Global Art World Research Articles

International Mobility and the “Academic” Ethos of Women in the Global Contemporary Art World: Double-Edged Means of Gaining Recognition

This article draws on a research study of intra-European migrations by Spanish artists and artist intermediaries in order to investigate the specific ways in which women build careers within the globalized contemporary art world. The uncertainties involved in pursuing both an artistic career and international migration frequently lead to “academic” behaviours among women in the population studied. Strategies such as turning to international programmes for artistic creation and international mobility and accumulating professional certifications facilitate these women’s career entries and allow them to aspire to internationalization, but such strategies may be counter-productive in the long term. This article shows how the academic professional ethos commonly found among women artists carries the risk of trapping them in gendered stereotypes and pushing them either towards dominated positions in the contemporary art world or professional bifurcation.

Slow Collecting: Sustainability and the Need for a Paradigm Shift by Iberian Collectors

Collectors are major actors in the global art market as they often spend large sums of money fostering the business. Concerning sustainable collecting practices—i.e., the balance between what is the best for people and for the environment—collectors’ actions seem contradictory. Firstly, ontologically, to collect is to accumulate artworks; secondly, art—the object of the collectors’ desire—and the global art world are not closely aligned with the climate crisis. The art ecosystem encourages trips to participate in art events worldwide, increasing the carbon footprint impact, and rarely uses recycled materials, causing waste. The economic model of the art market lacks sustainability, raising the question: how can we promote a sustainable collecting attitude? In this exploratory study, we will observe art market players, especially the Iberian Peninsula collectors’ actions, in terms of their contribution to reducing the environmental impact of purchases. Based on data, reports, interviews, and published sources, we will investigate collectors’ awareness of the subject and evaluate their adopted actions. As, to date, no analysis has been carried out on the trends of Iberian collecting in the field of climate sustainability, we have focused our study on finding data from the primary source par excellence: the collectors themselves. The aim is to fuel the need for a paradigm shift, concluding on a slow collecting attitude.

Obscured Brilliance: Modern and Contemporary Vietnamese Lacquer

This article gives a brief overview of the development of Vietnamese lacquer painting, a unique art form, which came into being due to French and Vietnamese artists collaborating in the 1920s and has continued to flourish throughout the ensuing periods of war and independence. Under-theorised and relatively obscure, the use of layering, combining mixed media and sanding processes, differed from lacquer arts in other Asian countries at the time, and can be used create a spectacular array of textures and finishes. While the impact of the political context on artistic expression has been explored elsewhere, this study has focused on the processes, techniques and modern styles in the context of the global art world.

Image/text/cliché/insight: analogical practices in the global art world

The special issue Analogical Practices in the Global Art World systematically examines for the first time the widespread practice of constructing global art and architectural histories through analogy. In addition to summarizing the essays presented and the pertinent literature on analogy across several fields, this Introduction marshals primary research alongside scholarship and observations from diverse disciplines to advance two overarching arguments. First, we claim that art world analogies both disclose and influence the axes along which art-historical and museological thinking is habitually oriented: national groupings or “schools” above all, but also chronology, gender, race, cultural identification, art media, and style. Second, we argue that the art world analogy paradigmatically involves collaborations of textual iteration with works of visual art. Proposing, ultimately, that visual analogy is never just visual, we build a theory of analogy-as-discourse for the visual arts.

Chinese Painting: Exploration and Comparison

Chinese painting is full of poetic, expressive power and rhythm, which is different from Western painting and could be unique in global art history and research. The poetic, expressive power and rhythm in Chinese painting have been unique in the global art world. Therefore, it should be evaluated correctly, thoroughly and accurately but not be included only as an example in the dominant Western art world. Doing comparisons between Chinese painting and Western painting is supposed to compare them with one another equally. Learning about the Chinese language and culture is also quite significant when studying Chinese painting to get to know it deeply enough and profoundly.

Review of “The Global Rules of Art: The Emergence and Divisions of a Cultural World Economy”

Larissa Buchholz has written a magnificent account of the Global art market over the last half century. The book combines extensive, and highly nuanced, discussion of a wide range of relevant cultural theories, with an enormous amount of wonderfully researched data and studies of the Global art market and the relevant personnel including artists, curators, gallerists, art critics, art purchasers, and museum personnel. As a result, the book is an empirical and theoretical treasure for those interested in Global art. Buchholz’s motive for starting this study was a desire to understand how some artists from geographic locations that were, historically, outside geographic mainstream locations such as Western Europe and the United States, had nevertheless managed to become successful in the global art world and market. She was especially struck by the well-known paradox that, despite so much talk of a new era of globalization and openness, empirical studies such as those by French sociologist Alain Quemin, showed that contemporary visual arts were dominated by artists from a small number of Western countries. So her research turned to case studies of the very small number of exceptions, artists from “non-Western” countries who had succeeded in the Global art market.

