Consumers Of Art Research Articles

A STRATEGIC LOGIC FOR ARTS MARKETING

Recent thinking within arts philosophy has moved further and further away from the concept of autonomous art. Nowadays art is mostly seen as an intrinsic part of everyday human life. Artistic value is conceived of more and more as something that depends largely upon experiencing the works as they are encountered within general culture. This relational perspective on art has important implications for the future development of arts marketing as a discipline. This article argues that arts marketing should primarily aim to support and reinforce the artistic functioning of artworks. It proposes that art consumers should be seen as co‐producers in the total art process and advocates that arts marketing should focus on the artistic experience as the core customer value.

The Atrocity Repetition

The Atrocity Repetition Davis Schneiderman J. G. Ballard: Quotes Edited by V. Vale and Mike Ryan RE; Search Publications http://researchpubs.com 415 pages; paper, $19.99 The signature obsessions of J. G. Ballard's long career—the elucidation of linkages between modernity and atrocity, the exteriorization of the human consciousness through the development of the technological, the extemporization of a popular culture seemingly unaware of its own implications —not only predominate the new RE/Search volume, J. G. Ballard: Quotes, but they populate its four-hundred-plus pages to such an extent that the effect is similarto finding oneselfinside the unsteady cylinder of a Ballard novel. Of course, this book is neither Empire ofthe Sun (1984) nor Crash (1973), but the position of Jim in the former, or Vaughan in the latter, is replicated in Quotes as the necessity of an almost surrealist de-realization of the world. First, there are the sudden delights, as when it is asserted that the American President "bears about as much relationship to the real business of running America as does Colonel Sanders to the business of frying chicken." Then, the clever metaphors: "If the sun is the ultimate TV station, then the beach is its most popular program, and life at a holiday resort resembles a chaotic rehearsal for the last great sitcom, a fusion of Baywatch and Armageddon." Before long, we reach the more sinisterjuxtaposition of man and machine, science and imagination, the place where "the ultimate Surrealist act would be to take a revolver and fire at random into a crowd." In the stranger moments of Quotes, Ballard's readers will indeed find the chance meeting on a dissecting table comprised ofa sewing machine and an umbrella (Breton through Lautréamont) that not only characterizes the surrealism he admires so much, but the enhancements he has made to its technique: "The ragged skyline of the city resembled the disturbed encephalograph of an unresolved mental crisis... ," or "Working in an office for a great many years can be one of the most crucifying experiences. You are forcedto repress your biological needto kill everyone around you." If we look more closely at this quotation, the repetition of labor tasks that die office worker performs presumably deadens the "soul" of the individual, and would thus be responsible for the repression ofthis interior killer instinct; accordingly, repetition becomes one of the means by which this book critiques and contributes to its own milieu. At its most successful, Quotes (as in the section, "JGB's Art Show") uses serial quotations from the publications Heavy Metal, Artforum, Blitz, Spike, and Evergreen Review to construct the narrative of Ballard's exhibition ofcrashed cars (held at the New Arts Laboratory in London, 1969) as an "experiment " or a "confrontation" between the bourgeois art consumer and this display of atrocity. This test case for the novel Crash offered guests prodigious amounts of alcohol, the chance to be interviewed on closed-circuit TV by a topless woman, and an opening night that had guests "breaking the bottles of red wine over the cars, smashing the glasses, grabbing the topless girl and dragging her into the back of one of the cars." The multiple quotations that tell this story never feel repetitive, and the structure is more like a slightly skewed Rashômon than the filing and collating of a bored secretary. Still, several sections tend toward the latter, as when the opening division ("The Future") describes totalitarianism in one quotation as "ingratiating and subservient, rather than using the jackboot," only to be followed, in the next quotation, by a characterization that the system will be "subservient and ingratiating, the false smile ofthe bored waiter rather than the jackboot." Yes, of course, this is part of the point, and that such repetitions do not go unnoticed is owing in part to the book's easy-to-use format. Topics are conveniently grouped together, extractions from novels and interviews and short stories and essays are freely interwoven —and astute readers will no doubt discover enough personally instructive meta-commentary hidden throughout the text to stay entertained, as for instance: "Having been a reviewer myself, I can always tell when somebody has stopped...

Furtum and the Description of Stolen Objects in Cicero, In Verrem 2.4

Cicero portrays Verres here in ways that are strikingly similar to those that would be used against a thief in a civil proceeding: he emphasizes that Verres carried off goods, characterizes Verres' purchases as forced sales, and describes the stolen objects in a spare manner like the one used in theft accusations. Cicero's matter-of-fact descriptive mode also plays a key role in his own self-presentation as an informed, but not enthusiastic, consumer of art, unlike Verres. The spare descriptions thus reinforce Cicero's ethical strategies.

