Ut oeconomia Pictura: How the Global Art Market is Changing the Dominant Canons

This study explores the pressure that the new configuration of the art market is exerting on the alleged universalism of Western artistic conventions, in particular as a result of the dramatic increase in the quotation of Chinese artists and the growth of China’s market share globally. In fact, over the last decade, there has been a great cultural and economic valuation of artistic expressions that hardly correspond to Western conventions at all, especially in Asian and Islamic countries. These changes call for a thorough revision of the ethnocentrism that marks the West’s artistic narratives and canons, as the need to create more inclusive narratives becomes increasingly more evident.