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Art and the Challenge of Markets Volumes 1 & 2 examine the politics of art and culture in light of the profound changes that have taken place in the world order since the 1980s and 1990s. The contributors explore how in these two decades, the neoliberal or market-based model of capitalism started to spread from the economic realm to other areas of society. As a result, many aspects of contemporary Western societies increasingly function in the same way as the private enterprise sector under traditional market capitalism.

This second volume analyses the relationships of art with contemporary capitalist economies and instrumentalist cultural policies, and examines several varieties of capitalist-critical and alternative art forms that exist in today´s art worlds. It also addresses the vexed issues of art controversies and censorship. The chapters cover issues such as the culturalization of the economy, aesthetics and anti-aesthetics, the societal benefits of works of art, art´s responsibility to society, "artivism", activist arts as protest and capitalism-critical works, and controversies over nudity in art, as well as considering the marketisation of emerging visual arts worlds in East Asia. The book ends with the a concluding chapter suggesting that even in today´s marketized and commercialized environments, art will find a way.

Both volumes provide students and scholars across a range of disciplines with an incisive, comparative overview of the politics of art and culture and national, international and transnational art worlds in contemporary capitalism.

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Part One: Introduction 1. The Capitalist Economy as a Precondition and Restraint of Modern and Contemporary Art Worlds Part Two: Contemporary Capitalist Economy and the Demands of Art´s Societal Utility and Responsibility 2. Culturalization of the Economy and the Artistic Qualities of Contemporary Capitalism 3. Neoliberal Marketization of Global Contemporary Visual Art Worlds: Changes in Valuations and the Scope of Local and Global Markets 4. Art, Capitalist Markets, and Society: Insights and Reflections on Contemporary Art 5. Art as a Means to Produce Societal Benefits and Social Innovations 6. A Plea for Responsible Art: Politics, the Market, Creation Part Three: Alternative and Critical Art Production and its Control 7. Artistic Critique on Capitalism as a Practical and Theoretical Problem 8. De-Aestheticization and the Dialectics of the Aesthetic and Anti-Aesthetic in Contemporary Art 9. Artivism and the Spirit of Avant-Garde Art 10. Dirty Pictures. Scandal and Censorship in Contemporary Art Part Four: Afterword 11. Manifestations and Conditions of Art.

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Victoria D. Alexander is Senior Lecturer, Institute for Creative and Cultural Entrepreneurship, Goldsmiths, University of London, UK.

Samuli Hägg is Lecturer, Finnish and Literature, University of Eastern Finland.

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