a clarification on art and value

7/25/2019 A Clarification on Art and Value

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A Clarification on Art and Value

Daniel Spaulding

The relation between art and value is the Bermuda Triangle of contemporary art theory.

My remars introduce a few basic propositions about this relation in order to clear the

ground for debate.

There is an impulse among many critics! art historians! and the lie to assimilate artwors

to the status of commodities. "n other words! the basic critical maneuver of a certain

school of art interpretation is to reveal the identity of artwors and commodities! and then

to trade on the evident scandal of this #fact$ to stimulate outrage! nowing

disillusionment! et cetera. The reverse of this is the claim that artwors are! at least to an

e%tent! immune to commodification and hence that they resist capitalism. Both of these

positions essentially misconstrue the status of artwors in a capitalist mode of production.

"t is first necessary to insist that the production of artwors is not sub&ect to the law of

value. Artistic labor is not mediated in the same way as labor in most other sectors of

capitalist production. 'By #artistic labor$ " mean! in a generic sense! any labor that goes

into the maing of things socially recogni(ed as #art$) this would certainly include art*s

#immaterial$ manifestations.+ "n particular! artistic labor is not sub&ect to the rationalityof socially necessary labor time. Most commodities are e%changed in such a way that a

presumed e,uivalence e%ists between them on the basis of the time needed! on average!

to produce them. This e,uivalence is validated in the maret and in turn enforces

continual development of the means of production. "f a given capitalist succeeds in

producing a given commodity more efficiently than before 'whether due to

technical-organi(ational advances or intensified e%ploitation of worers+! this will lower

the socially necessary labor time re,uired to produce that commodity. ther producers

must then either adopt the new! more efficient means of production or else find

themselves driven from the maret because they are unable to lower their prices

sufficiently to compete. The vast ma&ority of commodities in the world today are

produced and e%changed under these conditions/ they are beholden to the value relation!

which is the relation that allows commodities to e%change on the basis of the e,uivalent



socially necessary labor time embodied in them 'with the caveat that this is not a matter

of a #substance$ 0 value 0 that worers impart to the commodity in the labor process! but

is rather a ind of regularity in the flu% of e%change that is validated post facto! and is

indeed made possible! by the use of money as a general e,uivalent in the maretplace+.

The value relation also implies that labor! under these specifically capitalist conditions!

possesses a dual character/ it is at once the concrete labor that goes into the maing of

particular things! and also the abstract labor that e%changes as e,uivalent in the maret. "n

its abstract form! labor is social/ it is e,uivalent! and thus e%changeable! with any other

labor when it taes the form of the commodity. "t should be clear that this notion of

#social labour$ has nothing whatsoever to do with that labor*s concrete character.

1etworing at art openings! let us say! is not more #social$ than maing a widget) in fact

it is ,uite specifically not #social labor$ in this sense! because! to this day! no capitalist

has yet e%tracted a single hour of surplus abstract standing2around2in2a2gallery time. Such

#labor$ may be necessary for the art world to reproduce itself! but it is not directly

productive of surplus value.

Value is a specific social relation that causes the products of labor to appear and to

e%change as e,uivalents) it is not an all2penetrating miasma. Value en&oins its own

rationality upon both the production and e%change of commodities! and this rationality in

turn is what " have called the #law of value!$ the law that drives forward the technical and

organi(ational development of capitalist production as it manifests in phenomena such as

automation! labor discipline! and so forth.

This specific rationality 0 this specific social relation 0 is not operative in the production

and circulation of artwors! though it is! assuredly! the bacground against which their

e%ceptionality stands out. An e%ample may clarify why this is so. 3et us assume that the

cost of the materials for a given painting is negligible and hence that we are only

concerned with the value 'supposedly+ added by the artist*s labor. This painting taes!

say! twenty hours to produce. "f one then invents a way to produce the same ind of

painting in ten hours instead! this does not necessarily mean that the value of the painting

drops by half! as would be the case with most commodities. "f someone were to find a



that such #breas$ inevitably appear! at a general social level! in the normal course of

capitalist development/ this is what is nown as a crisis! an inability to maintain the lin

between production and circulation! or in other words! between the e%ploitation of labor

labor and the reali(ation of profits. Because of this! one could perhaps describe art as

#crisis at a standstill.$+

The sphere of art production can therefore be defined as dependent on the maret but not

subsumed to capitalist production 'though even here there are wrinles! because

patronage rather than maret relations remain far more common in the art world than in

other productive sectors+. There is! in short! no real subsumption of art to capital.

