Art as an economic activity has grown enormously in the last few decades but it has done so in a peculiar way that tells us a lot about art. The key factor of macroeconomic growth, according to mainstream economists, is technological development. That is to say, an economy can produce more – and therefore increase its GDP – when it develops technologies that increase productivity and efficiency, or reduce labour costs, etc. The expansion of the art market and increases in numbers of galleries, artists and so on has not followed this pattern. And it would be inappropriate to expect it to follow this pattern, for two key reasons.
First, artists tend not to be employed by capitalists or their managers, and therefore productivity is not measured in the normal way. Artists, unlike workers in other industries, normally own their own means of production, and the products that they produce. No owner or manager is in any position to increase their profit by forcing artists to work more efficiently or cheaply, nor would they gain by developing new technologies for increasing the productivity of the artist-as-labourer.
Second, capitalists tend to take a financial interest in art – especially the primary market – through consumption rather than investment. In this sense it is a luxury good. The difference is that it is not produced according to the same economies as luxury goods (even the production of sports cars is organized, as far as possible, in terms of cost effectiveness, and technology is used, as much as possible, to increase productivity and reduce labour costs).
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