ABSTRACT
How has the art world been changed by the internet? The question is repeatedly posed in the broadsheets and by the enormous attention given to post-internet art. In the following chapter, we will move away from the close readings of the previous two chapters to consider the art object’s context, often returning to issues we have explored before, but looked at here in a more brass-tacks sort of way. We will discuss how the two main means of ascribing value to artwork – the art market and the discipline of art history – have been affected (and not) by the internet’s changes to art’s circulation, and, particularly via David Joselit, how the discourse around rights and ownership becomes increasingly signifi cant. We will touch on the deepening importance of the fi gure of the artist in determining an object’s status as art, alongside further theoretical changes to the art object ushered in by the internet: the way circulation itself has been theorised within art practice and the artwork’s shift from unique object to circulating image.
