On the margins of art worlds

Description

During the late 1980s, the near-worship of artistic genius produced auction sales of works by Vincent Van Gogh and Pablo Picasso for tens of millions of dollars, over $15 million for a painting by Jasper Johns, and record prices for works by many other deceased and even living masters. At the same time, it was no longer controversial in academic and intellectual circles to maintain that art works are the products of what Howard Becker has termed collective activity carried out within loosely defined art worlds: Works of art, from this point of view, are not the products of individual makers, "artists" who possess a rare and special gift. They are, rather, joint products of all the people who cooperate via an art world's characteristic conventions to bring works like that into existence. Artists are some sub-group of the world's participants who, by common agreement, possess a special gift, therefore make a unique and indispensable contribution to the work, and thereby make it art. (1982: 35) The concept of the art world-with its central focus on the collective, social, and conventional nature of artistic production, distribution, and appreciation--confronts and potentially undermines the romantic ideology of art and artists still dominant in Western societies.

Description

The concept of the art world confronts and undermines the romantic ideology of art and artists that is still dominant in Western societies. By treating the production of art as work and artists as workers and examining the conditions under which these activities take place, this sociological perspective illuminates much that remains obscured by romantic individualism. The art worlds analysis represented in this collection of original studies questions the social arrangements that determine the recruitment and training of artists, the institutional mechanisms that govern distribution and influence success, the processes of innovation within art worlds, and the emergence of new formations around new media or new players. These studies share a focus on borderline cases and questions - on actions, transactions, and transitions at the margins of art worlds. Controversies and critical incidents expose many of the otherwise invisible rules and procedures that determine art world practices. Examining transitions across the border into art worlds has much to tell us about aesthetic values and biases obscured by the romantic ideology of artistic genius. Looking at art worlds organized around marginal media - amateur photography, video, graffiti - reveals patterns of interaction and evaluation strikingly reminiscent of those found in the fine art mainstream.

Subjects

Series Statement

• Institutional structures of feeling

Other Editions

• On the margins of art worldsWestview Press1995-01-01
• On the Margins of Art WorldsTaylor & Francis Group2021-01-01