Collaboration, competition and conflict: The collective labour of fashion photography at US Vogue (1940–42)

While the figure of the fashion photographer has been widely discussed, little has been written on image-making as a collective endeavour. Fashion photography indeed results from technical innovations, publishing strategies, editorial policies, behind-the-scenes negotiations and, ultimately, decision-making. This article analyses ‘The Condé Nast Papers’ – a series of internal documents held at the Condé Nast archives in New York – together with US Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar’s editorials and covers to explore how fashion photographs resulted from the collective labour of photographers, editors, artistic directors and many others in the early 1940s. Through these unique historical sources, this article gives a voice to the workers involved in the making of fashion images and shows how decision-making and creativity were distributed across occupations. It also unpacks the negotiations, arbitrations and power relations that underpinned work relations at US Vogue, showing the collaboration, competition and conflict between the different actors. Drawing on art sociologist Howard Becker’s concept of ‘art worlds’ while combining methods from fashion history and visual and material culture, I question the respective status of the multiple authors involved in this activity and the conventions of fashion image-making. In doing so, I argue that fashion photographs are the product of the interactions of a multitude of workers who are embedded in the power structures of the fashion media industry, and whose collective labour is made invisible. My goal is to rethink the ways in which collective labour has been evidenced and produced in the fashion industry.

The Power of Reputation: A Case Study on Artistic Directors of Austria's Music Festivals

Reputation represents the standing of a person or organisation in the public field and illustrates/marks their contribution towards the implementation of collectively shared values and goals. From a business point of view, reputation belongs to the intangible assets of a company and is therefore part of the goodwill. Especially, the leader of an organisation—particularly in a cultural enterprise—shapes the external public image of the organisation, studies the impact of the image on the public consciousness by assessing public opinion about the organisation's achievements and consequently also gauges the economic and/or artistic success of the organisation. Based on the statements of experts about music festivals of high culture in Austria alongside the big players such as Salzburg or Bregenz Festival, the aim of this paper is to investigate the relationship between reputation of artistic directors (ADs) and the performance of cultural enterprises. It will also be demonstrated how the reputation of these individuals has an impact on tourism, hospitality and trade in the vicinity of cultural enterprises.

THE INSTRUMENTALISED CONDUCTOR

This article explores ways in which artistic directors and composers of new music ensembles have developed and redefined the role of the conductor to achieve specific goals and fulfil musical and artistic need. It will explore various manners in which they have instrumentalised the conductor – literally an embodied role – and opened new possibilities for musical expression. The analysis and examples provided will rely for the most part on material gathered during in-depth interviews conducted with artistic directors, composers, conductors and musicians who are professionally active in the new music field in Europe and beyond. The article endeavours to bring into greater detail artistic and socio-economic motivations for utilising conductors in new music ensembles.

Transmitting Passione

This work addresses the case of the Ballet National de Marseille (BNM) and the 2017 recreation of the piece Passione, created by the artistic directors Emio Greco and Pieter C. Scholten. This study, informed by a phenomenological approach, adopts ethnographic methods, including participant observation, in-depth interviews, and one researcher’s direct involvement with the practices of enculturation and enskillment in this dance form. It investigates how the dancers of the BNM articulate their diverse forms of agency in relation to the choreographer’s artistic vision and demands. By looking at the specific case of the BNM staging of Passione, we can isolate some significant features of contemporary ballet’s trajectory as an emergent dance genre on the edge between innovation and tradition.

Tools of the trade: click-tracks and conductors

This essay will examine the manner in which composers and artistic directors have used conductors and click-tracks within the context of new music ensembles performing integrative concerts. The analyses and examples provided will rely for the most part on material gathered during in-depth interviews that I conducted with artistic directors, composers, conductors, and musicians, all of whom are professionally active in the new music field in Europe (and beyond). I will examine the application of both click-tracks and conductors and demonstrate that their implementation represents an active choice made by either the composer and/or artistic directors. Both click-tracks and conductors are viewed by the interviewees as potential tools with somewhat overlapping possibilities and capacities and their presence is no secondary phenomenon of the music. They become instead a means for the above actors to meet their objectives, be they artistic, pragmatic, technical, or otherwise.

