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In a process termed “organizational centrifugalism,” this chapter describes how avant-garde artists sought new, alternative organizational spaces for innovations in the visual arts from the late nineteenth century through the early twentieth century and how new alternative marketspaces co-evolved with these new organizational spaces. Organizational centrifugalism begins with the denouement of the state-run Salon and Academy in the mid-nineteenth century; the rise of the dealer-critic system and other, non-salon alternative exhibition spaces of French Impressionism in the latter half of the nineteenth century; and through many new organizational spaces associated with Modernism such as formal artists groups, museums, great exhibitions, schools of art, and Modernist art itself. The ultimate effect of organizational centrifugalism is drawing avant-garde art closer to the public and eventually the masses. Excessive organizational centrifugalism, however, can be dangerous to the avant-garde art.

This paper aims to analyze the evolution of the marketing of paintings and related visual products from its nascent stages in England around 1700 to the development of the modern art market by 1900, with a brief discussion connecting to the present.

Sources consist of a mixture of primary and secondary sources as well as a series of econometric and statistical analyses of specifically constructed and unique data sets that list nearly more than 50,000 different sales of paintings during this period. One set records sales of paintings at various English auction houses during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; the second set consists of all purchases and sales of paintings recorded in the stock books of the late nineteenth-century London art dealer, Arthur Tooth, during the years of 1870/1871. The authors interpret the data under a commoditization model first introduced by Igor Kopytoff in 1986 that posits that markets and their participants evolve toward maximizing the efficiency of their exchange process within the prevailing exchange technology.

We found that artists were largely responsible for a series of innovations in the art market that replaced the prevailing direct relationship between artists and patron with a modern market for which painters produced works on speculation to be sold by enterprising middlemen to an anonymous public. In this process, artists displayed a remarkable creativity and a seemingly instinctive understanding of the principles of competitive marketing that should dispel the erroneous but persistent notion that artistic genius and business savvy are incompatible.

A similar marketing analysis could be done of the development of the art markets of other leading countries, such as France, Italy and Holland, as well as the current developments of the art market.

The same process of the development of the art market in England is now occurring in Latin America and China. Also, the commoditization process continues in the present, now using the Internet and worldwide art dealers.

This is the first article to trace the historical development of the marketing of art in all of its components: artists, dealers, artist organizations, museums, curators, art critics, the media and art historians.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the professional biography of Ethel A. Stephens, examining her career as an artist and a teacher in Sydney between 1890 and 1920. Accounts of (both male and female) artists in this period often dismiss their teaching as just a means to pay the bills. This paper focuses attention on Stephens’ teaching and considers how this, combined with her artistic practice, influenced her students.

Using a fragmentary record of a successful female artist and teacher, this paper considers the role of art education and a career in the arts for respectable middle-class women.

Stephens’ actions and experiences show the ways she negotiated between the public and private sphere. Close examination of her “at home” exhibitions demonstrates one way in which these worlds came together as sites, enabling her to identify as an artist, a teacher and as a respectable middle-class woman.

This paper offers insight into the ways women negotiated the Sydney art scene and found opportunities for art education outside of the established modes.

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.

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In recent years, scholars have begun suggesting that marketing can learn a lot from art and art history. This paper aims to build on that work by developing the proposition that successful artists are powerful brands.

Using archival data and biographies, this paper explores the branding acumen of Pablo Picasso.

Picasso maneuvered with consummate skill to assure his position in the art world. By mid-career, he had established his brand so successfully that he had the upper hand over the dealers who represented him, and his work was so sought-after that he could count on selling whatever proportion of it he chose to allow to leave his studio. In order to achieve this level of success, Picasso had to read the culture in which he operated and manage the efforts of a complex system of different intermediaries and stakeholders that was not unlike an organization. Based on an analysis of Picasso's career, the authors assert that in their management of these powerful brands, artists generate a complex, multifaceted public identity that is distinct from a product brand but shares important characteristics with corporate brands, luxury brands and cultural/iconic brands.

This research extends prior work by demonstrating that having an implicit understanding of the precepts of branding is not limited to contemporary artists and by connecting the artist to emerging conceptualizations of brands, particularly the nascent literatures on cultural, complex and corporate brands.

The development of public art in French New Towns in the 1970s and 1980s was one of the most spectacular forms of state intervention in urban policy. Along with the new architecture programmes, the hundreds of works of art that adorn the public realm of the French New Towns help to differentiate them from the grands ensembles. This public art, which was highly publicised at the time, represents a heritage intrinsically linked to the urban history of New Towns but also to the history of French cultural policies at the end of the twentieth century. Artistic and town planning innovations underlie many public art projects. Artists and town planners participated, on a city scale, in the cultural developments that sought to respond to the expectations of the May 1968 crisis. In New Towns, the role of art was not simply to provide a backdrop to beautify the city but also to contribute to the success of new urban neighbourhoods. This involved placing visual landmarks in the urban space, confronting the residents with living art (painted walls, sculpted staircases, light paths, etc.).

The appropriation of these works of art by the public and councils was far from unanimous. It was only at the beginning of the twenty-first century that a heritage reflection emerged and led to a list of works of art being drawn up, with a view to protecting them. With the disappearance of state supervision over certain New Towns (1998–2002), damaged works has become a stigma in the public realm. A policy of restoration is being therefore introduced in certain New Towns, with public art participating in the identity of councils that do not hesitate to present themselves as ‘contemporary towns’ and take on the restoration or achievement of certain works that they now consider to be their heritage.