Materiality as a Basis for Valuation Entrepreneurship: Re-modeling Impressionism

This paper addresses the recognized need for connecting scholarship on materiality and evaluation by conceptualizing how materiality provides grounds for “valuation entrepreneurship.” It extends the scope of materiality scholarship by considering an ignored organizational outcome while offering stronger evidence for the role of supply-side factors in social evaluation. The theoretical model posits that materiality affords opportunities for identity construction and social organization that can lead to the emergence of a new theory of value contesting the evaluative regime. This framework is applied to the reanalysis of a famous case: Impressionism. The analysis shows that new materials and methods of painting served as a “focus” for the social organization of artists with a shared identity of craftsmen. These artists espoused a new theory of value that advocated the “unfinishedness” of artworks and used natural perception as an objective basis for contestation of the “subjective” evaluative regime at the salons. The contestation had political overtones, drawing on cultural resources and scientific tenets to justify the valorization of individuality and decentralization of art appraisal. An endogenous account of culture in action presents materiality as a natural counterpoint to the emphasis on conceptualization.