Acclaim Hegemony and the Cultural Production of Artistic Worth

Daniel Cotter

Date of Award

2007

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Social Sciences

First Advisor

Brain, David

Keywords

Artist, Selection, Globalization, Art World, Status, Hierarchy, Criticism, Success

Area of Concentration

Sociology

Abstract

Recent sociological inquiry suggests that institutional changes in the field of contemporary, avant-garde art have produced an increasingly skewed distribution of resources among artists. Important thinkers have assumed that globalization has created a platform for increased multiculturalism; that the institutions of criticism, exhibition, and sales provide relatively synonymous measures of artistic reputation; and that pluralism has destroyed the gatekeeping capacity of criticism relative to exhibition and sales. Analysis of the representation of artists in Sculpture magazine suggests that none of these assumptions are valid. First, Sculpture reproduces an international hierarchy of artists very similar to those found in the FNAC, Kunstkompass, & Art Basel. The United States, Germany, and the United Kingdom dominate, followed by a second tier of Western European countries, trailed distantly by a vast periphery. Second, the major differences between these hierarchies reflect the institutional particularities of their respective selection processes. Third, while the symbolic meaning of criticism may have changed, criticism as an institution has grown in parallel with the rest of the art world over the past 200 years, and remains-- among other things--an important input in art dealers' pricing scripts.

Rights

This bibliographic record is available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication. The New College of Florida, as creator of this bibliographic record, has waived all rights to it worldwide under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights, to the extent allowed by law.

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