Sophie CrasEcrits d'Artistes sur l'économie

What happens to the economy when it is thought up, invented and dreamed up by artists? Little is known, but many artists from the end of the 19th century to the present day have become economists, even going so far as to write treatises whose stated ambition was to renew the discipline from top to bottom. Whether they were university graduates in economics (such as Vassily Kandinsky or Robert Filliou), built their theoretical conception of art in dialogue with economists (such as William Morris or Joseph Beuys), or elaborated a theoretical system in their own right (following the example of Asger Jorn or Isidore Isou), these artists provide us with a rich and singular vision, both of the economic thought of their time and of the issues at stake today. Value, work, money and capitalism – these are all themes examined and revisited by these texts, which this book aims to anthologise. With humour or seriousness, erudition or provocation, these essays turn the experience of art into a theoretical and practical laboratory for rethinking the economy as a whole, aspiring to nothing less, as Isou does, for example, than to provoke “?a major upheaval, a fundamental transformation of the monetary system and the banking structure of the entire world? By bringing together these “?proposals”, modest or not, often unknown, sometimes translated for the first time into French, the book proposes the genealogy of a paradoxical form – a treatise on economics written by a non-economist – and exposes its limits and relevance for thinking about art and economics today.