PERFORMING CALCULATION IN THE ART MARKET

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to suggest a model of calculation in art markets based upon the work of Pierre Bourdieu and of actor-network theory. It will be argued that Bourdieu's concepts of capitals, economic, symbolic and cultural are useful for the specificity they lend to value making processes in the art market. However, actor-network theory's proposal of a distributed form of agency between humans and non-humans (e.g. calcualtion tools) is favoured here, posing a fundamental challenge to Bourdieu's notion of agency as resting solely at the hands of human agents. In order to understand the performance of calculation, this article explores the role of catalogues as an example of a market device in the Scottish auction market. It will be argued that the performativity of the catalogue cannot be fully understood without taking into account not only how it represents and enacts the value/s of aeshtetic objects, e.g. paintings, but also how this performance is mediated by its role as an aesthetic object.

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