Cultures of Cultural Globalization: How National Repertoires and Political Ideologies Affect Literary and Artistic Circulation

While prior research foregrounds the economic and political conditions that shape cultural globalization, we focus on the effects of culture. We argue that diffusion itself is a cultural practice, and that two types of cultural schemas – ways of conceptualizing national belonging, on the one hand, and geopolitical ideologies, on the other – shape the people, policies, and infrastructures actors deploy to insert their cultural products into the global art and literary worlds. Based on fieldwork in Argentina, South Korea, and Lebanon, we show how two forms of trans-border nationalism – those that incorporate the diaspora based on ethnic or ancestral similarity, and those that incorporate regional neighbors based on common civic norms – are mobilized to circulate art and literature internationally. Who participates in these diasporic and regional networks, however, depends on diffusers’ ideological commitments. We identify two types of aspirational visions for a global (art) world order, which influence which people and institutions cultural makers and managers draw on to diffuse art and literature: a reformative vision, in which the core institutions in traditional centers of power maintain their centrality but become more inclusive of creators from historically underrepresented countries, and a transformative vision, in which the global art and literary world are restructured and power redistributed via new nodes and circuits that circumvent these traditional centers.

From The Editors

From The Editors

Collectivity, Memory, and Art Making: Marcel Pinas and the Maroons in Suriname

This article develops an online interview conducted with the visual artist Marcel Pinas who lives and works in the Caribbean continental country of Suriname, South America. Marcel Pinas, starting from his standpoint as a Maroon clan descendant, focuses his art practice, art projects, and art festival on the country’s complex Maroon culture. The interview analyzes the country’s historical and sociopolitical context and explains the creative process and communitarian development of the art festival that Marcel Pinas initiated in Moengo, a symbolic location for the Maroon population and for Suriname’s post-independence history. Moreover, following the artist’s opinions and shared the article integrates Marcel Pinas’ artworks and installations—even when these are referred to ever so tacitly—and shows some of the relationships between his art practices and the Maroon communities as well as interconnections with the global contemporary art world.

Out of the Outback, into the Art World: Dotting in Australian Aboriginal Art and the Navigation of Globalization

Abstract In recent decades, the popularity of Australian Aboriginal dot painting overseas has exploded, with works by some of Australia's leading artists selling for millions of dollars at auction, as well as featuring in major international exhibitions like the Venice Biennale and documenta. While this carries with it the risk of Aboriginal art and culture becoming diluted or commodified, this essay explores the origins and use of the ‘dotting’ typical of much Australian Aboriginal art of the Western and Central Deserts of Australia, as well as Aboriginal dot painting's circulation internationally, to consider how Aboriginal art's entry into the global art world might also represent an act of Indigenous self-determination. By leveraging the Western fascination with the ‘secret/sacred’ content often assumed to be hidden by these dots, Aboriginal artists have been able to generate an international market for their works. While Aboriginal communities remain among the most economically disadvantaged in Australia, Aboriginal art nevertheless provides a critical means by which Indigenous communities can support themselves, and, more importantly, operates as a form of cultural preservation and a tool by which Aboriginal peoples can assert their sovereignty.

곡문달(谷文達)의 예술전략에 관한 연구

The purpose of this research is to find out what strategies Chinese artist Wenda Gu (1955~) used to build awareness in the international art world and China. In the early 1980s, the trend of modern Western philosophy and modern art flowed into China following the wave of China's reform and opening up. In addition, global interest in Chinese contemporary art is increasing. Amid this trend, the 85 New Wave, which called for the modernization of Chinese art, served as a turning point in history as a major event that revealed its presence in the global art world. In this study, Wenda Gu, a leading Chinese avant-garde writer, examined the significance of the 85 New Wave through analysis of his work as a person who participated in the 85 New Wave. The 85 New Wave is a kind of cultural movement in which young artists, including Wenda Gu, try to reform Chinese society and art through art, and this completely changed the trend of modern Chinese art. In order to investigate Wenda Gu art strategy, he first visualized China's turbulent political and economic situation, and then went to the U.S. to grasp the characteristics of the expansion of the art world and internationalization factors that enabled artists to succeed. It can be seen that he incorporated elements of traditional Chinese culture into his works and actively utilized elements of literati culture in his works. This study is meaningful because it aims to present another perspective on his work based on his attitude change using traditional Chinese cultural elements depending on his position in China and international art circles.

