Re-Installing Politics in the Field Theory of Contemporary Art

Following the Bourdieu’s model of cultural production, the question of art autonomy is framed predominantly in its relation to the economic field. The degree of autonomy is measured by how much a particular artist is distanced from the market. Institutional art that relies on the state, private, or other forms of non-commercial sponsorship is defined as belonging to the more autonomous pole of art field. How art field overlaps with politics and what it means for art autonomy is usually explored in a narrow and non-systematic way. The first option is to look at so-called authoritarian societies and illiberal democracies, emphasizing straightforward state interventions or its overall domination in the field of art. While these studies may provide a more systematic field analysis, their conceptual model is rarely applied to what is assumed to be contemporary democratic societies. The second option is to focus on the distinction between art and activism in (politically) engaged art and investigate how artists negotiate aesthetic and political messages in their works. The third is to explore how art contributes collective political actions and mobilization. The latter two options usually rely on Rancière’s theory of politics of aesthetics that was formulated in opposition to Bourdieu’s theory and is concerned with aesthetic expression as a mode of political resistance. The paper develops a field theory of contemporary art that includes simultaneously economy and politics as forces structuring the rules of art within its autonomous and heteronomous domains. Conceptual arguments of this paper are formulated in an abductive manner, based on theoretical analysis and two empirical studies that have been conducted by the author: 1. ‘artists in exile’ phenomenon in European and transnational art fields, 2. contemporary art practitioners in Russia and their encounters with various manifestations of power over the last decades.