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The freedom of art is more than an ideal. If, despite the small chance of success, the profession of artist is so popular, it is because it offers the prospect of a labor that is apparently free of narrow specialization, allowing artists, like heroes in the movies, to endow work and life with their own meanings. Equally for the viewers of art, there is a corresponding freedom in appreciating the purposeless play of ideas and forms, not in slavishly attempting to divine artists' intentions, but in allowing the work to elicit thoughts and sensations that connect with their own experiences. The wealthy buy themselves participation in this free zone through ownership and patronage, and they are buying something genuinely valuable; the state ensures that a wider public has at least the opportunity to breathe for a while the scent of freedom that works of art emit.Yet there are reasons to wonder whether free trade and free art are as antithetical as they seem. Firstly, the economy of art closely reflects the economy of finance capital. In a recent analysis of the meaning of cultural dominance, Donald Sassoon explored patterns of import and export of novels, opera, and films in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.  Culturally dominant states have abundant local production that meets the demands of their home markets, importing little and successfully exporting much. In the nineteenth century, France and Britain were the dominant literary powers. The US is now by far the most dominant cultural state, exporting its products globally while importing very little.  As Sassoon points out, this does not mean that everyone consumes American culture, just that most of the culture that circulates across national boundaries is American.Sassoon rules fine art out of his account on the sensible grounds that it has no mass market. It is hard to read trade figures for signs of cultural dominance in a system that is thoroughly cosmopolitan, so that you have a German collector buying through a British dealer the work of a Chinese artist resident in the US. We can, however, get an idea of the volume of trade in each nation, and, given the high proportion of international trade in the art market, this does give an indication of global hegemony. Here there are striking parallels with the distribution of financial power. It is hardly surprising that the US is dominant, accounting for a little less than a half of all global art sales; Europe accounts for much of the rest, with the UK taking as its share around a half of that.

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