Bound by Creativity: How Contemporary Art Is Created and Judged
Hannah Wohl
Abstract
Why do contemporary artists vary or maintain particular elements of their work? How do artists weigh these decisions at different career stages? Why do artists successfully garner money and prestige from some works but not others? Aesthetic judgments of contemporary art are highly uncertain. The book examines how artists make artistic decisions during the creative process and how others’ evaluations of artists’ work shape these creative processes. It draws upon ethnographic and interview data from the New York art world, encompassing a broad array of artists, dealers, curators, collectors, and ... More
Why do contemporary artists vary or maintain particular elements of their work? How do artists weigh these decisions at different career stages? Why do artists successfully garner money and prestige from some works but not others? Aesthetic judgments of contemporary art are highly uncertain. The book examines how artists make artistic decisions during the creative process and how others’ evaluations of artists’ work shape these creative processes. It draws upon ethnographic and interview data from the New York art world, encompassing a broad array of artists, dealers, curators, collectors, and art advisers. The book shows how artists and their audiences judge artworks not as discrete objects, but instead based on perceptions of each artist’s creative vision or distinctive style—the enduring and core elements within the body of work. Through experimentation, artists reproduce certain formal and conceptual elements, forming distinctive and recognizable bodies of work. As artists’ work travels to exhibitions and collections, viewers form their own, sometimes conflicting, interpretations of artists’ creative visions, in ways that can open or foreclose artists’ creative and career opportunities. The book reveals a paradox: ideas about what creativity is can ultimately impose constraints on the creative process.
Keywords:
aesthetic judgment,
contemporary artists,
contemporary art,
creativity,
ethnography,
experimentation,
New York City,
sociology of art,
style,
sociology of culture
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2021 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780226784557 |
| Published to Chicago Scholarship Online: January 2022 |
DOI:10.7208/chicago/9780226784724.001.0001 |
