Tuesday, 9 September 2014

The influence of globalisation on contemporary art

Looking at wider contexts and factors  that have reflected on the forming of conteporary art, I found an article made by the English magazine Frieze. It presents the influence of globalisation on contemporary art by comments of great variety of art practitioners, criticts, journalists and other art related professionals through from last few decades to nowadays. I decided to focus on their view of the present (or 2005th year when the survey was made) in order to illustrate the global changes affect art tendencies. In addition, I have relate them to different aspects of my projects,


  • Audience focus
"...art is no longer a separate sphere. It is now permeated by the art market, by business and political interests, and by the values of the ‘creative industries’." - Teresa Gleadowe, Director of the MA Curating Contemporary Art at the Royal College of Art, London

The capturing of the audience attetion driven by the development of business has been main focus of contemporary artist. It has spread a mass branding of artists, art cathegories and art venues in order to achieve popularity among the public. While in the past, art was observed by aristocrats and people in higher social position, in the 21th century art has been developed to cover people from all social class.

"The audience for art has exploded in size, with a growing emphasis on diversity and education." - Teresa Gleadowe, Director of the MA Curating Contemporary Art at the Royal College of Art, London

This change in terms of accessability has expand the borders of the term "art" and added new forms of it.

"...since the 1990s there have been many attempts to open up this enclosed territory and to diffuse art into the public arena. Daily activities have been appropriated into artistic projects that encouraged the participation of the viewer. Metaphorically speaking it could be said that newness has shifted from the content to the interface. " - Yuko Hasegawa, Artistic Director, 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Japan.

However, recycling and recycled materials have formed a tendecy of branding themselves.

A recent survey about Green Branding of University of Herdfordshire shows: 

"On the product characteristics front, an additional differentiation can be achieved by endowing the product with environmental characteristics, especially since this in itself involves supplying a service component, for example information and certification connected with the Environmental Management System (EMS) of a company. "

Or in other words a constructive relation of a product to the environment can cause a positive difference in consumers perception of it. The same statement could be put in art context as the usage of recycled and environment friendly materials in an art performance can increase the audience's willingness to attend it.




  • Saturation in the art field
"Today, when new conceptual styles and forms have reached the point of saturation and are no longer expected to be fresh, the ideological newness regarding display and transmission should be taken into account." - Yuko Hasegawa, Artistic Director, 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Japan.
"Perhaps the constant recycling of styles, not only Postmodern but also ‘post-new’, is an indication of art and MFA overcrowding." Jack Hanley, gallery owner, Los Angeles

That saturation of artists and art works has been caused not only by the great presense of art venues, exhibitions and fairs and the extention of the term "art" but as well by the development of access to online platforms such as social media, personal websites, video broadcasting sites and the recent bum of blogs.
However, as a part of the outcomes these two tendencies have been observed - art based on previous art works and art illustrating the personal identity of the artist. As I've already researched great number of artists, I linked some of them to the following cathegories.

"Analysing art-historical works is now one of the best solutions to interesting and well-formulated problems" - Luis Camnitzer, New York artist

A great example of an artist and designer who is basing her work on previous art work is Marvin Gaye Chetwynd and her references to films such as Starship Troopers, Cat Woman, Star Wars,etc with which she is illustrating contemporary global problems.

styles and personal signatures have increasingly become trademarks rather than elements of cultural communication, and the elimination of the erosion of information between conception and execution is becoming the priority.”- Luis Camnitzer, New York artist

On the other hand, in the line of artists that are basing their work on personal style can be refered Jennifer Henry who expresses her unique style covered in the extraordinary execution of her shining red carpet cellophane gowns.
  • Elimination of live contact between the art work and the audience.
"Art has become a globalized field, no longer bounded by the physical presence of the work of art.” - Teresa Gleadowe, Director of the MA Curating Contemporary Art at the Royal College of Art, London.

"The X-Box/iPod sense of hardware and software now applies quite efficiently to art world structures. ‘Performance’ art can be packaged and monetized as easily as collateralized and loaned collections. " -  
Jack Hanley, gallery owner, Los Angeles

That lack of necessity in the audience to touch the piece has been driven by the development of internet technology. A special contribution to alienation of the observer more recently have been having the video-sharing web sites such as youtube.


"Like many other digital achievements, Youtube's and other video-sharing sites' accessability have provoked visions of a total democratization of audiovisual space, where there are no barries between producers and the audience, or between professionals and amateurs" (Vonderau, P., 2010)

Not only have video-shaing sites brought easy access to a video of artworks from all around the word but they've also had a great impact on budgeting of a production. This media channel sets equal rights for low and high budget productions leding the final product to talk for itsself.

References:
Catulli, M., Morris, K., Brown, C.Green Branding and networks: building salvaged material 
in a branded value proposition. [online] Available at: http://impgroup.org/uploads/papers/7318.pdf  [Accessed September 09 2014]
n.a., 2005. How has art changed? [online] Frieze. Available at: http://www.frieze.com/issue/article/how_has_art_changed/ [Accessed September 09 2014]
Vonderau, P., 2010. The Youtube Reader [online book]. Available at: http://forskning.blogg.kb.se/files/2012/09/YouTube_Reader.pdf#page=64 [Accessed September 09 2014]

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