The Art Market As a Sign of Social Change? Auctioning Confiscated Art In The Post-war Czechoslovakia
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| Year of publication | 2019 |
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| Description | In the history of former Czechoslovakia (1918–1993), actually the whole East-Central Europe, we experienced the periods with radical political developments. These social, international and national conflicts usually raised the wave of very dynamic unprecedented ownership/property and structural/social changes. As one of the tools that could help us to study these processes more thoroughly and contextually in the new light we now identify the art market. The paper will analyse the newly uncovered archive sources of the Czech auction houses auctioning legally (as a state order) in the early post-war period (after 1945) hundreds of thousands of art items looted from the chateaux, mansions and residences confiscated in the borderlands from the violently displaced, expelled German bourgeoisie. This strong market torque wave of very cheap confiscated items with the mostly German provenance completely restructured the current market, actually created the new one with the different rules, clients, preferences and above all, the price levels. The degree of depreciation and distortion of the prices fetched by various artists and market segments during these years we see as strongly significant and should be subject of further analysis. Who were the buyers of this cheap antique furniture, Persian carpets, porcelain, art industry objects of all kinds, portraits of former proprietors in these years of economic crisis that hit mostly the lowest poor layers, at a time when basic foods were available only for state vouchers? And what was the real nature of the (social) conflict raised thanks to this development between (not only) the contemporary living artists and the dealers of displaced artistic assets, more economic or rather national? The art market is phenomenon deeply connected to the art itself, creating part of its nature. The fact, that it could be traded, changing the holder, is bind to its “socializing”, human-like dimension. Could be seemingly insignificant historical developments characterising the art market, concerning the structure of supply and demand for certain goods, segments, periods, tendency to admire certain visual/behavioural patterns, etc. perceived as one of the most distinctive signs of the undergoing social changes? Could we study the dynamically changing social elites structure and their role in the history on the aspects of art market? And under which circumstances could such social change help to create a completely new art market? |