Art between work and value

Abstract

Will art history constitute a domain of rarities, preciousness and virtuosity or an investigation into historical modes of value production, and therefore in its own way also an economy and a reflection on work human? The historian Giulio Carlo Argan, right at the beginning of History of Art, an eminently theoretical text in which he critically reviews the main currents of art historiography, establishes a distinction that operates as a divider waters in the general domain of art research. Considering that works of art participate in the modern process of circulation and belong to the set of things that have value, Argan proposes a distinction regarding the way of dealing with art: one can take care of value, for example, by identifying it , classifying it, qualifying it, etc. Or one can inquire about value, ask about its condition, its physiology, how it is constituted historically, etc.