Forgetting the art world

Abstract

The work of art's mattering and materialization in a globalized with close readings of works by Takahashi Murakami, Andreas Gursky, Thomas Hirschhorn, and others. It may be to forget art world-or at least to recognize that a certain historical notion of art is in eclipse. Today, art spins on its axis so quickly that its maps can no longer be read; its borders blur. In Forgetting Art World, Pamela Lee connects current state of this to globalization and its attendant controversies. Contemporary art has responded to globalization with images of movement and migration, borders and multitudes, but Lee looks beyond iconography to view globalization as a process. Rather than think about global art world as a socioeconomic phenomenon, or in terms of imagery it stages and sponsors, Lee considers the work of art's world as a medium through which globalization takes place. She argues that work of art is itself both object and agent of globalization. Lee explores ways that art actualizes, iterates, or enables processes of globalization, offering close readings of works by artists who have come to prominence in last two decades. She examines just in time managerial ethos of Takahashi Murakami; production of ethereal spaces in Andreas Gursky's images of contemporary markets and manufacture; logic of immanent cause dramatized in Thomas Hirschhorn's mixed-media displays; and pseudo-collectivism in contemporary practice of Atlas Group, Raqs Media Collective, and others. To speak of the work of art's world, Lee says, is to point to both work of art's mattering and its materialization, to understand activity performed by object as utterly continuous with it at once inhabits and creates.