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Through a critical reading of a twentieth-century Bengali artist’s autobiography, this paper aims to attempt to demonstrate how commercial art and the consumption ethos symbolized by that art represented an archetypal bhadralok insignia. A close examination of this insignia reveals how the dynamics of modern liberal values mediating through the colonial capitalist structure in relation to the regional particularities of Bengal opened up a new space of cosmopolitanism, where there is an attempt to reframe cultural practices in the light of a broader global history of interrogation, reason, change and emancipation.

This paper is a historical analysis of primary sources.

It was found that the bhadralok-led Bengal School of Art influenced commercial art of early postcolonial Bengal.

The study is limited to the region of Bengal.

This paper makes contributions to one of the less-researched, but very important areas, of business history in India.

The purpose of this paper is to extend the literature on how actors manage competing logics in an organizational field. The authors do so by introducing the concept of organizational irony to the literature on how to manage competing logics, and analyze a collaborative cultural project encompassing actors subjected to competing institutional logics.

The case study is built on qualitative data from in-depth interviews, newspaper articles and observations.

The authors describe and analyze a cultural project encompassing actors subjected to competing institutional logics and show how they responded to institutional pressures in their environment with the use of organizational irony. Thereby, the actors could collaborate with actors subjected to a competing institutional logic and still maintain adherence to their respective institutional logic.

Most studies of how to manage competing logics asserts that one logic will prevail over a competing one, either through “battles” or gradual dominance (Reay and Hinings, 2009). This study supports and adds to Reay and Hinings’ (2009) finding that actors also can collaborate and maintain adherence to their respective logic under such circumstances. In particular, it supports two identified mechanisms of how this can be achieved, namely, to separate decisions and to jointly innovate in experimental sites. It also adds to these mechanisms by showing that this can be done through the use of organizational irony. The authors only study one cultural project in one organizational field. It remains unclear if these findings are common in other cultural projects or in other organizational field, and the authors therefore encourage other researchers to extend or challenge the findings of this study.

The authors believe that the analysis and findings can be useful for politicians to take into account and address either to minimize the risk of organizational irony or on the contrary encourage it as a source of reflexive critique of society and cultural politics. The authors also believe that the response of organizational irony to institutional pressures broadens the acting space of cultural actors, provide media and critics with an analytical tool to analyze and deconstruct practices that otherwise would risk to be silenced or neglected. Finally, the authors believe that an analysis of organizational irony has the potential to make people attend to contradictions and multiple meanings in the artworks under study in a novel way.

The paper provides an intriguing and complex empirical case to demonstrate how actors manage competing logics in an organizational field through the production of organizational irony. The authors believe that its theoretical contributions and practical implications can inspire future research on how paradoxes can be managed through the use of organizational irony in other projects and organizational fields.

The purpose of this paper is to report on the current state of arts entrepreneurship education at higher educational institutions (HEIs) in the UK and Germany. It is based on findings from questionnaire surveys among 210 lecturers in fine art at 89 HEIs in the UK and Germany.

This paper explores issues related to fine art curriculum in higher education in the UK and Germany via survey questionnaires among 210 fine art lecturers with focus on arts entrepreneurship.

The study shows evidence that an arts entrepreneurship education, although considered by lecturers to be important and necessary for the professional and entrepreneurial preparation of fine art graduates, is definitely not implemented at HEIs, in neither the UK nor Germany.

The findings stimulate the discussion in the field of arts entrepreneurship and the redesigning of fine art curriculum to prepare fine art graduates for their entrepreneurial and professional careers.

There is still a marked paucity of research that focusses on arts entrepreneurship education. This study contributes to the knowledge by presenting specific findings related to fine art curriculum.

This chapter explores the role of entrepreneurship within the careers of fine artists. This is positioned within the context of the discourse of cultural value. How artists manage their artistic and, sometimes conflicting, entrepreneurial identities is explored. The fields of entrepreneurship, and more recently the creative industries, have received much attention from both policy makers and researchers. Fine artists are perhaps one of the least employable, and arguably most entrepreneurial (by necessity), as Higgs et al. suggest ‘some occupations naturally have substantially higher numbers of self-employed people such as “Artists” with 91% self-employment’ (Higgs, Cunningham, & Bakhshi, 2008, p. 94).

The study captures the career histories of a cohort of fine art graduates, all of whom had graduated at the same time (1994), from the same institution. Taking a narrative approach, detailed career stories were obtained. The relationship to and tensions surrounding entrepreneurship and artistic practice were explored in detail. While artistic identity emerges as a strong force for this group, artistic identity and entrepreneurial identity are sometimes at odds with each other. The practicalities of making a living as an artist, arguably, call for entrepreneurial activity. However, the findings suggest that this presents a conflict for some artists, both aesthetically and emotionally. This chapter explores what this means in the context of cultural value, and cultural value as a ‘lens’ for understanding an artist's career.

The purpose of this paper is to identify and analyze the influence that globalization has had on the development of the contemporary Japanese art production. The study also aims to expand the global narrative of Japanese art by introducing concepts behind festivals for revitalization that have been occurring in Japan in recent years.

