Screening the Art World

Unlike most studies of the relationship between cinema and art, which privilege questions of medium or institutional specificity and intermediality, Screening the Art World explores the ways in which artists and the art world more generally have been represented in cinema. Contributors address a rarely explored subject -art in cinema, rather than the art of cinema - by considering films across genres, historical periods and national cinemas in order to reflect on cinema’s fluctuating imaginary of ‘art’ and ‘the art world’. The book examines the intersection of art history with history in cinema, cinema’s simultaneous affirmation and denigration of the idea of art as ‘truth’ and what this means for cinema’s understanding of itself, the dominant, often contradictory ways in which artists have been represented on screen, and cinematic representations of the art world’s tenuous position between commercial good and cultural capital.

When Art isn’t Real

The art world is a multi-billion-dollar industry which captures world headlines on a regular basis, for both good and bad reasons. This book deals with one of the most-discussed areas of controversy: high-profile objects that have experts arguing about their veracity. Some may have been looted, others may be fakes, some may be heavily restored or misattributed. Often, in these cases, analytical science is called on to settle a dispute. The authors of this book have decades of experience in this field, working on a range of objects dating from prehistory to the twentieth century. They present seven of the most famous cases from the Getty Kouros to the Turin Shroud – some of which are still contested, and examine how a few words from a connoisseur or scientist can make a virtually valueless object worth hundreds of millions. And vice versa.

The visual gamut and syntactic abstraction

Charles S. Peirce’s second trichotomy, which introduces the concepts of iconicity, indexicality, and symbolicity, is probably the only piece of his semiotic that is familiar to visual artists and designers. Although the concepts have found their way into the academy, their utility in the field has been reduced for a couple of reasons. First, as with all of Peirce’s philosophy, his second trichotomy is a concept that is subtle, fluid, and difficult to fully grasp in a sound bite. Second, there has simply been no bridge concept that would form a working connection between that philosophy in its logical guise and the studio practice in the visual arts. The purpose of this article is to remedy that situation by investigating the subtle ways the second trichotomy functions within the visual sphere, and to then suggest a model that can serve to bridge the divide between pure theory and practice. The article makes four main points: first, using examples from visual identity and the graphic arts, it demonstrates how the modes of icon, index, and symbol tend to be blended; second, examples from fine art are used to illustrate how the concept of abstraction, as used in the art world, can only be partially accounted for within the second trichotomy, but can be modeled by supplying a syntactical supplement; third, it expands on and elaborates a previously sketched model, the visual gamut, which makes it possible to classify visual entities according to their position within a map of semantic and syntactic space; finally, it concludes by suggesting ways this enhanced version of the visual gamut model might be used in the analysis of, or creation of, art and design, presenting suggestions for further study.

The Factors of Market Success and Failure of Contemporary Artists from ASEAN countries | ปัจจัยทางการตลาด ที่ทำาให้ศิลปินร่วมสมัยจากประเทศอาเซียนประสบ ความสำาเร็จ หรือ ล้มเหลว

The market of contemporary art from Southeast Asia hasn’t been explored in-depth, despite its rise in sales and notoriety over the last two decades at national and international levels. Our aim is to identify the factors of success and failure of contemporary artists from ASEAN countries in the global art market. To do so, we map the trajectories of those artists and evaluate the role of the other stakeholders of the art world. Our methodology relies on a multidisciplinary approach, balancing quantitative and qualitative data. The period of study focuses on the art market data since 2000.

Counterpublic Goods in Interesting Times: Transitional Subjectivities Onstage at Highways Performance Space, 1989–1993

A raging global pandemic handled inadequately and indifferently by the Republican-led US federal government, with Dr. Anthony Fauci in a featured role; an antiracist uprising in response to police brutality; a resurgent political Right fomenting and stoking culture wars; activists’ demands for a diverse and equitable art world; increasing fiscal precarity for small, innovative live art spaces; a looming recession; and an escalating housing crisis fueled by accelerating income inequality: welcome to Los Angeles between 1989 and 1993. In this period, AIDS became the leading cause of death for US men ages 25–44; ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power)/LA called public health infrastructure to account and successfully fought for an AIDS ward at Los Angeles County Hospital. A widely circulated video of Los Angeles Police Department officers viciously beating Black motorist Rodney King, and their subsequent acquittal of criminal charges by a suburban jury, ignited five days of antiracist rebellion. The rising number of unhoused people in Los Angeles was becoming difficult to ignore, though not for the city's, state's, or federal government's lack of trying. “Multiculturalism” became a widely embraced—if sometimes cynically deployed—aesthetic and programming imperative.

