Publisher Description

This book provides a ground breaking re-examination of the changing relationship between art, craft, and industry focusing on the transition from workshop to studio, apprentice to pupil, guild to gallery and artisan to artist. Responding to the question whether the artist is a relic of the feudal mode of production or is a commodity producer corresponding to the capitalist mode of cultural production, Beech reveals, instead, that the history of the formation of art as distinct from handicraft, commerce, and industry can be traced back to the dissolution of the dual system of guild and court. This essential history needs to be revisited in order to rethink the categories of aesthetic labour, attractive labour, alienated labour, nonalienated labour and unwaged labour that shape the modern and contemporary politics of work in art.

Author Biography

Dave Beech, Ph.D., is Reader in Art and Marxism at CCW, University of the Arts, London. He is the author of Art and Value (Haymarket, 2016) and Art and Postcapitalism (Pluto, 2019).

Table of Contents

AcknowledgementsIntroduction1 Art, Labour and Abstraction2 Arts, Fine Arts and Art in General3 Guild, Court and Academy4 Salon, Museum and Exhibition5 Mechanic, Genius and Artist6 Aesthetic Labour7 Attractive Labour8 Alienated Labour9 Nonalienated Labour10 The Critique of LabourConclusionBibliography
Index

Long Description

This book provides a ground breaking re-examination of the changing relationship between art, craft, and industry focusing on the transition from workshop to studio, apprentice to pupil, guild to gallery and artisan to artist. Responding to the question whether the artist is a relic of the feudal mode of production or is a commodity producer corresponding to the capitalist mode of cultural production, Beech reveals, instead, that the history of the formation of art as distinct from handicraft, commerce, and industry can be traced back to the dissolution of the dual system of guild and court. This essential history needs to be revisited in order to rethink the categories of aesthetic labour, attractive labour, alienated labour, nonalienated labour and unwaged labour that shape the modern and contemporary politics of work in art.

Description for Sales People

A thorough, engaging, and haltingly unique attempt to understand the relationship between Art and the labor that goes into making it from a Marxist perspective

Details