{"id":62599,"date":"2010-12-08T13:34:45","date_gmt":"2010-12-08T19:34:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=62599"},"modified":"2023-11-25T18:16:05","modified_gmt":"2023-11-26T00:16:05","slug":"seven-days-in-the-art-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/seven-days-in-the-art-world\/","title":{"rendered":"Seven Days in the Art World"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Seven Days in the Art World<\/strong>
\nby Ann Poore<\/span><\/p>\n

Sarah Thornton\u2019s\u00a0Seven Days in the Art World<\/em>\u00a0is an insider\u2019s view (and a reality check) for aspiring artists and a whirlwind tour of just what the title says for the rest of us. It\u2019s a terrific read and deserving of a more extensive write-up.<\/p>\n

Thornton is a journalist with degrees in both art history and sociology. She has contacts seemingly everywhere in the contemporary art scene and takes you along for a very well-researched ride.<\/p>\n

Day One<\/em>\u00a0is devoted to\u00a0The Auction<\/em>\u00a0at Christie\u2019s, a world artists rarely enter, where tonight works by Twombly, Warhol and Ruscha are on the block. Thornton chats up the auctioneer, the bidders for the collectors, the collectors who are there in person, curators, journalists and even a stray artist and winner of the prestigious Turner Prize. He points out that \u201cthe auction is vulgar, in the same way that pornography is vulgar,\u201d and astutely observes that some collectors \u201care effectively buying futures options on a work\u2019s cultural significance.\u201d We learn that there is a substantial difference in the price for work by living women artists versus that of men; the highest prices paid for works of art at auction and who paid them; the interesting differences between primary and secondary art sellers.
\n
\nDay Two, The Crit<\/em>, is spent at CalArts in a seminar where student artists present their work for collective critique. Here we encounter philosophy of art questions: the what-is-an-artist, art\/not art queries and the search for multiple meanings in artwork by those whose work at this point has little monetary value. Thornton explores why the West Coast fosters the ability for artists to take risks: great schools, warm climate, relatively cheap rents and a \u201cliberating distance from the dominant art market in New York.\u201d She finds it significant that in L.A. artists see teaching as part of their practice rather than as a stigma on their careers.<\/p>\n

Day Three<\/em>\u00a0involves a visit to the major contemporary arts fair in Switzerland where collectors plot their best routes to the gallery stands and discuss the then-relentless boom in the art market. On\u00a0Day Four<\/em>\u00a0we visit the entries (and most of the entrants) for the Turner Prize at the Tate Museum in London.\u00a0Day Five<\/em>\u00a0sees us back in New York in the offices of\u00a0Artforum<\/em>, where we examine the inner workings of the magazine and its website.<\/p>\n

On\u00a0Day Six<\/em>\u00a0we are in Tokyo, setting out to visit\u00a0The Studio<\/em>\u00a0(or three) of Takashi Murakami, who perhaps surpasses Warhol in his breadth of interests and ambitions. Beyond Warhol\u2019s peeling banana for The Velvet Underground\u2019s first album, Murakami did hip-hop artist Kanye West\u2019s third album cover, the singles covers and an animated music video \u2013 because Kanye was a fan of the artist\u2019s 1997 \u201cbig-breast\u201d sculpture.<\/p>\n

The week climaxes at the Venice Biennale, the outsize exhibition of contemporary work that ends for the art world the week it opens to the public.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s an intelligent and insightful journey into the subcultures and dynamics of a once-heated art market, no longer hot but still simmering.<\/p>\n

Seven Days in the Art World\"\"<\/em>
\nSarah Thornton
\nW. W. Norton & Company; First Edition edition (November 3, 2008)
\nISBN-13: 978-0393067224<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Seven Days in the Art World by Ann Poore Sarah Thornton\u2019s\u00a0Seven Days in the Art World\u00a0is an insider\u2019s view (and a reality check) for aspiring artists and a whirlwind tour of just what the title says for the rest of us. It\u2019s a terrific read and deserving of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":844,"featured_media":62600,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_piecal_is_event":false,"_piecal_start_date":"","_piecal_end_date":"","_piecal_is_allday":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-62599","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-reviews","category-visual_arts"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/051s.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-26 00:59:53","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62599","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/844"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62599"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62599\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":72348,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62599\/revisions\/72348"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62600"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62599"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62599"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62599"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}