From starving artist to entrepreneur : justificatory pluralism in visual artists' grant proposals

Inspired by French pragmatism and using Bourdieu's notion of “refraction” as an indication of a field's autonomy, Peters and Roose explore in-depth what kinds of justifications visual artists deploy to legitimate their requests for government money. Based on 494 government grant proposals from visual artists between 1965 and 2015 in Belgium, they find six such justifications. The reputational, esthetic, and romantic justifications are grounded in autonomous criteria of worth, such as artistic CVs, the work of art itself, and a compulsive desire to make art. It is empirically shown how the refraction of governmental logics is multi-faceted, yet always related to or combined with artistic concerns, which is interpreted as characteristic for the artistic field's persisting autonomy in the face of heteronomous pressures.