Art Economics: A New Approach

This paper presents a new concept of art economics, here understood as an economics of the diffusion of artistic knowledge. Our thesis is that, in order to solve problems linked to public funding of the arts and to the efficiency of the culture industry, the economist has to set foot on the terrain of aesthetics and, with complete autonomy, has to build for himself a set of aesthetic variables to be applied to an industrial economic model. This implies that the art economist has to concern himself with art, which, paradoxically, contrasts markedly with the present economic tradition. The legitimation of the aesthetic variables selected occurs empirically, with reference to specific works of art, which the economist is able to evaluate by relying simply on his competence as an art consumer. Art economics, thus understood, has therefore a marked consumerist connotation. The art economist is a defender of art-consumer rights, which are presently trampled on by the inefficiency of the culture industry.

Renaissance Women Patrons: Wives and Widows in Italy (c. 1300-1550)

Proper, conduct - wives, widows, women as viewers and consumers of art wives widows and the law commissioning from the grave commemorating dead men - funerary altarpieces, funerary monuments self-portraits - votive portraits, funerary portraits acting for themselves acting together living saints Margarita Pelligrini.

Picture Consumption in London at the End of the Seventeenth Century

Auction catalogues from 1689 to 1692 reveal that tens of thousands of pictures were offered for sale in London during these years, but little is known about the purchasers. Using evidence from probate inventories, this article argues that the London middle classes were major buyers of the paintings available at these sales, and that this new group of art consumers was important to the development of both the art market and the art theoretical discourse of the period.

Picture Consumption in London at the End of the Seventeenth Century

Auction catalogues from 1689 to 1692 reveal that tens of thousands of pictures were offered for sale in London during these years, but little is known about the purchasers. Using evidence from probate inventories, this article argues that the London middle classes were major buyers of the paintings available at these sales, and that this new group of art consumers was important to the development of both the art market and the art theoretical discourse of the period.

Segmenting Alberta Arts and Festival Consumers: Part 1: Overview of the Arts Consumer

Segmenting Alberta Arts and Festival Consumers: Part 1: Overview of the Arts Consumer

Beyond offending the audience: Violating the audience body

The most recent survey of performance art theory to appear in the United States, the Spring 92 issue of Discourse: Journal for Theoretical Studies in Media and Culture, while it treats a number of performance‐related issues ‐ auto‐destructive art, Viennese Actionism, even “what is left of performance art “ ‐ pays astonishingly little attention to the body of the audience and virtually no analysis is applied to the question of the function of the audience body in/during high‐risk performance. This essay offers an overview of the phenomenon of so‐called pain or risk art as produced in the United States and Europe with special attention to the stresses and dangers brought to bear against an audience often perceived by the artistic community as a mere consumer of art, if not downright recalcitrant. The articulation of this rarely acknowledged hostility is itself the breaking of a taboo.

The knowledge most worth having: Otis W. Caldwell (1869?1947) and the rise of the general science course

In 1860 Herbert Spencer asked the famous rhetorical question ‘What Knowledge is of Most Worth?’ The unequivocal answer was science. Giving greater attention to science and scientific knowledge would not only produce additional scientists; more important, argued Spencer, it would make better parents, better church-goers, better citizens and workers, better artists and better consumers of art. It would lead to a ‘command of fundamental processes’, ‘worthy home membership’, ‘worthy use of leisure’, ‘ethical character’ — the goals of a general education spelled out by Spencerians within the National Educational Association in 1918. Here is our puzzle, then: how are we to interpret a definition of science, one widely accepted both in Spencer's time and in our own, that comes so close descriptively to a commonsensical view of what constitutes non-science? The answer to this question lies in part in the historical relationship between science and general education, a relationship established in the opening decades of this century, when the authority of science and scientific objectivity was in the minds of most educators unimpeachable. The high school general science course, developed in its early stages by the botanist and educator, Otis W. Caldwell, was a potent symbol of this new relationship. Organized around broad, topical issues and claiming to teach the mundane truths of life, general science was more than a loose collection of facts from the various earth, biological, and physical sciences. Its many advocates viewed the new unified science course as pedagogically independent of the specialties yet central to education in general. In 1949, two years after Caldwell's death, 72 percent of the total science enrollments in the United States were in general science and biology, its closest cognate. This paper examines the rise of the general science course and its implications for the reform of secondary school science education. It concludes that while recent reforms may impress students with the personal and social character of science, introducing them to a broad use of the scientific method, they will not necessarily make them more scientifically literate or train them to think about problems in anything like the way professional scientists do. Much less will they introduce students to alternative ways of problem-solving, arguably one of the most important goals of good science teaching.

