Browsing by Author "Hyrkäs, Antti"

Art and economy seem to go had in hand in the art market. Underneath the surface the relationship between the two spheres is more complicated, because a highly valued piece of art can be harder to sell than a piece less valued by the art circles. In the field of art, success in the market is often seen to befall artists who are trying to make money, not art. This is mainly because art and money have different, and often contradicting, conceptions of value. The purpose of this study is to find out how galleries solve the puzzle of combining art and economy in their communication. This study also bears a special purpose connected to the sociology of Niklas Luhmann. This purpose is to find out how a gallery acts as a structural link between two functionally differentiated subsystems of society, namely art and economy. Private art galleries that deal artworks to the general public are at the heart of this study. While doing this a gallery is not only a private firm trying to make profit, but also a gatekeeper for the art world. It makes decisions concerning what artists are to be seen by the larger public. Over the past few years the role of the gallery has changed in some respects. In Helsinki, for example, there are ten galleries that bear the name 'alternative gallery'. Some of these are amongst the most respected galleries in Helsinki. The second purpose of the study is to find out, how these so called alternative galleries differ from the more traditional ones in their communication about art. Research material for the study includes interviews of eleven art dealers working in private galleries – five alternative galleries, three prestigious galleries and three traditional galleries. Two people that have tested the limits of the traditional model for a gallery were also interviewed. These interviews are analysed using analytical strategies that have been derived from the sociology of Niklas Luhmann. This kind of method does not contradict the theory and its premises. The study thus leaves more room for theoretical implications. The results indicate that an art gallery finds the connection between art and economy problematic for two, mostly overlapping, reasons. Firstly, good art will not always sell as well as bad art. Secondly, the market draws art towards overtly commercial forms that are seen to threaten the substance of art. The problems that money and economic value raise are more evident in galleries that form around a private firm. The galleries in these spoke about their relationship with artists in the frame of family. In the alternative galleries, where economic pressure was minimized, the relationship between an artist and a gallery was spoken of in the frame of friendship. It was not as binding as in the traditional galleries and the responsibility of making an artist succeed in the market was given to the artist himself. The study also indicates that the special responsibility of the gallery is to control the economic communication that infiltrate in the system of art. The galleries managed to do this by redirecting communication back to art in various ways. The white, box-like interior of the gallery and the way of keeping price tags away from the paintings are ways of directin attention to the art and away from money. Interviewed, the gallery owners often made clear that they worked in the field of art, making art happen, so to speak. A gallery seems to be oriented towards controlling the influence of economy. It does this by silencing the unwanted effects and boosting the positive effects of the market. If we observe society as a system consisting only of communication, art galleries serve a special function. They disguise the positive irritations coming from economy as art system's own processes and hide the unwanted ones. The function of a gallery is not purely to stop money interfering art nor to bring money to art, but to direct attention to the positive effects of economic irritation to hide the underlying paradox of commodifying the art work.