How should art valuation be done these days? When art increasingly enters the domain public commodity and beecomes part of a capital mechanism, would it still be appropriate to assign a symbolic value to it when an economic value prompted its production? Do artists/art workers these days still occupy an exclusive group in society as a result of cultural trends or are they triggers of cultural innovation? Or should they accept their position as ‘professionals’ in a working class grouping, with all the labor division and standard structures that come with any economic sector?
The questions above are some of the main issues addressed in IVAA’s internal research, the ‘Economy Class’ Research Project carried out between June 2008 and February 2009. The research examined the relations between the art market and social change, as well as the resulting effects in contemporary art production.
IVAA LETTER 32 features essays by two researchers in the ‘Economy Class’ project, Pitra Hutomo and Ikun SK. Pitra wrote about the general thought process that developed as the research progressed, while Ikun offered his reflection on the entanglement between ‘economic value’ and ‘symbolic’ value’ of art today.
