scholarly journals Aesthetic Height of the Art and the Art Market: Essential and Imaginary Nature of Art Quality

2021 ◽  
pp. 94-131
Author(s):  
A.V. Karpov ◽  

A problem of perfection at art is analyzed in the article according to paradigm of the art market as a system of cultural, economic and social interactions of the art world. The author finds out the vitality of the artwork not only as its essential value but also defines the idea of its imaginary vitality. The latter is created by the art market participants, and it causes the commercial value of the artwork. The article makes an assumption about the division of art, at least of the Modern and Contemporary history, into two spheres — the art of “aesthetic experience” and the art of “commercial success”. While the art of “aesthetic experience” is aimed at finding and creating a new artistic language (the embodiment of new creative ideas, complex ethical and aesthetic problems), the art of “commercial success” follows artistic stereotypes, uses creative innovations in an adapted form, which is included in the cultural and aesthetic system familiar to the audience of art. This antithesis is analyzed in the article by the example of comparing a number of works by two artists of the same time. One is Mikhail Larionov, a prominent artist of the Russian Avant-Garde, and the other is Vladislav Izmailovitch, a typical representative of Salon and Late Academic art. Considering the specific historical aspects of vitality in art, the author analyzes several examples. Firstly, the late oeuvre of the Russian artist Ilya Repin as a metaphor for the “joy of the risen”. Secondly, the Easter rarities of the House of Faberge, which have changed their status over the past century from a home memorabilia to a cultural myth and became an object of the art market nowadays. Thirdly, the exposition of the Russian pavilion at the Venice Biennale of Contemporary Art in 2019, where authors and curators exploited the vitality of Dutch and Flemish art of the 17th century as the personification of contemporary creative pursuits.

2014 ◽  
Vol 4 (1/2) ◽  
pp. 25-44 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chloe Preece

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the branding of the Cynical Realist and Political Pop contemporary art movements in China. The trajectory this brand has taken over the past 25 years reveals some of the power discourses that operate within the international visual arts market and how these are constructed, distributed and consumed. Design/methodology/approach – A review of avant-garde art in China and its dissemination is undertaken through analysis of historical data and ethnographic data collected in Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong. Findings – The analysis exposes the ideological framework within which the art market operates and how this affects the art that is produced within it. In the case of Cynical Realism and Political Pop, the art was framed and packaged by the art world to reflect Western liberal political thinking in terms of personal expression thereby implicitly justifying Western democratic, capitalist values. Research limitations/implications – As an exploratory study, findings contribute to macro-marketing research by demonstrating how certain sociopolitical ideas develop and become naturalised through branding discourses in a market system. Practical implications – A socio-cultural branding approach to the art market provides a macro-perspective in terms of the limitations and barriers for artists in taking their work to market. Originality/value – While there have been various studies of branding in the art market, this study reveals the power discourses at work in the contemporary visual arts market in terms of the work that is promoted as “hot” by the art world. Branding here is shown to reflect politics by circulating and promoting certain sociocultural and political ideas.


2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-77
Author(s):  
O. M. Kirillina ◽  

Bohemia arose in opposition to the values and to the way of life of bourgeoisie at the moment when bourgeoisie became the largest customer in the art market. In Russia bohemia was more respectable, far from social problems and less revolutionary than in Europe, that is why representatives of the Russian avant-garde did not feel very comfortable in the restrictive bohemian environment. In the first years after the Revolution, the intense struggle of various art groups stimulated creative search and bohemia could find quite a comfortable niche. However the abolition of all art groups except the Union of Soviet Writers as well as the approval of the only acceptable method, socialist realism, in the early 30s eliminated the existence of such a free and asocial community as bohemia. Many poets and writers were repressed. These were not only critics of the government, but also totally apolitical or too revolutionary nonconformists, such as members of the OBERIU. Writers were destroyed not only by the state, but also by the deep disappointment due to the return of the spirit of Academism, Philistinism and bureaucratization, which penetrated the art world. At the same time loyal poets and writers generously endowed by the state turned into an elite.


2009 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 331-362 ◽  
Author(s):  
Diana Crane

The article examines the recent changes in art world from the characteristics of the global art market and its implications for sociological theories of art. Therefore, it focuses on the correlation established between the decline of the avant-garde art and how there are tenuous boundaries between high culture and popular culture. In this sense, it discusses and analyzes the influence increasingly exerted by actors located in countries such as the United States, England, Germany, France and, more recently, China. It concludes with how much the global art market may be illustrative of cases in which the globalization of markets expands the cultural and economic inequality by favoring the privilege of small social groups in the contemporary world.