Mo Bahc, the global artworker and the possibility of the network

This paper addresses how Bahc Yiso attained establishment in Korea through vocational labour and flexible authorial practice of his prior incarnation ‘Mo Bahc’ in New York. In relation to the post-1989 contemporary shift from New York to the global artworld and the notion of the networked artworker, it shows how Bahc authorially negotiated this terrain to significantly mediate in the formation of the Seoul artworld. It confirms the influence of the late-capitalist network in shaping the global contemporary artworld, but also demonstrates how the expansion of this field facilitated artworkers who desired to locate themselves beyond the Western institutional and intellectual frameworks of production. In conclusion, it asserts that to account for the progressive practice of a contemporary artworker one should critically attend to the entirety of their labour and agency in the network; beyond and including the production of art works.

Institutional policies and individual decision-making in artistic migrations: the case of Spanish artists and art mediators in the European Union

ABSTRACT Long-established hierarchies of power between territories persist in the so- called global art world. Spanish participants in the art world take advantage of the European free movement regime to internationalise their profiles and improve their chances of global success by migrating to global art hubs like Berlin, Paris or London. Institutional programmes fostering international mobility of European citizens serve a double function. Firstly, they provide a migration channel and advantages to individuals seeking to acquire international experience. Secondly, because of their selective nature, they can function as quality signals for individuals involved in the art world. Thus, institutional mobility programmes can be seen as tools that help manage the uncertainties of both the artistic career and the migration project. Taking Spanish art world participants currently living in European capitals as a case study, this paper presents three empirical types that represent individual profiles emerging from the examined population. These profiles are defined by repeated, lack of or occasional resorting to institutional mobility programmes, as well as to their career orientation and their visions of art and migration. Social characteristics such as gender, social class background and age appear as important factors shaping strategies of career development through migration.

A Suitable Distance? Revisiting a Millennial Approach to Curating Art in the Caribbean

In the autumn of 2006, Soft Box Studios, a small, privately run art gallery in Port of Spain, Trinidad, staged the exhibition A Suitable Distance, comprising twenty-one paintings by artists who were at that time living on the island yet who hailed from elsewhere. Curated by Andy Jacob, a teacher and former deputy curator of Trinidad and Tobago’s National Museum and Art Gallery, the five featured artists were Kofi Kayiga (b. 1943) and Roberta Stoddart (b. 1963)—who have a Jamaican background—alongside Chris Ofili (b. 1968), Rex Dixon (b. 1939), and Peter Doig (b. 1959), who are originally from the United Kingdom. Revisiting the approach taken to curating this group of foreign artists involves looking at the conditions of production and reception for this art and, more generally, for art in the Caribbean, during the first decade of the millennium. Reflecting on this period from a present-day perspective allows A Suitable Distance to be historicized as a millennial approach to curatorial projects that engage with both the global art world and the Caribbean’s local art world, and allows us to assess the geographical and metaphorical distances between them as well as their intersections. The conclusions encourage the continued foregrounding of critical frameworks of analysis and the problematizing of the terms of visibility and success that surround contemporary art and art communities of the Caribbean.

Emerging in the East: the Shanghai Biennale’s pathways to legitimation, 1996 to 2018

This study examines the 22-year development of the Shanghai Biennale from a localized contemporary art exhibition to an internationally renowned art biennale. Through the lens of organizational legitimacy, this research examines how the Shanghai Biennale negotiated changing external pressures to establish within China and grow into the international art world. Using a mix-methods approach, we first create a unique database of participant nationality and then examine artist and curatorial statements, media reports, and interviews with organizers and curators of the Shanghai Biennale from 1996 to 2018. Our study delineates three periods of the Shanghai Biennale’s development: incipient (1996–1998), internationalization (2000–2010), and expanding period (2012–2018). Through these periods we examine the different pathways by which the Shanghai Biennale attained legitimacy first within the local and national Chinese context and then within the Biennale’s expansion into the international art scene. We find at the beginning stage of the Shanghai Biennale, establishing local legitimacy was the foremost concern. When the Shanghai Biennale started to diffuse into the global art world in 2000, focus shifted towards remaking the Shanghai Biennale to comply with international perceptions. That said, our research finds both local and international legitimacy requirements remained salient simultaneously, with the importance of maintaining a good relationship with the Chinese State as a critical basis for internationalization and development. In the most recent editions, more local and non-Western features are included in the Shanghai Biennale, signaling the Biennale’s efforts of distinguishing itself in the global biennale scene. This research contributes to organizational study by closely examining a cultural organization’s ability to negotiate legitimacy requirements in different contexts, but also empirically responds to recent calls for studies on the global development of non-Western biennales.

