Art and value: art's economic exceptionalism in classical, neoclassical and marxist economics, paperback/dave beech

Shortlisted for the 2015 Deutscher Memorial Prize.

Art and Value is the first comprehensive analysis of arts political economy to be found in classical, neoclassical and Marxist economics.

It provides a critical-historical survey of the theories of arts economic exceptionalism, of art as a merit good, and of the theories of arts commodification, the culture industry and real subsumption.

Key debates on the economics of art, from the high prices artworks fetch at auction, to the controversies over public subsidy of the arts, the cost disease of artistic production, and neoliberal and post-Marxist theories of arts incorporation into capitalism, are examined in detail.

Through this exacting critique of mainstream and Marxist theories of arts economics, the book arrives at a new and highly origianl Marxist theory of arts economic exceptionalism.

About author(s): Dave Beech is an artist in the collective Freee and teaches Art at Valand Academy, Gothenburg University.

His work has been exhibited at the Liverpool Biennial (2010) and the Istanbul Biennial (2013).

He has co-authored The Philistine Controversy (Verso, 2002), edited Beauty (MIT/Whitechapel, 2009), contributed essays to Locating the Producers (Valiz, 2011), and Curating and the Educational Turn (Open Editions, 2010).