Mapping intermediaries in contemporary art according to pragmatic sociology

Heinich, Nathalie

doi:10.1177/1367549412450634

Cited by 34 publications

(25 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…Lastly, empirical findings of this research show that the emergence of digital art platforms like Saatchi Art impinges on the power and strategy of other intermediaries. Indeed, the layer of intermediaries in the field of contemporary art is in flux because of the repositioning of the status of its inner members (Bourdieu, 1996;Giuffre, 1999;Heinich, 2012;Lee and Lee, 2017;Velthuis, 2012), due to the appearance of new styles of artworks and the emergence of new players. The selected artists by Saatchi Art get more opportunities for involvement with other intermediaries 5 .…”

Section: Discussion Conclusion and Research Implicationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

User participation and valuation in digital art platforms: the case of Saatchi Art

Lee

2019

EJM

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Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of digital platforms on the contemporary visual art market. Drawing on the theoretical insights of the technology acceptance model (TAM), the meaning transfer model (MTM), and arts marketing literature, we conceptualise the role of user participation in creating the meaning and value of contemporary artworks in the online art market.Design/methodology/approach -We conduct a qualitative study of Saatchi Art as an instrumental case for theorising. It is an online platform for trading visual artworks created by young and emerging artists. The data for this study were collected through direct observation and documentary reviews as well as user comments and buyer reviews from Saatchi Art. We reviewed 319 buyer comments and 30 user comments. The collected data are supplemented with various secondary sources such as newspapers, magazines, social media texts, and videos.Findings -The growth of digital art platforms such as Saatchi Art provides efficiency and accessibility of information to users, while helping them overcome the impediments of physical galleries such as geographical constraints and intimidating psychological atmosphere, thereby attracting novice collectors. However, users' involvement in the process of valuing artworks is limited and still guided by curatorial direction.Originality/value -User participation in the online art market is guided by curatorial direction rather than social influence. This confirms re-intermediation of marketing relationships, highlighting the role of new intermediaries such as digital platforms in arts marketing.

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Section: Discussion Conclusion and Research Implicationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

User participation and valuation in digital art platforms: the case of Saatchi Art

Lee

2019

EJM

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“…This fosters a previously unseen intellectualization of discourse on art, in which sociologists and philosophers now join the ranks of experts writing on contemporary art – ranks that had previously been largely restricted to art historians (cf. Heinich, 2012).…”

Section: Conclusion and Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Trends in Contemporary Art Discourse: Using Topic Models to Analyze 25 years of Professional Art Criticism

Roose

Daenekindt

2018

Cultural Sociology

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In this article, we use topic modeling to systematically explore topics discussed in contemporary art criticism. Analyzing 6965 articles published between 1991 and 2015 in Frieze, a leading art magazine, we find a plurality of topics characterizing professional discourse on contemporary art. Not surprisingly, media-or genre-specific topics such as film/cinema, photography, sculpture/ installations, etc. emerge. Interestingly, extra-artistic topics also characterize contemporary art criticism: there is room for articles on new digital technology and on art and philosophy; there is also growing interest in the relationship between art and society. Our analysis shows that despite evolutions in the field of contemporary art -such as the 'social turn', in which contemporary art starts paying more attention to social forms and content -the prevalence of certain topics in contemporary art criticism has barely changed over the past 25 years. With this article, we demonstrate the unique value of topic modeling for cultural sociology: it is both a powerful computational technique to generate a bird's-eye view of a huge text corpus and a heuristic device that locates key texts for further close reading.

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“…Therefore, while alternative and more recent perspectives can be highly generative (I am thinking here especially of excellent work by e.g. Childress 2017;Heinich 1996Heinich , 2012Velthuis 2005), I have chosen to engage with a single and highly influential interlocutor for the purposes of this article rather than outline a tedious point-by-point discussion of the ramifications of each possible alternative. 2I failed to schedule meetings with three artists, and a fourth was too ill to participate and died shortly after I asked for an interview.…”

Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Black Hole Suns: Binarism and Gravity in Cultural Fields

Gerber

2019

Cult. Unbound

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Sociologicial analyses of artistic practice have long drawn on theoretical traditions grounded in binaries and dualisms. Such analytical strategies, exemplified here by field theoretical approaches, center art objects and their movements in and across markets, where binaristic visions of art worlds do offer significant leverage. But when the analyst moves away from markets for art objects and looks to artistic practices the binaristic lens provides, at best, a blurred image with meaningful blind spots. This article suggests an alternative vision of artistic practice-one based on gravity rather than polarity-that captures the ways individuals and their actions make sense in a specific universe of meaning without forcing them into fundamentally competitive and economistic relationships. It leverages findings enabled by a unique sampling strategy in a four year study of visual artists in the United States to illuminate some limitations of binary theoretical frameworks, and outlines a generative alternative to dualism that promotes new analytical and theoretical directions for sociological analyses of artists and artistic practice. This alternative model provides new leverage on four persistent issues in analyses of artistic work: cultural change in occupational fields; actors' attempts to manage overlapping but incommensurate forms of recognition, reputation, attention, and success; the persistent hegemony of markets for objects in both vernacular and sociological understandings of artistic practice; and questions of visibility and legitimacy central to understanding boundary formation and boundary work in creative fields. The gravitational metaphor promotes a distict set of strategies for the study of artistic work as well as other nontraditional occupations.

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Mapping intermediaries in contemporary art according to pragmatic sociology

Cited by 34 publications

References 15 publications

User participation and valuation in digital art platforms: the case of Saatchi Art

User participation and valuation in digital art platforms: the case of Saatchi Art

Trends in Contemporary Art Discourse: Using Topic Models to Analyze 25 years of Professional Art Criticism

Black Hole Suns: Binarism and Gravity in Cultural Fields

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