front cover of Wages Against Artwork
Wages Against Artwork
Decommodified Labor and the Claims of Socially Engaged Art
Leigh Claire La Berge
Duke University Press, 2019
The last twenty years have seen a rise in the production, circulation, and criticism of new forms of socially engaged art aimed at achieving social justice and economic equality. In Wages Against Artwork Leigh Claire La Berge shows how socially engaged art responds to and critiques what she calls decommodified labor—the slow diminishment of wages alongside an increase in the demands of work. Outlining the ways in which socially engaged artists relate to work, labor, and wages, La Berge examines how artists and organizers create institutions to address their own and others' financial precarity; why the increasing role of animals and children in contemporary art points to the turn away from paid labor; and how the expansion of MFA programs and student debt helps create the conditions for decommodified labor. In showing how socially engaged art operates within and against the need to be paid for work, La Berge offers a new theorization of the relationship between art and contemporary capitalism.
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Western Voices in Canadian Art
Patricia Bovey
University of Manitoba Press, 2023

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Why Are Artists Poor?
The Exceptional Economy of the Arts
Hans Abbing
Amsterdam University Press, 2002
Most artists earn very little. Nevertheless, there is no shortage of aspiring young artists. Do they give to the arts willingly or unknowingly? Governments and other institutions also give to the arts, to raise the low incomes. But their support is ineffective: subsidies only increase the artists' poverty.

The economy of the arts is exceptional. Although the arts operate successfully in the marketplace, their natural affinity is with gift-giving, rather than with commercial exchange. People believe that artists are selflessly dedicated to art, that price does not reflect quality, and that the arts are free. But is it true?

This unconventional multidisciplinary analysis explains the exceptional economy of the arts. Insightful illustrations from the practice of a visual artist support the analysis.
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Wisconsin in Watercolor
The Life and Legend of Folk Artist Paul Seifert
Joe Kapler
Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 2018

In 1867, German immigrant Paul Seifert settled in the Driftless Area of southwestern Wisconsin and began capturing the distinctive farms and landscapes of his new home in vivid, detailed watercolors. Today, these paintings are coveted by American folk art collectors across the country, but Seifert’s life remains shrouded in mystery.

In this first book written about Paul Seifert, author Joe Kapler examines the life of this enigmatic artist and provides context for his extraordinary art. The book features high-quality reproductions of twenty-two Seifert watercolors (more than half of which have never been published) and many close-ups of his characteristic details, from horses and hay wagons to dogs and dinner bells. Part art history treatment, part coffee table book, part research memoir, and part love letter to the Driftless Area, Wisconsin in Watercolor shines a long-awaited light on Seifert and the land he so carefully rendered over a hundred years ago.

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Women Artists, Women Exiles
"Miss Grief" and Other Stories by Constance Fenimore Woolson
Weimer, Joan Myers
Rutgers University Press, 1988
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