The Economy and Art Production

While this is not always necessarily true, we often attempt to interpret art by investigating the societal context in which it was created. Thus, what can the state of the economy or the society in which an artist lived tell us about the meaning or the aesthetic composition of an art piece? The resulting empirical question is, then, to what extent does the economy inform and translate into the quantity, quality, and content of artistic production? Moreover, how can that be tested?

The first variable (quantity of art) should be simple enough to study: simply run a regression of the quantity of art produced (represented by an index, factor, or instrument for artistic production, which in itself is perhaps no simple feat) on different economic measures. Of course, such a regression would have to be adequately controlled for potential endogeneity issues (for example, are the price level in an economy and the quantity of art produced jointly determined?), omitted variable biases, etc. With such a regression, we could uncover: do periods of economic crisis (i.e. recessions, stagflation, etc.) cause more or less art to be produced, either contemporaneously or with lags to the crisis? Does art production boom in times of prosperity? Moreover, do the relationships depend on the political and demographic makeup of societies (i.e. how do the coefficients change between democracies or authoritarian societies? Between younger and older nations in terms of their populations?).

Perhaps more importantly, how do the quality and the message content/ aesthetic composition of art pieces vary based on the economic situation? Meaning, do artworks generally reflect the times in which they were produced when those times are difficult, or more prosperous? Will an artist produce works portraying issues of economics or society, or portraying messages regarding economic situations when times are tough? A simple hypothesis—based perhaps on prospect theory—would argue that art reflects economic topics and messages when times are difficult, i.e. when the state of the economy is more salient and more impactful in the minds of the artists.

An unsophisticated way of studying this question would involve cataloguing art works in a systematic fashion by gathering information on their time and place of production, biographical information on the artist, and ultimately classifying them as revolving around a theme of the society or economic times. Then, a regression with a binary variable (“related to economics and society?”) would be run on economic variables.

An obvious difficulty, of course, is how to systematically classify works. After all, if during the Great Depression an artist had painted a scene of shantytowns or jobless lines, it might be simple to classify that as related to the economic situation. However, if an artist had instead painted a scene of prosperity and wealth, who’s to say that painting did not revolve around a yearning for better times, and thus also related to the economic situation of the times? Moreover, the classification of art pieces must be conducted independently from the information on the works. In order to avoid confirmation bias, the person classifying the relevance of an artwork to socioeconomic contexts must not be aware of that very same context. Lastly, how should abstract works be classified? How should pieces of art where only the implied message is economic in nature be classified, if art pieces themselves are often open to interpretation?

Of course, trying to systematically and objectively study a field that is inherently without constraints poses a multitude of problems. Yet, it could also be fruitful. After all, it could help answer questions like: should the government subsidize the arts based on patterns of production during different economic contexts? Should the government be involved in the arts at all? Should our interpretation of some works be informed further (or less) by the context in which they were created? In turn, should our interpretation of the objectives of an artist depend on his or her context as well?

The study of art can only be enriched by uncovering how it relates to economic and societal forces, which invariably shape and influence the hands and the minds that shape each work.