Guided by Culture Theorist Nira Yuval-Davies’ approach to the politics of belonging, the paper is situated within cultural studies and considers the development of contemporary art in Japan in relation to the power structures present within the global art market. This analysis draws heavily from the research of art historians Reiko Tomii, Adrian Favell, and Gennifer Weisenfeld, and is complemented by investigative research into the life of Art Director Kitagawa Fram, as well as observational analyses formed by on-site study of the Setouchi Triennale in 2015 and 2016.

The paper provides historical insight to the ways that the politics of belonging to the western world has created a limited benchmark for critical discussion about contemporary Japanese art. It suggests that festivals for revitalization in Japan not only are a good source of diversification, but also evidences criticism therein.

Due to the brevity of this text, readers are encouraged to further investigate the source material for more in-depth understanding of the topics.

The paper implies that art historiography should take a multilateral approach to avoid a western hegemony in the field.

This paper fulfills a need to reflect on the limited global reception to Japanese art, while also identifying one movement that art historians and theorists may take into account in the future when considering a Japanese art discourse.

Sociologists studying the rise of postmodernism have generally concentrated on either macro-level structures of economy or micro-level subjectivities of individuals. Few have specified how meso-level actions within concrete institutions have produced both these macro- and micro-changes. Bourdieu's concept of field provides a meso-level concept that allows sociologists to explain the transition to a postmodern society by changes in the composition and competition of producers and consumers struggling for advantage in the economy and culture. The chapter focuses on architecture, revealing that the rise of a postmodern aesthetic was the result of internal changes of this field and their complex interrelation with the external changes of an economy in transition from Fordism to post-Fordism.

In today’s hypercompetitive, digital-first, knowledge-based economy, organizational creativity has never been more important as a potential source of competitive advantage. The foundation stone for every innovation is an idea and all ideas are born of creativity. The innovation process thus starts with creativity and the new ideas it yields are ideally based on insights that will lead ultimately to novel outcomes (such as new products, services, experiences or business models) and thereby to a sustainable competitive advantage. In established businesses, until relatively recently, creativity was called on only for specific, often high-profile occasions, for ‘hackathons’ or for major ‘innovation jams’, but today it is an essential, everyday necessity of routine work. However, attaining the right level of creativity from within is a challenge for many organizations and so they need to establish an appropriate and effective way to import it into their teams, projects and, ultimately, culture. The arts are a pure, unadulterated form of creativity. Mindsets, processes and practices from the arts can give organizational creativity a significant boost and can potentially offset the creative deficit in an organization. Here, the illustrative cases and practices that demonstrate how the arts can have a positive impact on business are examined.

We contribute to the literature on institutional and organizational change by integrating two related areas of study: the theory and methods of analysis informed by the research on institutional logics and historical-event sequencing. Institutional logics provide the theory to understand how the content of culture influences organizational change; historical-event sequencing reveals the underlying patterns of cultural transformation. We apply this dual perspective to the cases of institutional stability and change in organizational governance in three industries: accounting, architecture, and higher-education publishing. Research on governance has focused on changes in organizational design between markets, hierarchies, and networks. Missing from this research is an understanding of how institutions at the wider societal level motivate organizations to adopt one of these governance forms over another. We examine how the governance of firms in these industries has been influenced by the institutional logics of the professions, the market, the state, and the corporation by focusing on three mechanisms – institutional entrepreneurs, structural overlap, and historical-event sequencing. Overall, our findings reveal how accounting was influenced by state regulation producing a punctuated equilibrium model, architecture by professional duality producing a cyclical model, and publishing by market rationalization producing an evolutionary model of institutional change in organizational governance.

This paper aims to present historical examples of collaborations between brand strategists and artists; provide an extensive, structured overview of existing published research on such collaborations and their effects; present seven papers comprising this special issue; and discuss ideas for further research into brand–art collaboration.

This is an editorial based mainly on an extensive and broad literature review.

First, this editorial underpins the relevance of brand–art collaboration in the past and present by reference to real examples. Second, it structures the diverse literature into four key aspects of the topic: inspiration, insights, identity and image. Third, it provides a glimpse of the seven papers selected for this special issue. Fourth and finally, it identifies a total of 16 avenues for further research, on four levels (artist, brand owner, consumer and cooperation process).

This editorial and the entire special issue together represent the first anthology on the topic of the interface between brand management and arts. The collection and classification of the existing literature, the formulation of ideas for future research and the content of the seven papers are collectively excellent starting springboards for new and fresh brand research projects.

Social studies is the combined study of several disciplines including cultural anthropology where expressive culture is defined and described. Expressive culture is the processes, emotions, and ideas bound within the social production of aesthetic forms and performances in everyday life. It is a way to embody culture and to express culture through sensory experiences such as dance, music, literature, visual media, and theater. By integrating the arts into social studies, students are introduced to cultural ideals, traditions, and norms inherent in their own lives. This article describes the use of cultural anthropology as a vehicle to teach social studies concepts with visual and performing arts. Two examples of coequal social studies and arts units are examined in second and sixth grades.