Variable Forms in Metal Sculpture: Real Motion as a Possibility

or my three-dimensional constructions I use simple mechanisms that permit motion. I do not work with electronics, and I do not need nonhuman sources of energy. I have always chosen the touch of the human hand as the sole source of movement, and I have preserved this method for a quarter of a century, as I am certain that my choice is justified. I greatly respect technical experiments in art; however, I cannot overlook the fact that these continue to leave spectators passive, as mere consumers of art, of new aesthetic aspects of our technical world. My objective is just the opposite: to arouse passive and indifferent spectators and transform them into spontaneous participants, able with their own touches to make immediate contact with the objects. In that way, spectators reorganize the structure of an artwork, thus coauthoring new compositions with creativity and initiative. I construct an object as an open field of possibilities, as I am devoted to the discovery of new creations. The physical manipulation by participants is a constituent of the artwork. The possibility of motion permits the creation of new three-dimensional configurations through the change of position of elements in each construction. Following the moment of transformation through motion, the object can remain in any position, changed only by a new intervention. The basic and final purpose of my objects is to create aesthetic effects in which spectators can take part. The type of construction, the ease of manipulation and the look of the whole piece determine and influence the size of

Participation in the Arts by Black and White Americans

Participation in the Arts by Black and White Americans

Consumers of Hmong Textiles

Profiles of midwestern consumers of Hmong textiles were developed and recommendations were made for improved product design and marketing of Hmong textiles. Participants were 20 consumers of Hmong textiles. In-depth interviews were followed by participants' completing a questionnaire. Central to the interviews were the participants' 1) ranking a set of 10 Hmong textiles according to preference and 2) discussing their reasons for placement of textiles at the top and bottom ranks. Data were analyzed using a content analysis system and hierarchical cluster analysis. Six consumer profiles were developed for Fine Workmanship Consumers, Supporters of the Hmong People, Pragmatic Consumers, Patrons of Hmong Folk Art, Function-Oriented Consumers, and Color-Centered Consumers. The results contributed to a proposition that the majority of textile craft consumers fit a common set of profiles regardless of the textile craft purchased or the consumer's home locale.

Readers and Literature

Disputes about readers have been going on since time immemorial. They began as soon as a permanent circle of readers and viewers had appeared. At the very least, Aristophanes's Frogs was performed in a theater almost two thousand years before Gutenberg invented the printing press. And this comedy, after all, was a parody on various kinds of creators and consumers of art, for the most part about the drones of Athens. This topic, naturally, has not lost its currency even today, when the readership has expanded to an extraordinary degree and readers have come to be distinguished from one another by both their motives for reading and their very skill at reading. Nowadays, the study of readers has acquired great social significance; in all countries, including our own, numerous works on this topic are being published. The authors of these works utilize statistics from libraries and publishing houses and employ special mathematical methods.

Curators, Creators and Consumers

The author discusses the way in which the reward-systems for the professions of art and architecture influence practitioners’ perceptions of their respective roles. Status is considered to be an important factor in this relationship. Following the ideas of Thorstein Veblen on the so-called ‘trickle effect’, the role of status in determining the perceptions of consumers of art and architecture is considered. Consumers are little interested in the issues, invariably formal and abstract, that concern professionals. Artists and architects are urged to address themselves to these realities and engage in a genuine attempt to create for the marketplace if they wish to influence the character of the environment.

Theater and Mass Culture: The Case of the Director

One thing that has frequently struck me about discussions of mass culture is the level of abstraction at which they occur. Theories of culture or generalizations about the media, art and literature often seem to block rather than open the path to an analysis of specific socio-artistic institutions and the history embedded in their structures. I was, therefore, very pleased to learn that the German theater was among the topics to be discussed at this conference, since the theater is certainly one of the most concrete manifestations of the social and ideological codes that organize collective experience in the West. It not only brings together in direct confrontation the producers and consumers of theatrical art, it also embodies the architectural, spatial and economic paradigms that shape our cultural consciousness. Although there will not be room here to discuss all of these aspects of the theater, by mentioning them I hope to raise several interlocking questions. The first of these is, does the theater, as a social and artistic nexus, indeed manifest traces ofor in some way objectify modern mass culture? If so, how, when and where? And assuming that such traces can be located, why has the theater not been made a central focus of social-cultural inquiry? An initial answer to this last question is no doubt found in the distinction frequently made between (high art, high brow, high culture) and low in discussing art and the theater. These clich6s themselves need some investigation, since they not only raise the possibility of two arts and two cultures existing side by side, but also suggest that certain socio-aesthetic products escape from the historical forces that condition cultural development everywhere else. This last problem, however, will be touched on only briefly, toward the end of what follows here, not because it is less important, but because this paper is primarily concerned with discovering whether and in what way the 19th-century German theater may inscribe the origins of mass culture in the history of its structure and practice. The terminological starting point for my analysis will be the Regisseur (the director). According to the Wdrterbuch der deutschen

The Role of the Federal Government in Support of the Arts and Music Education

This report focuses upon the historic role of the federal government in support of the arts and music education by placing instances of federal assistance into periods identified by the common motivational factor of “necessity.” To better understand the factors influencing present-day funding procedures and the likelihood of continued subsidies, government support policies were grouped into periods of “practical necessity,” during the nation's formative years; “economic necessity,” when the financial crisis of the Great Depression caused the government to provide work opportunities for unemployed artists and educators; and “cultural necessity,” during the 1960s and 1970s when aid was provided to meet the expressed needs of artists, educators, and arts consumers. Through the introduction of special programs, innovative funding activities, and creative projects, government support encouraged artists and educators, in recent years, to cooperate in the development of arts education efforts.

