ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of the book. This book consists of five case-studies, initially written as MA theses, that closely investigate aspects of the mechanisms of patronage outside the state institutions, while indicating structural links with it. The writers have sought to elucidate the relationship between patronage, the production of art and its dissemination. A concept of patronage as the idealistic provision of a social benefit to passive recipients has long since dissolved, as have notions of an homogeneous public or a normative art practice. By the early 1960s the coexistence of Pop Art, late Bloomsbury and Gustav Metzger's hypothecated, metaphorical art of destruction already indicated an urgent need to reformulate the terms of the transaction between the donor state and its potential recipients. The motivations of patronage may involve politics, ideology, propaganda, pleasure, generosity.
