The Death of the Author: The Case of art Market

Abstract

Recent evidence suggests that the artwork of an experienced artist is usually more expensive than that of a beginner. Additionally, the artwork of a man is often more expensive than that of a woman, and a painting is typically more expensive than graphics. However, this research aims to contrast the influence of the author's age and sex on the price with the influence of the artwork's material and technique. This idea is based on Roland Barthes’ famous philosophical doctrine about the death of the author, which appeared in 1968 and remains relevant today. In our article, this doctrine is tested for the art market. The research question posed is whether the author's influence dies in relation to their artwork after its creation or whether the artwork begins to live its own life without the author. To answer this question, a study was conducted comparing the impact on auction prices of the artist's biography and the characteristics of the artwork. The artist's biography inevitably determines their creativity and affects their art, while the characteristics of the artwork are not directly related to the personality of the author but are important from a consumption standpoint. Several dozen features were identified and divided into author and artwork characteristics. For author characteristics, demographic features such as sex and nationality were used, as well as biographical features such as education and migration. Artwork characteristics included size, material, technique, provenance, author's signature and frame, mentions in scientific literature, etc. By applying hedonic regression on a unique collected dataset of more than 15,000 artworks by the most expensive authors sold at world-famous auction houses such as Sotheby's and Christie's, it was determined which characteristics have the greatest influence on price and which specific features are most important.