AccScience Publishing / AC / Online First / DOI: 10.36922/AC025160022
ARTICLE

The value of art: An analysis of the Chinese art market from a value-driven perspective

Ziqi Wang1*
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1 Central Academy of Fine Arts, School of Arts Management and Education, Beijing, China
Received: 15 April 2025 | Revised: 16 September 2025 | Accepted: 16 September 2025 | Published online: 3 October 2025
© 2025 by the Author(s). This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution -Noncommercial 4.0 International License (CC-by the license) ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ )
Abstract

This article explores the evolution and distinctiveness of the Chinese art market in the new era from the perspective of the social construction of artistic value. It first reviews the limitations of traditional economic frameworks in analyzing the value of art and highlights the significant role played by the labor force and the uniqueness of labor products in the formation of price and value. The article then analyzes the historical context and temporal characteristics of Chinese art society, especially with the rapid development of the cultural industry, which has placed unprecedented emphasis on the value and price of art. To explain the multiple constructions of artistic value, the article employs a critical constructivist approach, combining Marxist value theory and Pierre Bourdieu’s cultural field theory, to explore the interwoven roles of symbolic capital and cultural power in the art market. Finally, the article proposes a new pyramid framework to analyze artistic value from the perspective of Chinese socialist theory, reflecting the complex social and economic relations in the production and market mechanisms of art.

Keywords
Artistic value
Chinese art market
Social construction
Critical constructivism
Funding
The study was funded by Phased Research Outcome of the National Social Science Fund of China General Project in Art Studies: A Social History of Chinese Fine Art (1898– 2023) with grant number 24BF104.
Conflict of interest
The author declares no conflict of interest.
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Arts & Communication, Electronic ISSN: 2972-4090 Published by AccScience Publishing