Fabric banners reminiscent of those carried by trade unionists proclaim that “we are not a burden to each other” and propose that we “share the means”. The Alternative School of Economics presents materials that critique neoliberal capital and the worker’s position in the post-Thatcherite economic settlement. The Whitworth styles itself as a socially useful museum, and parts of the exhibition follow its educational mission. The show is the result of research, cooperation and, one assumes, economic exchange between ten artist collectives and numerous contributors, including market stall traders in Wales, trade unions, academics and … a Hungarian banknote printing firm. This is the going concern of Economics the Blockbuster at Manchester’s Whitworth Art Gallery, which proposes that the artist is a speculator, investor and market manipulator all at once. Some artists began to run businesses as art projects, whilst others lent their skills to the economic consciousness of their audiences.
Eventually, the economy became an artistic medium. After the 2008 financial crisis which wreaked havoc in the art trade, artists came to economics itself with renewed interest and turned to the minutiae of capital flows as aesthetic forms. Since the emergence of conceptual art practices in the 1960s, which decoupled art from the artefact, the dematerialised work of “thinking like an artist” became a profitable activity. Despite all the attempts to democratise public appreciation of art in the 20th century, the art market still insists that the object of its trade is a special kind of luxury which few can appreciate. The banking fortune of the Medici family may have been as responsible for the Renaissance as the talents of Botticelli or Donatello. Even in antiquity, artists had to tune the calls of their muses to the clinking of coins in the pockets of their patrons.
Art and money have come a long way together.
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