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Tuesday, January 1, 2008

The contemporary art world in 2008

Posted by seiinod at 8:13 PM

What should I write between Xmas and the new year? No contemporary art news to comment?
One of the blog's reader just asked me to write "a vision" of what will be 2008 for the contemporary art world... It would be a bit pretentious... You would not hate me for that, would you?
Having a look on the last 'ARTPrice' report, I recently did some figures work in order to get a view on what is the contemporary art world 'culture' within the framework of a MA in intercultural Business Communication.
Easy to determine who rules the art world isn't it? It is precisely a matter of rules and power, isn't it? Like the U.S., if you are responsible of 45.9% of the 'market share' for the contemporary artworks on the secondary market (auction houses), you get a better position to set "the way to do it". I believe figures from the secondary market are still relevant to analyse the art world but not for long: Biennials and fairs pop-up everywhere and get more and more power on the market and change the deal radically... This is now almost taken for granted.

ArtPrice Report 2006

Back to our market figures, we can stress that numerous writers have analysed how the contemporary art world evolved in concordance with the culture of the members of the social relationship network within which contemporary art is produced, viewed and criticised; stressing the existence of an hegemonic power of western culture.

Analysing the market shares by countries from a cultural studies angle, we can see that the International contemporary art market is dominated by highly individualistic countries.
The dominant western art market also appears highly hierarchic and tends to give little chance to artists and enterprises to move among genres (but also that no importance is accorded to these new genres unless there are values of prestige associated). In other terms it does hardly give a chance to new emerging movements, especially if those movements do not emerge from the major cultural actors of the International art market.
Sorry for the headache...

So, the hard world is dominant, gives no chance to other actors... It does not explain why the media keeps on talking about India and China... Look at the press, it's crazy!!! Money is the explanation, ...but I certainly do not mean that Chinese or Indian artists have no talent!!! I won't go too much into details as I recently wrote a post about it in this blog (How to learn to be an art financial trader while taking the plane...). To make it simple, an artwork is unique and so, a good store of value. Therefore, the boom in the market comes from the need to store the excess of capital generated by the global prosperous companies. In the contemporary economic climate, Art is a good investment... At least until a better financial opportunity arise.


Big Family, Lithograph, Edition of 199, 200370cm x 82.6cm

The growth in Asian countries changes the global deal, but Chinese investors buy contemporary artworks in China, Indians in India, U.S. buy in the U.S. (also mainly due to Dollar depreciation that makes artworks 'unaffordable') and France anywhere else but in France.

I believe that this is only the first step of this 'new deal'. These changes will not only affect the content of the market, but will also change its culture: India and China will probably introduce their set of values to the contemporary art world business etiquette...

Any prediction? Yes...

  • Less differenciation (in other words we may see a low segmentation of the genres e.g. ‘expressionism’, segmented in institutionalised sub-genres such as ‘figurative expressionism’, ‘abstract expressionism’...etc);
  • less hierarchisation (this means that genres won't be organised according to the value of prestige associated).
  • More universalism in the art classification systems (which will also largely be enhanced by the maturity of the information transference technologies);
  • finally, we may see a growing facility for artists and enterprises to move between ritualised genres.

It looks all fine to me... We may see more artists from what we used to call 'products of colonisation' affirming cultural identities without too much difficulties as the pressure resulting of not being part of what we used to call "the hegemonic western art world" may decrease.
This set of potential changes within the contemporary art world culture may therefore sign the end of the modernism... Postmodernism is only a baby... Let's hope it is a genius!

Detail from The Silk Route by Subodh Gupta ("The Damien Hirst of Dehli"-The Guardian- ArtReview). Photograph: Colin Davison

Good ole artistic trends debates may probably disappear in such conditions! No more: "My 'Nouveau Réalisme' is an answer to your 'painting and sculpture hegemony'..." or "I developed my idea of 'cubism' in reaction to your Blablablah..." Such a shame...

All these personal predictions concern the art world in market terms... What about the artists and the artworks?

Have you recently visited the Saatchi website? It now looks like a MySpace for the artists... I read in your mind that this must concern a minority as Facebook and MySpace themselves are too big to allow any serious competition... Well you may be wrong then: I read "HITS IN THE LAST 24 HOURS: 60,914,153!!!! RANK TODAY IN THE WORLD'S TOP 50.000 SITES: 227(Source: Awstats, Alexa)". It is an example among many other relevant examples. As a result of the resulting competition among artists, I see an increase of the artwork technical and aesthetic quality, already initiated by artists like Lisa Yuskavage or John Currin mentioned in the 'artwork of the month' for December in this same blog.

Jeff Koons - Model for a project... Work in progress

You can already see that artworks are more and more expensive to produce... Is it a consequence of these changes? If realized, the 161 foot tall hanging train would be located at the entrance of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and would become a perfect illustration of the contemporary affordability to be a 'good artist' (see model above). I must admit that I am joking a bit... Koons can do it? Ok why not! It does not mean to me that someone from the other corner of the world may not impress the whole art world with a pencil, a A4 piece of paper and a great idea...

In conclusion, to YOU, the black middle class, bisexual lady from Kenya with your pencil and your A4 piece of paper... I wish you the best for 2008 and will probably see you soon in a famous contemporary art museum in China!

Happy new year everybody!

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