Celia Lury, " 'Contemplating a Self Portrait as a Pharmacist': A Trade Mark Style of Doing Art and Science", Theory,Culture,Socieety, Vol.22 (1), London: Sage, pp.93-110
Things we all know -
1. Damien Hirst can brand himself until the cows come home, doesn't mean he is 'good'. It’s a matter of taste.
Boy does Elizabeth Currid make sense. All the talk about gatekeepers and hobbyists and I was thinking that not being in the "scene" was ok and that maybe by a miracle I could be an artist fo’ life. The first thing the reading made me think of was a little old NZ magazine called "No." - a magazine that agonizes me to read but I still look at it. It deals with mainly fashion, but art and music too. Essentially, covers all the bases of popular culture. No magazine is run by a select group of people, "scenesters" if you will. If you read the magazine closely, you will see that the people who write the articles/ take the photos/ style the shoots are also the people who feature in the articles/shoots/photos. They are the gatekeepers to their own publication, therefore they control who the exposure limits/pushes. Wouldn't we all like to think that our artwork is good enough for us to get by without "schmoozing" - but maybe it’s not? In which case, the "scene" better be ready. As Damien Hirst proves, perhaps pure taste isn’t enough to hold onto with this, perhaps we all need to be more committed social networkers. If you really wanted to simplify Currid, you might say that because taste is derived from a social context, become popular/ influential enough within one social context, and then you can dominate it. Then your social group will slowly take over the world. Well, maybe get into the mainstream, anyway.
Its kind of like the Sofia Coppola collaboration with Louis Vuitton – the woman is a filmmaker, yes? But she designs an accessories collection for LV and it takes off. So we assume that she has enough connections to make the bridge between fashion and film that much smaller. S.C got “scene” in’s with LV designers (THE GATEKEEPERS to luxury fashion) and this apparently opened a door (or handbag) for her. By the way, the bag comes cheap for LV at a smashing $2,200 US approximately. To use Celia Lury’s idea, it’s like amalgamating one brand name with another, then taking Currid’s idea, making something luxurious and unattainable to most of the world and letting the desire filter down through the masses… sigh.
If we can take anything from the death of Michael Jackson, we can surely prove that the scene controls all. Much as to what you said, when Michael died he became the No. 1 selling artist on iTunes. The current/popular sells, and the advertising/media will always jump on board and back this to the death.
ReplyDeleteIf I were to leave one more example, Kanye West- despite his remarks towards Taylor Swift at this years VMA's, his shoe design for Nike (the Air Yeezy's) as dubbed, the first 2 original pairs are selling for over 16k USD. It doesn't matter what he does, publicity is publicity no matter what. And it sells.
I have never picked up a copy of No magazine before but I always find magazines such as this highly amusing. The blatant self promotion is cringeworthy. It reminds me of a recentish copy of a Sunday magazine, found within the Sunday Star Times. On the cover was an artist (can't for the life of me remember her name) who specialised in making artworks using stencils and spray paint. Yea good on her, but the article felt like an advertisement for selling her (awful) art. Surely for a national newspaper this is a disgrace? I suppose as James says its all about the publicity.
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