Vantržišna motivacija tržišta umetničkih dela

Art markets are not homogeneous, the difference being especially between the art products that can be technically reproduced and the unique products. As for the former, regulations of the copyright type introduce certain specificities (the author retains some rights over the object in circulation— for example, she or he can withdraw it). In case of unique goods, the demand is determined by the buyers’ tastes and does not result from some generally valid presupposition: thus, these goods have a price, but they have no value. Since the aesthetic nature of the reproducible works of art is subject to the same laws as the unique artworks, the economy of unique artworks can serve as a paradigm for the economy of artworks in general. According to a theory developed by Rade Pantić, the price of unique artworks is a monopoly rent. As any other rent, it is determined by non-economic mechanisms. These mechanisms should allow for the freedom of individual tastes and at the same time provide a unique field within which these idiosyncratic attitudes can interact. The mechanisms determining the rent (price) of artworks are therefore ideological apparatuses that present themselves and their elements (individual taste judgments) as non-ideological, and moreover formulate the judgments as individual receptions open to “interpretation,” i.e. as cognitive-affective material to be processed in specific symbolic formations (in curatorial practices, art criticism, philosophical interventions, and alike). In contemporary art, the structure of ideological apparatuses reproduces domination-through-fragmentation, typical of contemporary capitalism.