CULTURAL ENTERPRENEURSHIP AND INNOVATION
WEEK 1: ECONOMICS & CULTURE
- In cultural industries a lot of informal employees à a lot of cameramen are freelancers
Bradshaw & Holbrook (2007) – Remembering Chet: theorizing the mythology of the self-destructive
bohemian artist as self-producer and self-consumer in the market for romanticism
Self-destructive artists: myth & reality
- Chet Baker
- Tension between art and commerce à tension between being successful artistically x
commercially
- General idea = if you’re a great artist, you’re not a great businessman à you don't care about
the money
- It seems suspicious if someone who is good artistically also has a lot of money
- One way to bridge commercial and artistic success à self-destruction as a successful
marketing strategy
- Why does self-destruction make sense?
o It attracts a lot of attention
o Anything that makes you stand out is good
o Attention is vital and self-destruction can be a means of attaining it
o It helps justify commercial and artistic success
- Nobody thought Chet was doing it for the money
- The self-destruction was like an alibi à no one could accuse him of being a sell out
- Self-destruction = strategic management solution to combine the two successes without being
attacked for it
Artistic vs commercial orientations
- “… competing career orientation arising from the contradictory demands for musicians to
produce aesthetic experiences for an audience of experts, or devoted fans while also facing the
need to earn cash in the mass market constituted by non-experts”
- “…unfortunately – pushing the artist past the need to scuffle to make a living – the market,
geared to romantic expectations, may demands an additional component of self-destruction”
Article
- About competing career orientations arising from the contradictory demands for musicians to
produce aesthetic experiences for an audience of experts, cognoscenti, or devoted fans while
also facing the need to earn cash in the mass market constituted by non- experts
- Musicians are expected to create music that is oppositional, autonomous, and innovative,
thereby pleasing themselves above all else while simultaneously satisfying the Romantic ideal
of art by inducing a profound state of aesthetic contemplation or even ecstatic rapture; on the
other, they are forced to create music that, bound by mundane realities, will raise the cash
needed to sustain their professional careers by putting food on the table
- How the artist negotiates this precarious trade-off tends to position the resulting creative
offering at one or another level on the bohemianism dimension
- Bohemia = musicians or other artists who perform primarily for themselves as expert self-
consumers seeking to maximize their own profound aesthetic experience as an audience for
the consumption of their own playing
- Alienation = music made purely for the commercial pursuit of a monetary reward and aimed
at an audience of nonexpert consumers who have no special knowledge of the art form, who
are cultivated for the dollars they can provide rather than for the sincere appreciation they can
bestow, and who will respond favourably to the music only if it is dumbed down in ways that
make it easily accessible
- Logically, pure bohemia, defined in marketing-related terms as the equation of the artistic
producer and aesthetic consumer, need not necessarily involve self-destruction; at the other
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, extreme from bohemia, the alienation associated with pure pandering represents complete
subservience to the marketplace
- Main point: self-destruction in general and that of Chet Baker in particular serve to illustrate
the difficulties of achieving credibility in a marketplace that makes mutually contradictory
demands
Dubois (2012) – Recognition and renown in the market for poetry
- French poetry
- “the status of publishers is remarkably stable over time, whereas poets may gain in reputation
and move from small firms to large and high-status publishers”
- “These moves make sense in terms of the distinction between recognition, the reputation an
artist enjoys within his or her original world of art, and renown, the extension of the artist’s
reputation beyond his or her world of art. The central argument here is that the structure of
markets corresponds to that of reputations, which array themselves according to the two stages
of recognition and renown.”
- It’s about the economics of the French poetry publishing industry
- This is a highly competitive industry; you also need to be aware that this competition is not
really about money
- It is still economic competition à about things that have value and are scarce; but not just
money
o Core insights = nobody does this for the money
o BUT there is fierce competition between writers and publishers à for reputation
- Reputation comes in different kinds
o Recognition x renown
o Recognition = domain specific
o Renown = domain transcending
o Recognized painter = ppl in the painting industry will know you
o Renowned painter = ppl outside your domain have a good idea about who you are and
what you stand for
o Renown has commercial value à e.g. Beyoncé can make a perfume and it will sell
out
- “Everything hinges on the market in question and its particular means of constructing
reputation. Art worlds may need to create reputations that last over time in order to stabilize
the slow-moving markets that would not survive without those at the head of the pack. The
major poets of the time pull the market forward on the strength of their stable reputations. By
contrast, speculative markets like the contemporary markets for art or pop music rely on
reputations that fluctuate wildly in the short term, even if history will later settle the matter of
reputation, as shown in the classical art market.”
The dynamics of growing reputations and market success
- Getting published is already a huge success
- Minor publishers will get smaller poets, major ones will get the big ones
- They will reinforce each other’s reputations
- Editors à not well paid; you become an editor, because you are interested in literature; you
become employed at a major commercial institution; usually the deal is that each editor has a
portfolio and this portfolio needs to be profitable; as a compensation (and to allow you for
evaluative tweaking) you also get some highbrow literature
- In this way, poets are also a solution for the tension between art and commerce
Article
- This article explores the organization of cultural markets through the case of French
contemporary poetry, distinguishing the market for recognition and the wider market for
renown
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, - Empirical studies have shown that the genres of seemingly smaller appeal can reach the core
of the market by gaining consecration, as illustrated in the contexts of contemporary music, art
or literature
- The structure of markets corresponds to that of reputations, which array themselves according
to the two stages of recognition and renown.