Contemporary Taonga: The Art Works of Brett Graham

<p>The production of taonga is a sovereign Māori tradition closely guarded in contemporary Māori society. Many Contemporary Māori Artists observe taonga principles in their work though these qualities are stifled within the New Zealand art system. In the 1990s these subjects were fiercely debated resulting in Contemporary Māori Art being defined differently to the ancestral tradition of taonga. This debate created a rupture, which disturbs the practice of Māori art and is a major concern in the emerging practice of Māori art history. Reviving earlier arguments for Contemporary Māori Art to be defined according to the principles of taonga, this thesis applies the concept of ‘contemporary taonga’ to the art works of Brett Graham (Ngāti Koroki Kahukura), to argue that taonga production is active in contemporary Māori life and offers a new method to reconcile Māori art histories. The practice of Kaupapa Māori research and theory enlivened the taonga principles of Brett Graham’s art works. Intensive accounts of two art works, produced a decade apart, reveal ‘contemporary taonga’ to be a collaborative process involving recognition and instrumentalisation by authoritative Māori viewers. Kahukura (1996), produced in response to the debates was, however, overwhelmed by competing interests of the time. Āniwaniwa (2006) undertook an arduous journey—to the centre of the Western art world in order to be shown within the artist’s tribal rohe—where Ngāti Koroki Kahukura kaumātua recognised Graham as a tohunga. Iwi leaders also employed Āniwaniwa in their Treaty of Waitangi claims process, functionalising the art work as taonga to support the advancement of their people. Āniwaniwa then left New Zealand to play a role in the formalisation of an international indigenous art network. As a type for contemporary taonga, Āniwaniwa is an expansive model to introduce this concept to contemporary art discourse. The impact of this concept is yet to be realised though immediately reconciles long-standing issues in Māori art. ‘Contemporary taonga’ has the potential to radically reconcieve, and reorganise, Contemporary Māori Art practice and history according to the practice of ancestral Māori traditions and determined by the authority and agency of Māori people.</p>

Testing Grounds and Launching Pads: Situating the Artist-Run Space Today

<p>My research is concerned with the formation of artists as creative subjects in an increasingly neoliberalised art world. This study examines to what extent does the artist-run space offer alternatives to current neoliberal orthodoxy in the art world. There has been little research to understand the lived experiences of emerging visual artists within neoliberalism. The thesis is located in museum studies but stretches beyond this field in an interdisciplinary approach to explore the complexity of what it means to both make art and self-organise. The thesis presents multiple case-study research into three New Zealand artist-run spaces; RM, Enjoy Contemporary Art Space and Meanwhile. Qualitative research brings the experiences of artist-run space participants to the fore through interviews, examining how they understand and articulate their involvement, negotiate tensions over power, and position themselves in an art world that seeks to enfold them in its own narratives. I analyse and discuss the findings through a series of connecting theoretical frameworks—assemblage theory, creative labour and governmentality—which together map the distinct practices that shape, and reshape, the artist-run space. My research contributes to literature on creative workers within neoliberalism, providing new knowledge about tactics and strategies deployed by emerging visual artists to carve space for their activities on their own terms. The thesis argues that while artist-run spaces are embedded in the mainstream through both networks of strategic reciprocity and funding imperatives, the nuances which define an individual artist-run space are both broader and messier than their increasingly formal structure suggests. The identity formation of the artists and creative workers whose hard work and passion keep artist-run spaces going is similarly compromised, confounding simplistic readings. I propose that the notion of ‘alternative’ is too binary an understanding to describe artist-run spaces within a time of neoliberalism, instead, this thesis seeks to complicate and problematise the term.</p>