The Global Contemporary Art World
- Submitting institution
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Birmingham City University
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 32Z_OP_A0039
- Type
- A - Authored book
- DOI
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- Publisher
- Wiley Blackwell
- ISBN
- 978-1-118-33851-3
- Open access status
- Out of scope for open access requirements
- Month of publication
- -
- Year of publication
- 2017
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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- Research group(s)
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- Proposed double-weighted
- Yes
- Double-weighted statement
- The double weighting of <The Global Contemporary Art World> reflects the length, ambition and range of case studies included in this single-authored monograph of 232 pages. The book comprises an extensive introduction setting out the conceptual, theoretical and historical bases of the study, followed by five chapter-based studies rooted in the examination of substantial, new empirical evidence—much sifted from contemporary archival sources over seven years of research visits. The book offers an integrated analysis of many interlocking art world institutions in China, Hong Kong, South Korea, India and the Middle East, and their complex relations with Euro-American ‘gate-keeper’ organizations.
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- This full-length study represents the culmination of ten years research by the author on the lineaments of the contemporary art world and the emerging character of contemporary visual arts under neoliberal capitalist globalized conditions of production, dissemination and consumption.
The volume is based on extensive empirical fieldwork carried out in China, Hong Kong, South Korea, India and the Middle East (principally Israel and Palestine), and diverse materials gathered systematically in relation to a unique theoretical understanding of the global contemporary art world assembled by the author from his work in cultural studies and critical art history over a thirty-five-year period. The book’s theoretical-conceptual framework has its origins in a sustained critical reading of Raymond Williams’s paradigmatic institutional analysis set out in his 1981 study <Culture>. Harris’s earlier books (<Globalization and Contemporary Art> (ed., 2011, Wiley-Blackwell) and <The Utopian Globalists: Artists of Worldwide Revolution> (sole author, 2013 Wiley-Blackwell) prepared some of the intellectual ground—conceptual and historical—for the innovative contribution <The Global Contemporary Art World> makes through its extended comparative analyses.
The study examines the relational dynamics between five Asian centres of the art world and the core axes of a system dominated by US and western European institutions, markets, media and productive hubs (New York City and London). In detailed empirical case-studies concerned with recent art fairs (Hong Kong Art Basel), biennials (Kochi Biennale), digital technologies (Seoul Loop), transnational higher education (Chinese universities), and cultural-funding by NGOs (Ramallah, Palestine), the research finds that a western interests-dominated system still underpins the growth and diversity of the global contemporary art world, but that this integrated system is volatile and mutable—subject to the vicissitudes of the global capitalist economy and the shifting balance of power between powerful if residual Anglo-American cultural hegemony and the rise of Asian ‘soft power’ polities.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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