Author(s):  
Jonathan Walley

Cinema Expanded: Avant-Garde Film in the Age of Intermedia is a comprehensive historical survey of expanded cinema from the mid-1960s to the present. It offers an historical and theoretical revision of the concept of expanded cinema, placing it in the context of avant-garde/experimental film history rather than the history of new media, intermedia, or multimedia. The book argues that while expanded cinema has taken an incredible variety of forms (including moving image installation, multi-screen films, live cinematic performance, light shows, shadow plays, computer-generated images, video art, sculptural objects, and texts), it is nonetheless best understood as an ongoing meditation by filmmakers on the nature of cinema, specifically, and on its relationship to the other arts. Cinema Expanded also extends its historical and theoretical scope to avant-garde film culture more generally, placing expanded cinema in that context while also considering what it has to tell us about the moving image in the art world and new media environment.


1988 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 221
Author(s):  
Rosanne Martorella ◽  
Diana Crane
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  

Leonardo ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
Kieran Browne

Abstract The mainstream contemporary art world is suddenly showing interest in “AI art”. While this has enlivened the practice, there remains significant disagreement over who or what actually deserves to be called an “AI artist”. This article examines several claimants to the term and grounds these in art history and theory. It addresses the controversial elevation of some artists over others and accounts for these choices, arguing that the art market alienates AI artists from their work. Finally, it proposes that AI art's interactions with art institutions have not promoted new creative possibilities but have instead reinforced conservative forms and aesthetics.


2018 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 223-254
Author(s):  
Kate Clarke Lemay

The overseas American war cemeteries, in their aim to achieve “soft power” or cultural diplomacy during the mid-century, created high-value commissions in the American art world. The sought-after commissions resulted in an internal struggle between artists practicing traditional figural Classicism and the avant-garde who had adopted expressionism and abstraction. Additionally, a surging political stream of anti-Communism made artists vulnerable, because modern art seemed to underscore Communism’s abandonment of religion. By adopting demagoguery as political strategy, McCarthyists escalated the perception of Communism as present in the United States by targeting American culture, including artists of the American war cemeteries. Describing the struggles surrounding the creation of the cemeteries, this essay takes into account the artists’ biographies, statements, and actions, arguing that their art-making was not only critical in creating international diplomacy, but also in sustaining American freedom, particularly within an era of American political suspicion.


2007 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 287-303
Author(s):  
Susanne Kogler

That art functions as a corrective to rational-scientific insights is one of the formative thoughts of art philosophy. The fact that artistic expression represents a corrective to linguistically-rationally affected insight also ranks among the constants of art philosophy in the 20th century. “Expression is the opponent of articulating something” can be read, for instance, in Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory with regards to the character of language in art and Jean François Lyotard wrote on aesthetic experience: “What happens to us is by no means something which we would have controlled, programmed or conceptually apprehended beforehand”. The uneducible, conceptually unattainable is also at the centre of current art production of the 21st century. On the basis of Lyotard’s and Adorno’s positions, the article shows that one should acknowledge a constancy of the topos of art as non-conceptual knowledge on the one hand as the continuing function of a tradition defined from the philosophical aesthetics of modernity to post-modernity and orientated on the artistic avant-garde. On the other hand and beyond this a continuous line of tradition of New Music becomes clear, leading to the expressionistic avant-garde of the 20th century which represented the starting point for Adorno’s music philosophy, through Lyotard’s focus on John Cage, up to the avant-garde of New Music in the era of post modernity. Specific features of contemporary art, such as rebellion against linguistic standards, an understanding of expressivity that opposes the traditional language of music and operates on the verge of silence, as well as the utopian vision of a modified reality which aims at transcendency enable a conception of art as non-conceptual knowledge, corresponding with the positions of art philosophy in modernity and post-modernity in important points. The relevance of focusing on this line of tradition for musicology lies in the fact that it sheds new light on the musical avant-garde and its further function and, last but not least, that it opens new perspectives in understanding contemporary artistic productions.


Author(s):  
Andrzej Mądro

Djent - digital metal neomoderne? Deep-rooted ideas of “art rock” do not expire and recently gave rise to the new, progressive metal trends like djent. It wants to be the elite, the modern, and the innovative. At the expense of greater commercial success, djent bands cut off from the mainstream and operate independently, incessantly exceeding stylistic and aesthetical boundaries. Poetics of their music often reveal a tension between elitism and egalitarianism, intellect and corporeality, individuality and convention. But can it be seen as some kind of musical trans-avant-garde or neomodernistic?


2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 47-64
Author(s):  
Adria Harillo Pla

This text presents a communicative model in the art market as well as its importance compared to the traditional communication model analysed from Art History. To achieve this, we expose the lack of solid criteria when defining what art is. Subsequently, we defend that the Sociology of Language allows us to obtain a referential and pragmatic knowledge of what a community calls art. As we will say, this lan-guage is produced through money, and that is why Economic Sociology plays a key role. Understanding that “art” is something named like this in a social environment with its agents, motivations and mecha-nisms, we defend that the art market - as a small part of the art world - is a tool of great informative value. This is because it allows to see what a human group refers to as “art”. This is possible thanks to the use of a shared code (money). Through money, some agents can express their preferences in that context, acting as senders. The market plays the channel role and, the public acts as the receiver. The preferences shown through money by some agents within that social system gives to the community some referential and pragmatic knowledge while allowing us to allocate that scarce resource named “art”.


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