UDC

130.2+17.021.3

DOI

10.37482/2227-6564-V042

Authors

Aynur M. Safina
Kazan State University of Architecture and Engineering;
ul. Zelenaya 1, Kazan, 420043, Respublika Tatarstan, Russian Federation;
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5005-2413 e-mail: ainur.safina@mail.ru

Abstract

Commercialization of art is a natural process accompanying artistic creativity since its institutionalization as a professional activity and establishment in the system of social division of labour. However, until recently, the commercial value of a work of art had been secondary, derivative of its aesthetic value, while today it can produce a significant influence on the viewer’s attitude to a work of art, as well as on the evaluation and public recognition of the author’s oeuvre, and even on the definition of art per se. The purpose of this article is to reveal the main contradictions and inversions of contemporary art caused by its commercialization, as well as to demonstrate the methods that both art and society develop to overcome and/or compensate for these contradictions. Thus, a number of internal, conceptual transformations of art in the 20th century can be interpreted as a response (defence/resistance/adjustment) to the process of its intense commercialization: rejection of the crafts component of artistic creation (e.g. ready-made by M. Duchamp) аnd dematerialization of art (introduction and development of artistic forms and genres with minimal dependence of a work of art on its material-physical substrate). The author of this paper believes that to preserve the essential characteristics of art under total commercialization, it would be productive not to attempt to move art beyond the limits of the commodity–money relations, but to introduce such tools and practices that would make the market value of an artwork adequate to its aesthetic value (artistic-aesthetic value in Jean Baudrillard’s terminology), not sign exchange value (capability of a work of art to be an object of social distinction, prestige). As such tools, the author considers the idea of cyber-communism by R. Barbrook and the Museum of Art Fraud (rejection of exaggerated praising of the original in contrast to its replica).

Keywords

commercialization of art, art market, Banksy, cyber-communism, aesthetic value, sign exchange value

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