TWISTING THE ARM OF MICHAEL MAIERHOF: COMPOSER, PERFORMER, CONCERT ORGANISER

The German composer Michael Maierhof took a curious and unusual path to becoming a professional composer, performer and concert organiser, one that gives him a unique perspective on the German art music scene. This interview with Maierhof took place on 17 January 2020 in Maierhof's apartment in Hamburg, Germany and forms part of my research into the artistic and socio-economic motivations that composers and artistic directors employ when utilizing a conductor. The interview explores his personal history, compositional techniques, and perspective on the course of contemporary musical history before going on to consider his views on conductor's responsibilities and their role in contemporary music.

From artistic direction to cultural management: governance and management of Barcelona's artistic institutions in the twenty-first century

PurposeDuring the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, debate about the governance and management of national cultural institutions has largely focused on the problematic relationship between art and the economy. However, several more recent changes have made this discussion outdated. These include loss of autonomy in the art world, transformation of cultural production and distribution and instrumentalisation of cultural policies to generate a new context leading to the emergence of art managers.Design/methodology/approachIn terms of cultural policy, the interplay between the governance and management of national cultural institutions is currently problematic, with the work of art managers now replacing the previous “art versus economy” binomial. Here, we demonstrate the growing centrality of the governance paradigm and generation of public value in the local context, by qualitatively examining the discourses of politicians and national cultural institution managers in Barcelona.FindingsWe concluded that a new interface between policymakers and managers has appeared in twenty-first century cultural institutions, and that this has replaced the previous antagonism between artistic directors and managers. Finally, although there is a consensus that the objective of national cultural institutions should be to enhance public value, we also identified the presence of a symbolic battle over how this public value is defined and who should evaluate it.Originality/valueThis paper reveals the centrality of this new debate: policymakers and managers have developed discourses and strategies so that their vision of public value now predominates. In turn, this debate has become the new “battlefield” of cultural policy and reflects a rebalancing between the artistic and political spheres.

The Transnational Roots of Key Figures from the Early Years of the Gate Theatre, Dublin

In Gate Theatre studies, the venue’s original artistic directors, Hilton Edwards and Micheál mac Liammóir, are commonly described as ‘Englishmen’. This chapter breaks new ground by exploring the Irish roots of Edwards and mac Liammóir, and the rumours that mac Liammóir had Spanish and Jewish ancestry. ‘The Boys’ were not the only figures associated with the early Gate to have transnational backgrounds. Coralie Carmichael, the theatre’s biggest female star in its early years, was of mixed Moroccan and Scottish ancestry, and Nancy Beckh, who worked as an actor, costume designer and milliner at the Gate between 1932 and 1956, was a Dubliner of half-German descent. Using critical theories around new interculturalism, the chapter suggests that the mixed backgrounds of these artists helped them to create intercultural performances. It further demonstrates that these performances cannot be simply dismissed as those of people condescendingly engaging in cultural imperialism or shallow cosmopolitanism.

The Internationalist Dramaturgy of Hilton Edwards and Micheál mac Liammóir

In part because the Gate explored an experimental dramaturgy, its artistic directors Micheál mac Liammóir and Hilton Edwards often wrote, spoke and advocated for a drama that could move beyond realism. The analysis of Hilton Edwards’s dramatic commentary reaches from his early articles on dramaturgy right up to his encounter with the Berliner Ensemble in 1956 that influenced Edwards’s most elaborate statement on drama, The Mantle of Harlequin (1958). An important part of Edwards’s vision was his cosmopolitanism, his refusal to view drama within a restricted national framework. Nationality, on the other hand, was more important for the self-styled Irishman Micheál mac Liammóir. On close inspection, however, we find that his outlook did not differ much from Edwards’s. Mac Liammóir’s main concern was for Irish(-language) drama to absorb elements from abroad, to escape the straitjacket of Abbey realism and to become distinctive in a global context.