14.
BeckerHS (1982) Art Worlds. Berkeley: University of California Press.
15.
BeggsAGraddyK (2009) Anchoring effects: Evidence from art auctions. The American Economic Review99(3): 1027–1039.
16.
Bell-VilladaGH (1986) The idea of art for art’s sake: Intellectual origins, social conditions, and poetic doctrine. Science & Society50(4): 415–439.
17.
BernsteinE (2007) Temporarily Yours: Intimacy, Authenticity, and the Commerce of Sex. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
18.
BermanEP (2006) Before the professional project: Success and failure at creating an organizational representative for English doctors. Theory and Society35(2): 157–191.
19.
BeveridgeK (2005) The hidden costs of public exhibitions: Artists donate $4,000,000 a year to the costs of public exhibitions in Canada for preparation and installation work. Calendar (CARFAC)8(1): 4–5.
20.
BiernackiR (1995) The Fabrication of Labor: Germany and Britain, 1640–1914. Berkeley: University of California Press.
21.
BinderA (1993) Constructing racial rhetoric: Media depictions of harm in heavy metal and rap music. American Sociological Review58(6): 753–767.
22.
BourdieuP (1993) The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Literature. Cambridge: Polity Press.
23.
BourdieuP (1996) The Rules of Art: Genesis and Structure of the Literary Field. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press.
24.
BradleyWEscheC (eds) (2007) Art and Social Change: A Critical Reader. London: Tate Publishing.
25.
Bryan-WilsonJ (2009) Art Workers: Radical Practice in the Vietnam War Era. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
26.
BurwickF (2001) Mimesis and Its Romantic Reflections. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University.
27.
Canadian Artists’ Representation (1975a) CAR fee schedule. CAR News1(1): 2.
28.
Canadian Artists’ Representation (1975b) Saint Mary’s University art gallery unfair to artists. CAR GO2(2): 13.
29.
Canadian Artists’ Representation (1983) CARFAC recommended minimum exhibition fee schedule for April 1, 1983. CARFAC News7(3).
30.
CavesRE (2000) Creative Industries: Contracts between Art and Commerce. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
31.
ChambersJ (1973) Encounters. Canadian Artists’ Representation National Newsletter1(1): 38–46.
32.
ChambersJOndaatjeKUrquhartT (1973) C.A.R. … ?Canadian Artists’ Representation National Newsletter1(1): 2–3.
33.
ChildressC (2017) Under the Cover: The Creation, Production, and Reception of a Novel. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
34.
ChildressCGerberA (2015) The MFA in creative writing: The uses of a ‘useless’ credential. Professions and Professionalism5(2).
35.
CowenTTabarrokA (2000) An economic theory of avant-garde and popular art, or high and low culture. Southern Economic Journal67(2): 232–253.
36.
CreanSUrquhartTBlooreRFafardJLobchukBKiyookaHGreenwodGBoyleJJamesGSilcoxDavid (1978) The artists [Conference Panel transcript]. CARFAC News3(3–4): 4–9.
37.
DurkheimE (1984) The Division of Labor in Society. New York: Free Press.
38.
Esping-AndersenG (1990) The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
39.
EwaldJ (2002) Konstnären Skall Ha Ersättning För Sitt Arbete. Konstnären18(2): 1.
40.
FavellA (2012) Before and After Superflat: A Short History of Japanese Contemporary Art 1990–2011. Hong Kong: Blue Kingfisher Limited.
41.
FineGA (1996) Justifying work: Occupational rhetorics as resources in restaurant kitchens. Administrative Science Quarterly41(1): 90–115.
42.
FineGA (2003) Crafting authenticity: The validation of identity in self-taught art. Theory and Society32(2): 153–180.
43.
FiskCSzalayM (2016) Story work: Non-proprietary autonomy and contemporary television writing. Television & New Media. Epub ahead of print 20June2016. DOI: 10.1177/1527476416652693.
44.
FleetVKempG (2006) The art of fundraising. CARFAC Calendar9(2): 6–7.
45.
FourcadeM (2011) Cents and sensibility: Economic valuation and the nature of ‘Nature’. American Journal of Sociology116(6): 1721–1777.
46.
FraserA (1997) What’s intangible, transitory, mediating, participatory, and rendered in the public sphere?October80: 111–116.
47.
FriedlandRAlfordR (1991) Bringing society back in: Symbols, practices and institutional contradictions. In: PowellWDimaggioP (eds) The New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis. Chicago, IL: University Of Chicago Press, pp. 232–263.
48.
FrutkinM (1987) Copyright: From beginning to end. Art Action12(4): 2–3.
49.
GibbonHMF (1987) From prints to posters: The production of artistic value in a popular art world. Symbolic Interaction10(1): 111–128.
50.
GlaserBGStraussAL (1967) The Discovery of Grounded Theory: Strategies for Qualitative Research. Chicago, IL: Aldine.
51.
GordyB (1969) Untitled statement. In: Open Hearing. New York: Art Workers’ Coalition, pp. 97–98.
