ART AS INVESTMENT. INSTITUTION OF ART IN SERVICE OF THE ART MARKET

The author of the article argues that art market is particular, because it originates from the world of art. The purpose of the article is to show how crucial is the institution of art for the functioning of the art market and how the qualitative criteria have weakened. Defining something as art less and less relies on conceptual justification and historical references. The aesthetic pleasure and appreciation of art have been replaced by the practice of collecting art with market interest. Art has become an investment opportunity for refining the capital. For this reason, marketing is very relevant in this game. The author analyses marketing approaches used to create the artists as trademarks and works of art as goods of the highest exchange value. The author examines the structure and the functioning of the contemporary world of the art market. She comprehends art in the context of capitalism, acknowledges a strong tie between the art system and the free market, and ascertains the foundations for the actual functioning of the art market in the modernity with the establishment of the bourgeois society and its social institutions. She claims that the moment of crisis in aesthetics that generated discussions on the end of art has actually enabled a rather liberal trading with art, with no request for the professional justification of art. Instead, advertising tactics have become increasingly relevant for the trading success. The author examines the case of Pop art as the first marketing success in this regard.