- Reputation = a category of collective thought, a perception; it has meaning only when shared;
it emerges from a collective effort that positions individuals within a common space through
the use of a ‘‘label’’
o Reputation functions along vertical and horizontal axes: vertically, reputation orders
individuals within a hierarchy; horizontally, it is shared among a more or less large
community
- Recognition = occurs in small, specialized circles where the economic power of businesses
counts for little
- Renown = comes to the artist whose name goes beyond the circles of the initiated to enter into
History
o Renown is at the heart of the sociology and the economics of art, since that is where
we find the names and works that will enter the canon
- The central hypothesis of this article is that reputation governs cultural markets and that stages
of recognition and renown act on two related but different markets in terms of both artists and
firms
- The status of publishers is remarkably stable over time, whereas poets may gain in reputation
and move from small firms to large and high-status publishers
- These moves make sense in terms of the distinction between recognition, the reputation an
artist enjoys within his or her original world of art, and renown, the extension of the artist’s
reputation beyond his or her world of art
- Main point = reputation structures the cultural marketplace by differentiating the two ideal
type moments, recognition and renown; everything hinges on the market in question and its
particular means of constructing reputation
o Art worlds may need to create reputations that last over time in order to stabilize the
slow-moving markets that would not survive without those at the head of the pack
o The major poets of the time pull the market forward on the strength of their stable
reputations. By contrast, speculative markets like the contemporary markets for art or
pop music rely on reputations that fluctuate wildly in the short term, even if history
will later settle the matter of reputation, as shown in the classical art market
Wijnberg – Art and appropriability in renaissance Italy and the Netherlands of the golden age: the
role of the academy
- Used to be market selection
- The selection systems in visual art industries à peers, experts, consumers
- During renaissance and golden age à huge production
- Italy
o From guild related market selection to peer selection (in academy) with a bit of expert
selection
- The Netherlands
o From guild regulated market selection to fairly unregulated market selection with a bit
of expert selection
Three marketing strategies in the Dutch golden age
- Based on the structure, what kind of strategies were possible?
- Vermeer = small scale craftmanship for the local connoisseurs
- Rubens = large scale production for the courtiers as if they were market consumers
- Rembrandt = middle-scale production for the market consumers as if they were courtiers
Modern patronage: the CIA and abstract expressionism
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, - The Central Intelligence Agency used American modern art - including the works of such
artists as Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwell, Willem de Kooning and Mark Rothko - as a
weapon in the Cold War. In the manner of a Renaissance prince - except that it acted secretly -
the CIA fostered and promoted American Abstract Expressionist painting around the world for
more than 20 years.
Velthuis –Symbolic meanings of prices: constructing the value of contemporary art in Amsterdam
and New York galleries
- About art galleries
- An art gallery is essentially a retailer, without price tags
- Pricing signifies value
- How art galleries manoeuvre between artistic and commercial ideas à they create a relational
story
Two perspectives on the prices of art works
- Price x artistic value
1. Nothing but à price is a reflection of artistic value
2. Hostile worlds à there is no relation between price and value
- Both these perspectives can consider Van Gogh as an example
(Symbolic) meaning of prices
- Classic economics à price creates the equilibrium between supply and demand
- Perverse price à price behaves in the opposite way than you would expect; price goes up,
demand goes up; price goes down, demand goes down
- Price becomes a signal of quality
- Buying visual art à observable by other people
- Prices of single goods in the framework of an artist’s total career output
- Prices as signals
o Of economic value?
o Of artistic value?
o Of other things?
- In a drug store, if a toothpaste isn’t selling well, you will put it on sale à demand goes down,
price goes down
- Art galleries can't do this à instead, art gallerists act as salespeople; they do not give an
explicit discount, it’s about the relation between the gallerist and the buyer; the price going
down is not a signal of the quality of the art, but of your relationship
Two problems
- The gallerist’s and art collector’s pride in how cheap they bought and how expensive they sold
(problem for the hostile worlds perspective)
- The taboo on price decreases (problem for the nothing but perspective)
The taboo on price decreases
- Galleries, artists and customers – relational transactions
- Changing prices when artists change galleries
- Special prices/discounts for special customers
End of galleries? Opportunities for cultural entrepreneurs?
- Oligarchs and other super-rich investors are ‘bulk buying’ new art and destroying the middle
market for artists, a panel of experts claimed yesterday. And they said a new ‘Premier League’
of art galleries and buyers fuelled by new wealth money was emerging, leaving smaller
galleries and artists fighting for crumbs.
- Multi-billionaires such as Mexican magnate Carlos Slim and Chelsea FC owner Roman
Abramovich have so much money that they need to exercise little judgement when buying art.
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