Ranking Art: Paradigmatic Worldviews in the Quantification and Evaluation of Contemporary Art

Abstract

While numerous studies have shown diverse effects of rankings, rather little is known about their production. This article contributes to a broader understanding of rankings in society, and does so by focusing on underlying worldviews. I argue that the existence of a ranking and its concrete methodology can be explained by the producer’s paradigmatic assumptions about a world-to-be-ranked. Referring to the sociology of knowledge and studies on commensuration, comparisons, quantification and valuation, I provide a general heuristic to analyze this relation between underlying worldviews and observational regimes through which order is constructed systematically. Presenting empirical results on a ranking for the most famous artists in the world, I show how the review device’s initial problem and its construction of order derive from consistent assumptions about contemporary art, its symbolic structures and its social embeddedness. These findings have implications for both research on rankings and sociology of the arts.

The concentration of power in the market for contemporary art: an empirical analysis of ArtReview’s “Power 100”

“…(Krause 2001, p. 196, own translation from German). The "worldview" (Buckermann 2021) is that of the committee members, i.e., the distribution of power in contemporary arts as recognized by members of contemporary art.…”

Trajectories of Consecration: Signature Style and the Pace of Category Spanning

“…Consider the case of rap music, where the need for recognition as authentic members of the music scene (Koza, 1999) prompts artists to reiterate legitimate elements before introducing any significant stylistic change (Lena & Pachucki, 2013). On the other hand, if producers aspire to establish an eclectic identity, then a faster pace of category spanning would help them delay the development of strong audience expectations, postponing de facto the time when a judgment on their identity is formulated as in the case of contemporary art (Buckermann, 2020).…”

Worlds of Rankings Research

“…Due to the limitation of space, and unless stated otherwise, most references cited in this section are for illustrative purposes and do not necessarily represent the only or the most important work in the given strand.4 We can also find research on rankings of individuals, such as artists(Buckermann 2021), athletes(Lom 2016), and scientists(Macri and Sinha 2006), but also of non-actor entities (e.g., products, vehicles, works of art, etc.). Although these and other works in this category present us with important contributions to the study of rankings, the research on rankings of individuals could hardly qualify as a distinct strand.…”