A Socialist Critique of Art History in the U.S.A.

The socialist critique of art history derives from the fact that the making, distribution and appreciation of art in Western societies has become an extension of capitalist economics and that therefore the conditions applying to capitalist modes of production and consumption apply also in the realm of aesthetics. The nature of this new relationship between artists, middlemen and the general public tends to be obscured or ignored by traditional art scholarship that analyzes styles and schools of art mainly in terms of pre-capitalist economics. The history of art as a discipline does not seem capable of dealing with new artistic technologies and new relationships between artists, art consumers and the modern impressarios of mass culture who have no obvious counterparts in European history during the main periods into which art history has been divided. As a result, art historical writing and teaching fail to provide the public with adequate conceptual tools to deal with the present significance of art. By treating the history of contemporary art much as it treats medieval or Renaissance art, historians continue to emphasize the privileged character of art objects and their status as a precious commodity in a market of fluctuating pecuniary values. Unfortunately, this approach does not come to grips with the character of inexpensively reproduced imagery as it affects the behavior of members of the general public. Furthermore, in their analysis of traditional works of art as models of ‘quality’, art historians serve the interests of collectors and investors more than the interests of students and of the general public who need to understand the visual sources of their social and spiritual situation.

The Relationship between Years of Art Training and the Use of Aesthetic Judgmental Criteria among High School Students

In art classrooms throughout the country it is common to see teacher and student huddled together engaged in determining how well things seem to be working in the student's art product, or to see the teacher and a group of students discussing the relative merit of several works of art that the students have produced. The ability to make skillful, sensitive, and adequate judgments of the aesthetic merit of works of art is considered to be a highly desirable achievement for the art teacher as well as consumer of art and the future artist. Indeed, art criticism, as it is called, is one of the most pervasive activities of art classrooms. Criticism is seldom taught as an individual topic, but it is persistently taught in a secondary manner through the teachers' and students' continual classroom judgmental activities directed toward students' work-in-progress, completed work, and the reproductions of the work of artists. This obviously important activity of the art classroom led to the question, Just what relation does all this critical activity have to the students' own ability to make adequate judgments of works of art? In a previous study' it was noted that high school students who had taken art classes made more judgmental statements about works of art than their peers who had no art instruction, and also that as the number of years of high school art increased, the number of judgmental statements also increased. But the earlier study made distinctions only between the most gross types of judgments, namely, whether reasons were given for the judgments and how complex the judgments were. There was no attempt to determine systematically what criteria were used in justifying judgments, nor was there an assessment of the adequacy of criteria which were used. A casual examinaton of the data did not indicate much consistency among the students' judgments. Some seemed highly reasoned and adequate while others seemed narrow and inappropriate. A more detailed study of the nature of high school students' critical abilities seemed in order. The purposes of this study were: (1) to determine the nature of the criteria high school students used in judging the aesthetic merit of works of art, (2) to determine if there were differences in the criteria used by students with differing amounts of high school art training (specifically zero years, one year, and three years), and (3) to evaluate the adequacy of the criteria used by high school students in making judgments of aesthetic merit. If a high degree of relation were found to exist between high school art instruction and the ability to make adequate aesthetic judgments, then art teachers might be justifiably satisfied with their practices. However, if on the other hand few relations were found then current practices might be questioned. The study was conducted by developing a set of categories which specified the types of judgments about works of art. These categories were then used as the basis for a content analysis of high school students' judgments of a reproduction of Chagall's I and My Village.

Computerspil og kunstmuseer

Via a range of examples, the article discusses connections between technology, computer games and presentations of art. On the basis of Walter Benjamin’s notorious dictum from the past that the illiterates of the future will not be those who cannot read or write but those who are not capable of dealing with the visual culture of their own time, the article argues that current worldwide visual digital communications, including computer gaming, also have interesting potential for the art museums, especially regarding youth as a forthcoming core group of art consumers. The focus is on – amongst others – the former virtual presentation of the Van Gogh Museum and the first shooter action game Duke Nukem, the Louvre Museum and the Da Vinci Code game and on remediating performances in the Second Life virtual universe.