ABSTRACT
The problem of the division of labour might be seen to be met, especially in art’s most modern forms. If art does increasingly include the conceptual and quasi-rational, then the oft-stated divide between intellectual and manual labour seems to have been overcome: manual labour techniques can be married with intellectualised content drawn from an unlimited supply of ideas. The artist can adopt almost any kind of labour practice, or combination of practices, that her inward subjectivity demands. And, in this way, the value-sphere of art starts to approach Marx’s famous utopian image of freedom beyond the division of labour: For as soon as the distribution of labour comes into being, each man has a particular, exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape. The relationship of the worker to the product of his labour as an alien object that has power over him.