"n capitalist society! the boundary of the category of #art$ itself is! to a large e%tent!

drawn along this line/ things that escape the law of value are! or potentially can be

designated as! #art!$ whereas things that obey capitalist rationali(ation are more

unambiguously commodities! even if a great deal of aesthetic consideration goes into

them. This is why a painting by a named and nown artist is not the same as a #painting$

in a bin at "89A/ the former is not subsumed to capitalist production! whereas the latter is

subsumed not only formally but in a real sense! that is! its production process has been

reorgani(ed by capital in order to better suit its own imperatives! rather than simply being

appropriated from a different mode of production 'an artisanal mode! for e%ample+. The

division between art and non2art does not derive from medium or techni,ue 0

photography! for e%ample! shows up on either side of the ledger 0 although it is certainly

true that art sometimes preserves techni,ues! such as oil painting! that have otherwise

been left #stranded$ by the development of society*s productive forces.

" do not intend to grant any special privilege to artwors vis2:2vis other cultural products!

such as films! that are produced in a way that is really subsumed to capital) in fact the

entire ,uestion of whether commercial arts 'or! on the other side! crafts+ count as #art$ is

otiose in the present conte%t! since " am only describing a logic that has long since been

validated by the very e%istence of the #art world$ as a separated sphere. There is no

&udgment of aesthetic superiority at stae here. There is! however! an important

conceptual distinction to be made. By the same measure! " want to emphasi(e that there is



nothing inherently subversive about art*s status under capitalism. Art is #autonomous$ in

the sense that it has its own forms of self2mediation/ in the capitalist era these have

included the discourse of art2in2general! or art as a category independent from any of its

particular material manifestations 'Duchamp is perhaps the first to accede to this

#generic$ level+) the discourse of #medium$ 'art*s self2mediation on the grounds of its

physical substrate+) the discourse of utopianism! or art as the prefiguration of a more &ust

social order) or the discourse of e%pression! or the mediation of form by #deep$ psychic

necessity. The self2mediating autonomy of art proceeds! however! under the sign of more

general patterns of social reproduction! which are determined by the form of value.

Almost all of us! in other words 0 artists included 0 must abide by the rules of capitalist

e%change in order to survive! that is! in order to sell our own labor power and to buy the

products that eep us alive. The special sphere of artistic production is as much within

capitalism as any other and does not in itself have any particular political efficacy) it is!

simply! one of the possibilities that capitalism provides for 'indeed the emergence of #art$

as such is profoundly lined to the separation of spheres initiated by the advent of

capitalism) art is not recogni(able as a separate0 autonomous! self2consistent 0 practice

until it is set apart from a different logic! namely that of the capital relation+. There is

nothing politically interesting about art per se) what is interesting is what art does and

what can be done with it.

There is! nonetheless! a certain instability built into the modern institution of art due to its

non2coincidence with the dominant mode of production. Art history has very much to do

with the description of this instability. Because art is neither directly subsumed to capital!

nor entirely outside of capitalist relations! a degree of mimetic elasticity has always been

the hallmar of the aesthetic in the so2called #modern$ period. These mimetic relations

between art and other mechanisms of social reproduction are the substance of art history)

they are constantly changing and immensely comple%! and hence the e%tremely abstract

presentation " have delivered in this te%t does not get us very far in the description of art

as something more than a category! a bo% to be checed in the inventory of capitalist

social forms. 5eal! historical artwors are! by contrast! rather intransigent things. They

bear traces not only of their determination by capital 0 which is itself entirely historical!



although it assumes a #logical$ character that appears to be transhistorical 0 but also of

any number of more contingent factors.

By #art$ " therefore understand the sedimentation! in aesthetic form! of historically

specific relations! one of which is art*s self2relation 'autonomy+. The autonomy2relation is

never the only relation in play! but it is the relation that gives #art$ its consistency as an

institution of capitalist society) autonomy is a sort of collateral that allows art its

e%ceptional relational fluidity. Art history is then the critical reconstruction of the

historical dialectic between the autonomy2relation and those other social forms and

relations that do not merely impinge on art! but which rather 0 whether negatively or

positively 0 determine its form. All of this maes up the historically specific #ontology$

of given artistic practices. " must of course emphasi(e that the mediation between

aesthetic form and social form is very rarely direct) the one does not #reflect$ the other.

Aesthetic mediation is instead characteri(ed by a degree of metaphorical and mimetic

fle%ibility 0 not ,uite free play 0 that is e%cluded from the more strictly rationali(ed

spheres of capitalist society 'the labor process! the maret! etc.+. This by no means

indicates that art is therefore necessarily a realm either of atavism or resistance. "t is &ust

as much a product of modern social relations as anything else. But it does obey different

necessities! as " hope to have demonstrated in my remars on value above.

a clarification on art and value

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