The Sociology of Arts and Markets by Unknown

The Sociology of Arts and Markets by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783030390136
Publisher: Springer International Publishing


9. Collective-Artists: Actors on the Margins of the Global Field of Contemporary Art

Séverine Marguin1

(1)Technische Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany

Séverine Marguin

Email: [email protected]

In the sociological literature of the last 20 years, the figure of the artist has been considered as the precursor of new forms of work which value flexibility, individual initiative, and creativity (Chiapello 1998; Menger 2003). One consequence of this subjectification process is the shift from collective responsibility to individual responsibility (Zimmermann 2011) with the direct implication of questioning the traditional mechanisms of solidarity and regulation of the wage labour society. Many sociologists have uncovered the social problems resulting from these transformations of work, such as precariousness, disaffiliation, and social exclusion (Bourdieu 1999; Castel 2009).

In my PhD, I aimed to identify existing collective responses to these problems resulting from the individualisation of work in our Western societies. Artists, as precursors to these new forms of labour, have been particularly affected by precarious situations as well in the past (Bourdieu 1996; Heinich 1996) as in the present (Abbing 1999; Lahire 2006; Manske and Schnell 2008; Bureau, Perrenoud and Shapiro 2009). My general question was: do they have imagined collective responses to the uncertainty inherent in their profession (Menger 2009)? How can one put social ties and solidarity back into their individualised work practices? I based my approach on the analysis of an exemplary case, namely the visual artist as paragon of individualism, and analysed the collective practices of these individualised workers.

This chapter, taken from my doctoral thesis, looks more specifically at the reception of such collectives in the field of contemporary art. I will focus on one of the most radical forms of an artists’ collective: the collective-artists, which appeared at the turn of the 1960s in the context of the questioning of the author’s figure. By collective-artists, I mean a group of two or more artists producing singular artwork with several hands and signing it collectively. I would like to explore the “success” of these groups: are they recognised? Certainly, the contemporary history of art has been punctuated by success stories of collective-artists: for example, General Idea, Gilbert & George, Fischli/Weiss, IRWIN, or Gelitin. Are these examples exceptions? What is the degree of acceptance of collective formats in the field of contemporary art?

In order to analyse the level of the consecration of collective-artists, the theory of the artistic field, which Bourdieu developed in his analysis of the French literary field at the end of the nineteenth century, represents a relevant theoretical frame for examining the structure of the globalised contemporary art field of today. Several authors (notably Wuggenig 2012; Buchholz 2012; Zahner 2006; Schultheis et al. 2015) have contributed to its actualisation and implementation for the current period and the visual arts sector.

The question of sources has proven to be problematic, as there is no census of collective-artists nor federation or listing of any kind. It was only after several years of research in the field, by word of mouth with actors well established in the field, that I could gather contacts eventually.



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