Markets framed by culture The role of local contexts in the rise of contemporary art commerce in Russia and India

How can we explain the diversity of ways in which local contexts affect the development of new markets? This dissertation takes the proliferation of contemporary art commerce across the globe that started in the late 1980s as an opportunity to answer this question by undertaking the study of art markets in Russia and India. Empirically, it is based on qualitative interviews with 130 art market participants and ethnographic observations conducted in Moscow, St. Petersburg, New Delhi, and Mumbai, between April 2012 and July 2013. The project addresses a number of empirical puzzles encountered from a comparative perspective. It discusses the differences in the current role of pre-market organizational heritage of art distribution; diverse resources enacted by art dealers when opening a commercial gallery; contrasting career paths and ideas of success of contemporary artists; conflicting narratives of crisis organizing the functioning of the two contemporary art markets; and, finally, the differences in understanding the practice of giving a discount on a work of art within a single art market of India. Theoretically, the dissertation argues that interpretative frameworks used by market actors mediate the effect of local contexts on market development by shaping the perceptions of local contexts and, therefore, they are primarily responsible for the observed differences. It shows that interpretative frameworks refract the impact of social and political contexts, because, first, meaning systems are unevenly distributed within a market, and second, their immanent logics affect which elements of local contexts are enacted and how.