This open access book offers the first comprehensive, interdisciplinary examination of the art market’s entry segment – where objects of modest monetary value circulate yet hold significant cultural, social, and economic meaning. The volume reframes the “low-end” market as a dynamic ecosystem shaped by heterogeneity, shifting categories, and alternative logics of value creation. Contributors explore how everyday cultural goods, from antiques and decorative arts to prints, collectibles, and vernacular objects, challenge conventional hierarchies of taste and prestige.Through case studies spanning flea markets, auction platforms, galleries, and digital marketplaces, the book interrogates mechanisms of trust, scarcity, branding, and symbolic capital in contexts where traditional markers of authenticity and consecration are absent or contested. Drawing on cultural economics, art history, sociology, anthropology, and heritage studies, among others, the chapters discuss the impact of informal economies, digitization, and sustainability imperatives on art markets and consumer behavior. By documenting these overlooked segments, the volume addresses survival bias in art market research and opens new pathways for understanding cultural value beyond elite consumption. This book will be an essential volume for scholars working in cultural economics, art market studies, economic sociology, and creative industries more broadly.
Anne-Sophie V. Radermecker is an Associate Professor at the Université libre de Bruxelles, where she holds the Chair in Cultural Economics (Department of History, Arts and Archaeology). Her main research interests focus on price formation mechanisms, value construction, and rebranding strategies in the markets for art and cultural goods.
Chapter 1: Recontextualizing and Modeling the “Low-End” Market for Art and Cultural Goods.- Part I - Revisiting Art Market Theories: Chapter 2: The Low End of High-tailed “Toys”. Sequences of Markets for Cultural Goods.- Chapter 3: Information, Bargaining, and Relationships: Cultural Goods and Art in the Bazaar Economy in Western Markets.- Chapter 4: “Semi-Luxury Goods” as Investment: The Case of Val Saint Lambert Crystalware.- Part II - Between Art, Craft, Luxury, Commodity, and Junk: Chapter 5: Flea Markets from a Historical Perspective and Their Contemporary Challenges: The Example of St. Ouen.- Chapter 6: Selling Eclecticism: Trickle-Round Signaling and Modular Design in French Cemeteries after 1804.- Chapter 7: A Piece of Art in Every Household: The Nationwide Subscription of Graphic Art and its Implications on the Market for Prints in Poland.- Part III - Capitalizing on High-End Art: Chapter 8: Price, Value and Originality in the Oleograph Market in Buenos Aires (1870-1920).- Chapter 9: Cheap Art by the Crate-load: Victorian Wholesalers of “Fine Art” Silber & Fleming.- Chapter 10: Intellectual Property Licensing in Superstar Museums: Transforming Collections into Creative Products for International Consumer Market.- Part IV - Porosity across Market Segments: Chapter 11: Stratification and Price in Art Auctions: How the Presence of Unconsecrated and Lowly Consecrated Painters Impacts the Australian Art Auction Market.- Chapter 12: Illusions of Rarity and Value in Competing Megalodon Tooth Markets.- Chapter 13: Sector insights: The Valuable Low End of the Auction Art Market.- Part V - Mechanisms of Trust and Value Creation: Chapter 14: A Study of the Low End of the Auction Market for Australian Indigenous Art.- Chapter 15: From Canvas to Confidence: How Trust Shapes Barcelona's Low-End Art Market.- Chapter 16: Trash or Treasure? Interviews with a Dealer from the Chinese Folk Antiques Market.- Chapter 17: Sector Insights: Stay Local, Sell Global: Regional Auctioneers, Platforms and Questions of Locality in the Digital Age.- Part VI - Beyond Traditional Art Values: Chapter 18: Consumer Behavior in the Low-End Art Market: A Comparative Analysis among Consumers of Fine Antiques, Ordinary Antiques and Collectibles.- Chapter 19: Collecting the Past: Motivations and Meanings in the Low-End Antiquities Trade.- Chapter 20: From Physical to Virtual: The Shifting Landscape of a Collectors’ Community of Advertising and Packaging Paraphernalia in Northwestern Europe.- Chapter 21: Outsiders or Forgotten? Independent Artists Creating Alternative Career Paths in the Low-End Market.- Part VII - Unveiling the Heritage Dimension of Low-End Cultural Goods: Chapter 22: Guardians of Lesser-Known artists: The Role of Public and Private Actors in Cultural Preservation.- Chapter 23: Sector Insights: The Low-End in the Mobilier National’s Collections: From Splat Back Chairs to Bouillotte Lamps.- Chapter 24: Sector Insights: Coins as Cultural Goods: Promoting Conservation Over State Control.