Art and Commerce: From History to Present

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Art and Commerce: From History to Present Essay Sample

The furthermost important motivation for the presence of inventiveness in art is to develop and express new ideas that can fetch the market with more ease. Artists dedicate a boundless deal of time trying to make better artistic creations that would result in larger sales than the existing ones. The business world, on the other hand, spends a lot of money designing creative, artistic features in their production and marketing phases. This relationship between art and commerce has a long history, starting with the point when both the business and art were still in their initial stages of evolution. As of today, a strong intermarriage between business and art exists – each cannot thrive without the other. The emergence of technology has particularly strengthened the use of art in the online marketing. The future of the art-commerce relationship cannot be fully determined, but the input of technology will highly influence the course of this relationship (Carr 56). Detailed discussion of the relationship between art and commerce will only be given below.

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The account of the connection between art and commerce involved use of art to influence commerce, that is different forms of arts were used to influence business practices. During the 20th century, there was mass proliferation of media arts, characterized by the emergence of the mass media technology (Belew 41). The mass communication technologies provided a place for the development of music, acting, and movies. These media attracted a huge audience on televisions, cinema halls, magazines, newspapers and movies, amongst others. The consequence of this media attention was capped with the growth of the mass media ads (Belew 67).
Towards the end of the 20th century, the mass media communication was the mainstream means for advertisement. For example, the big media houses like Disney managed most of the TV advertisements in the US particularly between the years 1965 to 2000. The use of music and movie celebrities in adverts was a common phenomenon in the mass media. The consequence of using mass media advertisement was a great improvement in sales. As the cost of advertisement on these media was increasing small companies could not afford it; hence, it is only the big companies that advertised their goods and services through the large media houses (Walter 94). With the rising sales, most of those companies advanced to become multinationals. A good example of a company that improved its sales through mass media advertisements is Microsoft. Microsoft, apart from offering technological goods and services with a ready market, relied heavily on advertisement to penetrate the international market and secure a substantial proportion of the world technology market. This perspective shows how media and advertisement arts helped create some of the world’s strongest corporations (Walter 103).
Additionally, law and communication played a great role in the development of the commercial framework throughout the global business world. Various governments and business people spent the 20th century laying business strategies and laws to protect various commercial activities. The US government, for example, enacted numerous laws and signed large amount of commercial agreements to help streamline its development endeavors (Ting, Nakajima 21). Various business players, on the other hand, used communication to grow their portfolios, strike business deals and source for the best expertise for their business practices. Additionally, communication was used to convince various business stakeholders (Stanley 43). In this perspective, art was used to create an enabling business environment.

At present, art and commerce relationship has evolved to entail art as a business. However, the traditional perspective of art as a business enabler has not been masked because various aspects of art are still being used to create a favorable commercial environment. Today, music is the form of art that exists as a business. The current world also recognizes it as a form of service business where the musicians sell their performances (Carr 52). This relationship is fast improving especially with the rising recognition of entertainment and recreation in the modern world. This phenomenon has brought about the aspect of show business in the commercial circles. It is characterized by the global search for the most talented artists by the entertainment firms like Hollywood. In the showbiz industry, the most talented and accomplished music or movie artist sells the works at the highest price. This form of business has created some of the most affluent individuals in the world, with Jerry Seinfeld as an example in the American comedy circles (Carr 74).
Additionally, the creative artists have also started to commercialize the art. There are some of them who produce their work specifically for sale. These artists use creative, artistic approaches to minimize costs of producing a piece of art, market it and consequently maximize their profits. This aspect has led to the proliferation of curio shops throughout the world. African artists, for example, make creative carvings that they sell to various people across the world. The concept of online marketing has additionally intensified the sale of creative art products and skills. Various creative artists use the internet to penetrate the global market where their skills and products are greatly needed. Today, it is very easy to find numerous art shops and their products on the web (Walter 58).


The future of the art-commerce relationship cannot be determined with 100% accuracy because of both the technological and market dynamics. However, it can be easily noted that art will continue enabling different facets of commerce – even with the rising commercialization of the art and creative artist skills. The level of specialization that can be observed in the current business world may project to higher levels in the future. As a result, specially trained business professionals will be required to create commercial and business legal framework. The development of unique and specialized business practices will require sophisticated handling of communication arts during marketing, legal framework development and various other aspects of commerce (Belew 123). Such commercial endeavors, for example, in nanotechnology, neural engineering and molecular medicine raise certain concerns. In what way will the ultimate users – who discern nothing about these technologies – be convinced to use them? Who will persuade them if the designers do not have sufficient convincing abilities? Such questions highlight a projection of the business future that will require professionals with training in both sophisticated technologies and art. Such professionals will be the only bridge between sophisticated business products and the market.  On the other hand, the art-as-business aspect of the relationship will continue growing. This growth will be highly influenced by the apparent constant advancement of the communication technologies which provides access of the market by the artists. The social media, for example, provide a sufficient platform for direct contact between musicians/movie-stars and the public (the market) hence helping these artists retain their followings. Various e-commerce platforms, on the other hand, will enable the artists to access the whole globe where they successfully sell their skills and works (Belew 64).

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In conclusion, the relationship of art and commerce can be described as dynamic. Over the history, art primarily helped create suitable commercial environments and raised sales volumes in businesses. This relationship evolved to entail the selling of artistic works, talents and skills in the modern times. The future of the relationship, additionally, may differ from the present status to require blended professionals with knowledge of the science of production and the skills of marketing. This phenomenon will especially happen in such unique fields of commerce as nanotechnology, molecular medicine and neural engineering.