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Part 1
The Art of Today and Its Meaning
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Chapter 1
The Purpose of Contemporary Art: Social and Economic Drivers
Susana Gonçalves
Abstract
This chapter begins with a brief journey through the history of art in order to point out art serves both social and psychological functions and how it is tinged by civilizational and historical context by accumulating layers of purposes and sense from the past times and diverse mind frames. Art produced in the first quarter of the twenty-first century has absorbed the late trends of the twentieth century and has traced and reinforced some paths, especially those in connection to economy (art as a valuable market product) and society (art as statement, critical posture and participatory citizenship). The chapter brings together these ideas with examples showing, on one side, the economic connection of art to the market and mass consumption, while other projects, on the other side, include a politicized facet and activism through self and collective curatorship, participatory art and glocalization of its matters of interest, audiences and social impact.
Keywords: Art history; art market; participatory art; community protest; sustainability; curatorship
Art serves both social and psychological functions and how its civilizational and historical contexts build layers of purpose, of a shared past and of diversity. In our times, drivers such as globalization and the media, power and social justice, environment and sustainability, diversity and social unrest, development and technology all affect art just as any other facet of social life.
This chapter shows how the tension between the economy and society tinge and affects contemporary art production and consumption nowadays. I will start with a brief walk through recent art history to help us to understand the relations that art maintains with the economy and the society, and to answer the questions on which role art plays in contemporary societies. The last sections of this chapter analyse and compare artworks as a product for mass consumption and, on the other hand, participatory art, collective curatorship and communities of artistic practice, which entail a dimension of political activism, especially when developed in times of repression, war, refugee, pandemic or environmental crisis.
Contemporary Art Is Nurtured and Displayed in Fluid Social Platforms
The particularities of twentieth century art and of its connection to other fields of interest (economics, politics, identity, ethics, citizenship, technologies, media) have become more acute and expanded in the twenty-first century. New questions are now emerging for common questions about contemporary art:
- What is art for? What distinguishes the art in this first quarter of the twenty-first century from Hellenic, Renaissance or Modernist art? Which objects, experiences and events are called Art nowadays? Where do we see art? In what forms, domains and displays? Is art anything that is presented at the museum? Alternatively, is it everywhere, including the streets, the building walls, the factories, the community? At this time, art continues to be shown not only in traditional spaces such as galleries (where it is sold) and museums (where it is archived and shown as a relic or historical document) but also in non-traditional spaces such as public buildings, the street; i.e., art is present in the community like no other time in the history of mankind and appears either with economic value, as an ethnographic and sociological testimony or as a political site of resistance and participatory citizenship.
- Who are the curators in community art? Who are the artists? Who are the consumers of art? Moreover, are handicrafts and art merging through modern artists of the people and for the people? And where do we learn the techniques, skills and terminology of the arts? In the studio with the master craftsman, as in the Renaissance, in art schools such as those that progressed throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, or in the global workshops that are digital platforms, where artists and curators offer training, art criticism and abundant information? In fact, art is now dispersed in all spaces of social life, including the street, the walls, public spaces and even the body itself, as evidenced by the proliferation of performance art and tattoos. At the same time, art seems to have accepted the political statement of Joseph Beuys, one of the members of the Fluxus collective, for whom ‘Everyone is an artist’ and the idea of the Bauhaus school that there is no difference between art and crafts.
- What is the relationship between art and dimensions of social life such as education, science, politics, environment or technologies? And with mentalities, ethics, globalization, spirituality?
In this chapter, I will consider the importance of these questions, analyzing them from two fundamental macrodimensions: the economy and society. A short walk through recent art history seems helpful to understand the relations that art maintains with the economy and society.
Abridged Tour: Art through the Ages
This chapter is not about art history; nevertheless, it seems useful to highlight a few points about the role that art has played in previous times so that I can make clear the critical arguments in this chapter regarding the role of art today. In art history, the usual timelines indicate wide temporal divisions, in which it is possible to identify variations in the functions and qualities of artworks that have been preserved. Fig. 1.1 shows some of these divisions, in what we could envisage as an abridged (and biased) history of western art (see also Esaak, 2020). It is clear that these time cuts and classifications highlight some works and perspectives while keeping others obscured, yet it is generally agreed that such histories reveal artworks that were significant in those times and still today, in the form of architecture, sculpture, painting, ceramics, illuminations and so on.
Fig. 1.1. Example of Roses of Sarajevo. Credits: photo by Allan Karl | WorldRider Productions | worldrider.com.
In the twentieth century, the art vanguard gradually changed paradigms. Traditional ways of making and consuming art are maintained (with professional artists trained in art schools, their works inscribed in artistic movements, exhibited in museums and sold in galleries), but they coexist with radically diverse concepts and practices of production and consumption of art. Today we create and are used to a more diffuse type of art, that with an interdisciplinary and popular nature, blurring or removing boundaries in crafts, media, communication, language, social and political intervention (Table 1.1).
Table 1.1. Art Tour Through the Ages.
| Designation | Ages | Subject Matters and Purpose |
| Prehistoric and ancient art | 24,000 BCA to fifth century | Prehistory: images as an alphabet, writing (visual narrative) and map/guide. Food, hunting, nature and daily life represented, so art becomes ethnographic.
