The Political Economy of Art

Political economy is defined in this volume as collective state or corporate support for art and architecture in the public sphere intended to be accessible to the widest possible public and raising questions about the relationship of the state to cultural production and consumption. This collection explores the political economy of art from the perspective of the artist or from analyses of art’s production and consumption, emphasizing the art side of the relationship between art and the state.

It explores art as public good, but is not a study of public art’s aesthetic issues, or conflicts between a work’s aesthetics and public reception. Authors emphasize the effect of art on economics and national identity in defining the public sphere. Essays in this book examine points of struggle between economics and cultural processes, assuming that art’s production includes interpretation and consumption that constitute part of the very nature of art works.

The essays focus on three areas of conflict: political economy put into practice for state cultural production is exemplified by James Barry’s murals and by American art deployed for promoting national identity in the 1930s New Deal WPA during the Depression and at NASA in the 1960s when the U.S. tried to catch up with the Soviets as American economic, political, and intellectual hegemony seemed to falter; political economy of art in sculptural and architectural monuments commissioned by state and corporate entities to shape public identities through public spaces; and conflicts and critiques of state investments in culture by artists and the public.