Luxury Goods and Art in the Market

Course Director: Pierre Guillet de Monthoux

SSE Art Initiative and Art Division greet you welcome a course IN REAL LIFE. This is course- but also a research project! You have the assignment to hunt for New Luxury of Tomorrow! You are Luxury-Hunters!

Your assignment, searching for New Luxury

First thing; you have to kick-start forming workgroups (between 5-10) of Luxury-hunters. For 6 weeks we offer enticements for your group assignment; finding New Luxury. Visiting cases of how Art + Business interplay will inspire your visions of how shape tomorrow´s Luxury. Let the Schwung between tradition and novelty energize leaps from Old to New.

Your spaces of work and for chill

Second week you are all invited to the KAW lecture hall where you also have access to 8 group rooms to intensify your Luxury Hunt-work. After regular course you are all invited to the LUXURY LOUNGE, to enjoy events and watch movies we propose and feel free to launch your own events too, and invite your friends… The LUXURY LOUNGE is your laboratory for New Luxury…

Your time and course presence

We expect you to be active students. Never hesitate shamelessly picking the brains of those you meet during course-hours and in our Luxury Lounge.

Now I hope you realize why we like you to attend this course in person, we offer experiences you can neither Google nor Zoom. To activate your “senses of knowing” your presence is needed

1. the last days of the course when we all present our assignments, the fruits of it all, are presented and 2)
2. of the remaining 15 course days you can only miss out on 4 to complete this course

Further Course info

Course Ethos; Art and Aesthetics and Business

Art is a main gateway when business enters the new luxury sector. Today Art is a cultural foundation of economic action. Therefore, SSE Art Initiative offers this first art-based course at Stockholm School of Economics. Students will get a respectful familiarity of contemporary crossovers between art and luxury. In the company of artists and inspired by the school´s Art Initiative, commerce and business will get and aesthetic dimension. Our ambition is to help in articulating an ethical/aesthetic awareness transgressing outmoded bling-bling luxury rip-offs.

Course Method; Luxury Hunting

Luxury Hunting is the practical skills trained by this course. We want you to envions how Art and Artist may give ideas that eventually, through your help, can land in luxury business.

Course Resources; The outstanding Perspectives and Tools SSE Art Initiative provides.

CFHill Art Initiative Executive Colloquia is a series of four exclusive top leadership conversations animated by Michael Storåkers. He is the founder of CFHill and equally Course Counselor to our course. We can guarantee aunique experience as Michael guides us inside the hearts of art and business leadership.

Art Encounters and mini-masterclasses with artists in flesh and blood and their concrete works exposed in the Stockholm School of Economics permanent and temporary shows. All over the course we will take breaks to meet important artists like Mikael Olsson, Jens Fänge, Lena Selander, Lars Arrhenius and Goldin+Senneby. They will introduce their works exposed at SSE…

Art Excursions to understand experiences of atmospheres. Activate your senses and listen to the ambience…voyages to new zones…

Art and Business Crossovers; new aspects of economic action become relevant when aesthetics and artpenetrate business. Luxury hunters as well as researchers on the edge must now develop new philosophical sensitivities. Slowness, poetics, quality, meaning and curating are some tracks we now pursue. A presentation of luxury experts from Bain & Co Milano concludes this block of resources.

Luxury Strategy; we will focus on a classic of this growing field of management knowledge. Let us critically read Jean Noel Kapferer´s and Vincent Bastien´s “The Luxury Strategy” and check out their stories, models, and rules-of-thumb-rescues from the premium-swamp!