52.
GrahamJ (2002) Status of artist legislation jumps into prominence. Calendar (CARFAC)5(2): 1–4.
53.
GuérardA (1936) Art for art’s sake. Books Abroad10(3): 263–265.
HarrisonCWoodP (eds) (2003) Art in Theory 1900–2000: An Anthology of Changing Ideas. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
56.
HaynesDJ (1997) The Vocation of the Artist. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
57.
HealyKJ (2006) Last Best Gifts: Altruism and the Market for Human Blood and Organs. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
58.
HirschPM (1972) Processing fads and fashions: An organization-set analysis of cultural industry systems. The American Journal of Sociology77(4): 639–659.
JamesG (1978) Copyright and you. CARFAC News3(2): 7–24.
61.
JonesCLivne-TarandachR (2008) Designing a frame: Rhetorical strategies of architects. Journal of Organizational Behavior29(8): 1075–1099.
62.
KhaireMWadhwaniRD (2010) Changing landscapes: The construction of meaning and value in a new market category—modern Indian art. Academy of Management Journal53(6): 1281–1304.
PindellH (1977) Alternative space: Artists’ periodicals. The Print Collectors NewsletterVIII(4): 96–121.
85.
RaoHMoninPDurandR (2003) Institutional change in Toque Ville: Nouvelle cuisine as an identity movement in French gastronomy. American Journal of Sociology108(4): 795–843.
86.
ReichertEBackmanCPalmC (2007) Untitled. In: BillingJLindMNilssonL (eds) Taking the Matter Into Common Hands: Contemporary Art and Collaborative Practices. London: Black Dog.
87.
RenneboogLSpaenjersC (2013) Buying beauty: On prices and returns in the art market. Management Science59(1): 36–53.
88.
RobertsJ (2007) The Intangibilities of Form: Skill and Deskilling in Art after the Readymade. London and New York: Verso.
89.
ShermanR (2010) ‘Time is our commodity’: Gender and the struggle for occupational legitimacy among personal concierges. Work and Occupations37(1): 81–114.
90.
SholetteG (2010) Dark Matter: Art and Politics in the Age of Enterprise Culture. New York: Pluto Press.
91.
SingerI (1954) The aesthetics of ‘art for art’s sake’. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism12(3): 343–359.
92.
SingermanH (1999) Art Subjects: Making Artists in the American University. Berkeley: University of California Press.
93.
SpillmanL (2012) Solidarity in Strategy: Making Business Meaningful in American Trade Associations. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
94.
SuttnerG (1971a) Anförande Vid KRO:s Demonstration Den 16 November 1971. Medlemsblad (Konstnärernas Riksorganisation)32(6–7): 5–11.
TateishiSA (1985) The house that Jack built: Fifteen years later. CARFAC News10(2): 2–6.
97.
ThompsonDN (2008) The $12 Million Stuffed Shark: The Curious Economics of Contemporary Art. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
98.
ThorntonPH (2004) Markets from Culture: Institutional Logics and Organizational Decisions in Higher Education Publishing. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
99.
ThorntonPHJonesCKuryK (2005) Institutional logics and institutional change in organizations: Transformation in accounting, architecture, and publishing. In: Transformation in Cultural Industries, vol. 23, Research in the Sociology of Organizations. Amsterdam: Elsevier, pp. 125–70.
100.
ThorntonPHOcasioW (1999) Institutional logics and the historical contingency of power in organizations: Executive succession in the higher education publishing industry, 1958–1990. American Journal of Sociology105(3): 801–843.
101.
ThorntonPHOcasioWLounsburyM (2012) The Institutional Logics Perspective: A New Approach to Culture, Structure, and Process. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
102.
VelthuisO (2003) Symbolic meanings of prices: Constructing the value of contemporary art in Amsterdam and New York galleries. Theory and Society32(2): 181–215.
103.
VelthuisO (2004) An interpretive approach to meanings of prices. The Review of Austrian Economics17(4): 371–386.
104.
VelthuisO (2005) Talking Prices: Symbolic Meanings of Prices on the Market for Contemporary Art. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
105.
WeberM (1968) From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
106.
WhiteHCWhiteCA (1965) Canvases and Careers; Institutional Change in the French Painting World. New York: Wiley.
107.
WilcoxJ (1953) The beginnings of l’art pour l’art. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism11(4): 360–377.
108.
YatesS (1983) The Applebaum-Hébert report: An analysis. CARFAC News8(1): 2–4.
109.
ZelizerVA (1978) Human values and the market: The case of life insurance and death in 19th-century America. American Journal of Sociology84(3): 591–610.
110.
ZelizerVA (1981) The price and value of children: The case of children’s insurance. American Journal of Sociology86(5): 1036–1056.
111.
ZelizerVA (2000) The purchase of intimacy. Law & Social Inquiry25(3): 817–848.
112.
ZoglinR (2008) Comedy at the Edge: How Stand-up in the 1970s changed America. New York: Bloomsbury.