Art World Fields and Global Hegemonies

AbstractThis paper investigates the art world as a setting for hegemonic status or prestige politics. Powerful states engage in art world status-seeking but appear to face challenges distinct to the art world in so doing. To explain, I adopt a Bourdieusian forms of capital approach, framing the art world as a social field with distinctive contentious dynamics and symbolic politics. I argue states must work through art world networks and institutions to pursue status there, observing local rules in so doing. I frame art world prestige as symbolic capital—the overt, observable pursuit of which tends to undermine any gains. Hegemonic incumbents and challengers face differing such constraints. The existing global art world models rules and standards by homology on that of the current hegemon. A challenger must adapt to this status quo before they can revise it. I unpack these dynamics in the cases of America, China, and India. I focus on their shifting standing in the global art market and performances of national aggrandizement at a recurring global art world event: the Venice Biennale.

Cosmopolitan Repair: Reclaiming and Restoring Cultural Heritage in Postcolonial Nigeria

The retention of sacred artifacts against the will of source countries, particularly ex-colonies, represents a form of social and cultural control that facilitates and exacerbates political and economic inequities between nations. Since independence, generations of Nigerian artists have engaged in various forms of recuperation of pre-colonial aesthetics through the adoption of postcolonial modernist visual tactics to negotiate a sense of self-determination and to recover an autonomous postcolonial national identity. Contemporary artists in Nigeria, particularly in Benin and throughout the diaspora have employed a range of aesthetic political practices to disrupt the legacies of colonialism still pervasive within their industries and communities. Through the creation of subversive artwork which attempts to think beyond the framework of western benevolence embedded in the project of restitution, some have made efforts to resist hegemonic influences within the global contemporary art world. The tactics of decolonial resistance that some Nigerian and diasporic artists have employed suggest a strategic redeployment of an aesthetic tradition that simultaneously advocates for the reclaiming of a black radical indigenous history and full realization of Nigerian cultural autonomous potentialities, while also envisioning a future situated within a global cosmopolitan framework – what I refer to as cosmopolitan repair. Such forms of cultural production constitute a critical component of the recent resurgence of decolonial activism that has swept the global art world which, at its core, poses a resistance to extractive capitalism in the Global South.

The Contemporary South African Artist as Global Citizen

In this article I investigate the ways in which a new humanism can assist contemporary artists in South Africa in making their work relevant to a global audience. Following the ideas of Chielozona Eze (Race, Decolonization, and Global Citizenship in South Africa. Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2018), I argue that decolonisation in art is possible through a cosmopolitan mindset built on inclusion and openness to otherness. Eze's ideas on empathetic cosmopolitanism and global citizenship respond to the need for a new society marked by solidarity with all people, regardless of race, class, gender, or other markers of difference. However, this call for global citizenship does not come at the cost of cultural specificity, which acknowledges (South) Africa as a site of knowledge creation. My argument is supported by an examination of the 2017 Fondation Louis Vuitton show in Paris and the work of Lawrence Lemaoana exhibited there. His embroidered works serve as an example of the ways in which young black artists can access the global art world through being open to reality and to global concerns, leaving behind tradition which is incompatible with modernity. I state that Lemaoana has managed to decolonise his art to become a global citizen with a cosmopolitan mindset, and whose art exemplifies sameness in our humanity.

Destruction or Secession?

1968 saw the May revolt in Europe, a series of events where students protested all-pervading capitalist systems and an ever-encroaching hyper-commodification of art. The protests proliferated beyond student quarters, with the Venice Biennale vernissage plagued by infamous demonstrations. Several artists and even a few national pavilions closed their exhibitions for weeks on end: a true secession from the art world powers that be. A few years later, in 1974, the Venice Biennale reached a breaking point when the event was cancelled once again. Yet this period of turbulence was also one of dynamism, allowing the Biennale’s content to fully align itself with international trends in the nascent global contemporary art world. This article examines—through interpretation of archival documents and a critical analysis of Biennale art market sales and discourses of the 1960s and 70s—how these upheavals reverberated through the Venice Biennale’s history and impacted international relations around the exhibition. In doing so, it contributes to scholarship on the history of the Venice Biennale and provides fundamental clarifications on the institution’s origins. I add to critics’ opinions of the years following the 1968 edition and recall Biennale successes that have remained in the shadows. Analysis throughout the article is drawn from archival documents under-utilised until now.

Analyze Marc Quinn and Tim Noble’s Team Conveyconvey the Theme of Impermanence in Different Ways

After 1990, the global art world began to re-form various micro-ecological art circles, and each micro-ecological art circle has its own concerns.Uncertain definitions of individuals, cultures and bodies make artistic content and forms extremely diverse. During this period, some young artists emerged in the UK, and these artists were called YBA. Compared with previous artists, the materials of their works are diversified, and their creative direction is related to body, life and death, and consumption. Both Marc Quinn and Tim Noble are artists of this era in England. Their works are related to life. They create and express the theme of Impermanence in different ways. This paper analyzes and compares the details of the works of the two artists. This article analyzes and compares the details of the works of the two artists and analyzes how they use different methods to convey themes.