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H48.2053   Lecture   4 Credits
Instructor(s): Professor Annie Cohen Solal

The Case of the Viusal Arts Scene Towards A Global Observatory of the Visual Arts

Professor Annie Cohen Solal

H48.2053.001

Wednesdays, 11am –1:45pm

Graduate Students only

4 points

 

The cultural historian Neil Harris formulated the idea that the visual arts world functions as an allegory of social order. The seminar will take this statement as a starting point. It will first give an overview of the different periods of the history of the art world since the mid-nineteenth century, in order to provide a better understanding of the characteristics of this field. The analysis will be based on our model which presents the two categories of actors interacting in the art world : on the one hand, the "manifest actors" (the artists) which produce the art; on the other hand, the "dynamic actors" (the patrons, trustees, museum directors and curators, gallerists, critics, professors), which lay out the conditions of production for the artists.

 

The course will first consider the period of the French hegemony (1850-1950) and analyze the different elements which constructed Paris as the center of the art world. It will then compare the option offered to the artist by a very different context, that of the United States of America, and consider the years of its preeminence (1950-1999) under the leadership of American gallerists, dealers, and institutions, before considering the contemporary period (1999-2006), with the emergence of non-western countries. Among them, the most caracteristic might be the Cuban art scene, which produced wonderful generations of artists for the last three decades. After our "Summer Tisch in Cuba seminar" (which will take place in July 2008) the Cuban cultural policy model, will be largely described, analyzed and debated.

 

How to describe the new actors, the new configurations of actors who are reorganizing the global ecology of the art world in the twenty-first century? By considering those challenging questions, which are the center of all cultural debates today and will remain so in the years to come, the Observatory of the Visual Arts will be the first institution of its kind in the world.