New Worlds of Art and Luxury is our final block of resources. In good faculty company we present some new perspectives of capitalisms. Capitalism will get organized differently, it rests on art and aesthetics as it’s new foundation and the antropocene condition will call for new materializations in the digital world. Reckwitz, Boltanskiand Esquere, Latour and Glissant are the important philosophers of such societal changes…

Course administrator : Anna.Meijerberg@hhs.se

To successfully pass course BE1768 , the student needs to demonstrate:

• Knowledge of how businesses in the past have integrated Art and cooperated with Artist to achieve Luxury products and brands.
• Knowledge of how contemporary business leadership rest on integrating Art and involving Artist in building Luxury products and brands.
• Ability to interact actively to pick brains and experiences of Artists and Managers encountered in the courses field sessions.
• Ability to observe and register aesthetic atmospheres in business venue visited during course field sessions.
• Ability to pitch for and suggest implementations of connections to Art and Artists for businesses with future potential for building Luxury brands and products.
• Ability to analyse and articulate the business impact of Art and Artists in terms of aesthetic philosophy and curatorial practices.

General entry requirements

• Jean-Noel Kapferer and Vincent Bastien. The Luxury Strategy, break the rules of marketing to build luxury brands (London. Kogan Page Publishers. 2012). The book is available at: Bokus or Adlibris
• Isak Nilson and Erik Wikberg, Artful objects Graham Harman on art and the business of speculative realism. (Berlin. Sterberg Press 2021).
• Guillet de Monthoux, Pierre Schwung, Kuratera kapitalismen (book Korpens förlag)
• Curating Capitalsm (book Sternberg Press MIT under printing if not available articles will be provided)
• Pierre Guillet de Monthoux and Erik Wiberg, Economic Ekphrasis. Berlin Sternberg Press, 2021.

Articles Papers and Chapters will be uploaded, other titles might be added during course.

This is the basic list:

• Deloitte Ch Art Finance report 2022
• Guillet de Monthoux, P. Art Management of Aesthetic organizing (chapter)
• Guillet de Monthoux P. Opening the gates of the art firm (chapter)
• Guillet de Monthoux, P. Performing the absolute (journal article)
• Guillet de Monthoux, P. Organizing reality machines (chapter)
• Guillet de Monthoux, P. Curating Capitalism (chapters)
• Reckwitz, A. The rise of aesthetic economy (chapter)
• Riot, E. Murakami on the bag (Journal article)
• Strannegård, L. Senses of Knowing (chapters)
• Strati, A. Do you do beautiful things: (article)

DIVING INTO THE MOOD WITH JZ

• JAY-Z - Picasso Baby: A Performance Art Film

DIVING INTO SPACE TIME WITH JEAN COCTEAU, LEE MILLER

• Jean Cocteau - Blood of a Poet (1930) with Massive Attack - Paradise Circus (Gui Boratto remix)

DIVING INTO THE ZONE WITH TARKOVSKIS STALKER

• Full Movie Stalker, Directed by Andrey Tarkovsky

PREPARATION TO GET IN MOOD CHECK OUT

• Masters of Business Art: Part 1
• Masters of Business Art: Part 2

Course Assignment; Luxury Hunting for Curating Capitalism

Luxury Hunting is what we call the student assignment of this course. in groups students are asked to roam the economic landscapes spotting potential artful projects of new luxury. “New luxury” is also to be discovered especially in our pandemic and hopefully post-pandemic times. We leave free-from-teaching-weeks 16 and 17 to engage fully (digitally or maybe also analogously) in luxury hunting group field work. Luxury hunting is done in groups of minimum 3. Week 15 we offer (you book up for group slots latest week 14). Your work assignment is presented and evaluated in two ways;

1. 40% A common group Zoom presentation (web or in situ) 20 min max by e.g. video and/or powerpoint or other creative use of digital media. When: weeks 20-21
2. 60% An individual written exam. Adjusted to your other examinaions.

Detailed dates will be posted in time!

Week 20-1 are basically group presentation (might be individual) weeks where each group shows on Zoom to all of us. This is has in the past been a really exiting series of shows, mind-blowing and fun for all of us! You will be asked to give us power-point you might produce for these shows and we will record your performances on Zoom.

Attendance 80% of all course activity

Find the course schedule in TimeEdit

Have you been granted educational support because of a documented disability? If so, please contact the course director as soon as possible so that adequate accommodations can be made.

Contact specialneeds@hhs.se if you have questions about being granted educational support or need a copy of your educational support certificate.

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