Ancient and classical civilizations: architecture, sculpture, painting and ceramics representing daily life, religion, politics and law. Concerns with the afterlife and the celebration of humankind among the main subjects. With the Roman Empire, art became a tool for power with monumental buildings, and enormous frescos representing gods, nature and prominent citizens. |
| Medieval art | Sixth to fourteenth centuries | Flourishing of decorative art, portable art and artistic ornaments for buildings and sacred art (seen in catacombs, churches, mosaics, bookmaking and illuminated manuscripts) and graven images, art used to teach those who could not read the Bible. |
| Renaissance and mannerism | Fifteenth and sixteenth centuries | A connection with the church and religion (sacred art) and with powerful families with art being a symbol of glory and success; being an artist recognized for the first time as an acceptable profession. |
| Baroque to neoclassicism | Seventeenth and eighteenth centuries | Art recognized by the masses as human values (humanism) emotion, passion and science (scientific revolution, enlightenment and rationalism) became subjects represented in works of art such as painting and sculpture; art at the service of aristocracy and status and the glorification of the good life. |
| Romanticism to symbolism | Nineteenth century | Social consciousness and art for the middle class audience; copies of the old masters; light and colour valued by realistic representations of the world and experience in artworks; subjective impressions and emotions recognized as subject for art; art became the subject of debate with a growing number of movements and schools and ideas about what art is and should do. |
| The modern age | Twentieth century | Art movements and schools continue to grow; artist developing consciousness of what their work is for and its social power; abstraction, subjective expression (surrealism deriving from the rise of psychoanalytic ideas), surreal and distorted representations of the world … and with the industrial age the trust in development also visible in art; self-expression and raw emotion stronger after the second world war; movements and ideologies (modernism, orientalism, feminism, experimentalism, culture and daily life, concerns with place, identity, spirituality territory, etc.) present in art – art used as a manifesto and a political message. |
| Contemporary art | Early twenty-first century | New forms of art (performance, conceptual art, digital art, shock art, etc.) invented after the 1970s recreated and strengthened. Flourishing of post-museum, post-gallery, non-conventional art in matters such as display, exhibition venues, art forms and contents. Also non-conventional artists and art forms and co-created art; scale altered (grandiose artworks and events) and more uses for art recognized and disseminated worldwide:
- Community art
- Therapeutic/spiritual/political art
- Commercial/touristic art
- Art for and by the masses and fluid borders with science, technology and handicrafts. |
Economy: The Art Market, Art Galleries and Investment
Today, only a few artists have become famous and influential worldwide with their artworks highly valued in the cultural market. These artists become global stars due to the gaze of social media. As an example, see the following cases in visual arts (see also McIntosh, 2020):
- the Japanese painter Takashi Murakami (his painting collection with prices averaging at $1.8 million per work),
- the French photographer JR (the Ted Prize awarded him $100,000 to support the Inside Out Project),
- the British-Indian sculptor Anish Kapoor with works sold in auction at an average of $1.4 million,
- the American sculpture Jeff Koons, with one of the highest selling pieces from a living artist, the Balloon Dog (Orange) sold for $58 million in 2013 and his collaboration with Louis Vuitton ranging from $585 for a keychain to over $4000 for a handbag, or
- the Chinese visual artist Ai Weiwei with two of his sculptures auctioning for $4.4 million and $5.4 million just to quote a few in the field of visual arts.
What about individual artworks? Some are seen today as symbols of perfection, status, civilization or good taste and can reach huge market values. The painting Salvator Mundi (c. 1500, walnut oil, 45.4 × 65.6 cm) was sold at auction by Sotheby's in 1958 for £45, sold again in 2005 for $127.5 million and again in November of 2017 by Christie's, for a value 50% higher than the previous transaction, $450.3 million dollars. It is, presently, the most expensive work of art ever sold. This astronomical price surprises because of existing doubts regarding its authorship, currently attributed to Leonardo da Vinci. At the time of the auction, The New York Times (2017, n. p.) reported:
Even if the motive is a pure love of art, the price paid for the Leonardo testified to something gone wrong in the balance of value and values. It reflects a world in which the minute sliver of the obscenely rich see nothing untoward in parking hundreds of millions of dollars on a rare but unexceptional painting that may well spend the next several years in a tax-free storage facility. (The New York Times, 2017)
At the time, many other newspapers questioned the value, quality and authorship of the painting. Sceptical critics alleged, ‘There are 450 million reasons why Leonardo da Vinci's Salvator Mundi isn't a masterpiece’ (Hudson, 2017) or that ‘Many thought of the sale as one of notoriety and brand recognition, rather than of appreciation and respect of the painting's gravitas. The piece also underwent numerous conservation and cleaning efforts, which sparked conversation around how to classify the painting – how original is it?’ (Invaluable, 2019) (for other reviews see Eckardt, 2017).
This demonstrates the relevance of art in the luxury market and its value as economic investment and a source of prestige and status. This importance is attested by the business volume of the large auction houses that negotiate art, side by side with other luxury and collectible products, of which they stand out (Randall, 2019): Christie's (founded 250 years ago in London, currently represented in 43 countries), Sotheby's (founded in London in 1744, currently has offices in 40 countries), Beijing Poly International Auction Company (founded in 2005 in Beijing, China, is oriented towards the Asian Market for modern and contemporary art), Heritage Auctions (founded in 1976 in Dallas, Texas, USA, the world's largest collectibles house) and China Guardian (founded in 1993 in Beijing, China, specializes in the sale of Chinese artwork). All of these auction houses sold pieces of art and collectibles for astronomical values, with Christie's and...
