Cal McKeever

Keywords and the Art World: Globalism and Production

The contemporary as a concept is hard to pin down. The modern had Charles
Baudelaires concepts of the ephemeral, the fugitive, the contingent, etc, but the key terminology
to understanding contemporary art is harder to place. Periodizing contemporary as 1989 to the
present, its rise can be traced with the expansion of political, economic and cultural globalism.
The art market has expanded outside of the western world, and the impact of which is difficult to
assess. In understanding the works themselves, it is important to understand the theoretical
groundwork of production, within its historical growth and present day praxis. Through these
two concepts, the beginnings of the concept of the contemporary can be understood,
contextualizing that which at first seems without context.
The political ideology of globalism has been increasing important in the past several
decades, with the expansion of international free trade agreements, along with the expansion of
cultural globalism through enhanced global communication. This notion has permeated
throughout much of Western culture, and thus non-Western culture. In thinking about the
periodization of contemporary art as 1989 to the present, this concept is not to be overlooked.
The modern is an idea entrenched in Western culture and philosophy, and the evolution from
modernism, as well as post-modernism, to the contemporary was concurrent with the growth of
globalist ideology. The expansive nature of the art world as a concept, as well as its relation to
market capitalism, lends itself well to globalized culture1. In order to critically examine the
contemporary art world, its critical to understand globalism within and outside of the art world.
Globalism within the artworld is a recently imposed fixture, which was set in place
without adequate systems for dealing with the previous, as well as ongoing, systems of euro-
dominated imperialist practices 2. Globalist ideology expands the melting pot to a global scale,
with the creation of a homogeneous, arguably still euro-centric, culture. Essentially globalism is
a utopian concept, but one rooted in coded capitalistic white supremacist cultural genocide.
Nikos Papastergiadis points to the methods of cultural erasure that the globalist shift in art
culture has led to. His usage of Edward Saids orientalist notion of the other points to the way
in which people of color in the art world have been marginalized for their identities through

1 Lee, Pamela. Boundary Issues, 40

2 Papastergiadis, Nikos. The Limits of Cultural Translation, 330.

1! of !6
liberal means3. Although artists of different cultural backgrounds are being included physically,
their works are being shown as works of the artists culture rather than the artist themselves, and
thus being excluded from the mainstream voice. The veneer of inclusion does little to address the
deeply rooted structural issues behind.
There are few better examples of the globalist other than that in the 1989 show titled
Magiciens de la Terre at Centre Pompidou in Paris. In response to a Primitivism exhibition at
MoMA years before, Magiciens sought to correct those imperialist wounds through giving
contemporary artists of color globally their own show. Artist globally shared the same space,
despite vast cultural differences between the Chinese and Chilean artists being shown in the
same space4. While the case can be made for the exposure for these marginalized artists, the
show was still fundamentally built on orientalist primitivism. Contemporary artists from third
world countries are exoticized, and not giving the same artistic agency as those with the shows
before and after it 5. The artists had been given their own show, but globalist cultural erasure
othered" these artists from the artworld, in the primitivist reductionist sense, pigeon-holing
these artists of color as representatives of their non-Western culture as a whole.
Globalism is a critical factor in thinking about the late capitalist market dominated art
world of the present. The self-presentation of the great equalizer is inherently false, and is
based on and perpetuating interlocking systems of domination. However, the cultural
globalization (not inherently tied with the militant economic globalization), is due in part to the
expansion of global communication with the advent of the internet. The horizons of culture are
being limited by their now-innate accessibility, breaking the boundaries of how Papastergiadis
saw the cultural shaping of identity6. However, the issues of accessibility and visibility artists of
marginalized identities need still the burden of the institutions of the art world, as they are as
present in the contemporary contemporary as they were in 1989.
While globalism may be dominating the cultural ends of the contemporary art world, new
theories and practices are being adopted. The role of physical production was enormously
important to the growth of modernism, but the theoretical framework for it has changed vastly

3 Papastergiadis, Nikos. The Limits of Cultural Translation, 333.

4 Araeen, Rasheed. Our Bauhaus, Others Mudhouse, 7.
5 Ibid., 4.
6 Papastergiadis, Nikos. The Limits of Cultural Translation, 333.

2! of !6
moving into the contemporary. In the mid-1930s, German critic and theorist Walter Benjamin
published an essay called The Work of Art in the Age of Its Mechanical Reproducibility, which
became a keystone for Modernist cultural theory. In this essay, Benjamin championed the impact
that technology would have on art, citing the lessening importance of beauty-centric 19th century
European aesthetic philosophy7. To Benjamin, the criteria of authenticity would shift to the
technology of the time, thus changing how an audience interacts with and sees a work of art. This
theory played largely into the understanding of art as the idea of art, a notion which helped foster
the progression of modernity into post-modernity. Its easy to see trace the theoretical lineage of
Benjamin to Warhols reproductions and to then the conceptual art of the late-1960s and 1970s.
The tools and methods of the artist change, but are paramount to the production of the artwork.
With this theoretical framework, Benjamin advanced the notion of how technology in
flux affects the aesthetic criteria of artworks8, and how the larger institutions must adapt to said
changes. This was critical to the development of artworks in the latter half of the 20th century, as
the concepts of production, creating, authenticity and ownership began to shift. In his 2002 book
Postproduction, Nicolas Bourriaud catalogues what he sees as these trends, expansions within
the art world into new, or contemporary territory, which utilize new methods of creation and
production. He cites the appropriation of other artworks in new settings, the utilization of older
styles for new means, and the use of relational art (among many others) as forms which use new
forms of production9. This mode of postproduction holds the old methods of production at arms
length and debased the concept of creative authenticity within the contemporary art world10.
Postproduction is an in depth deconstruction of the tools of contemporary art, expanding upon
Benjamins ideas of technological adaption in the artworld, using similar Marxist tools to dissect
the idea of a tool 11 12. However, Postproduction and Work of Art differ greatly in the
contemporary usage of the reproduction of a different artwork as a work, and thus the process of
using the tools becoming the artwork itself.

7 Benjamin, Walter. The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility, IX.
8 Ibid., IV.
9 Bourriaud, Nicolas. Postproduction, 18.
10 Crimp, Douglas. Appropriating Appropriation, 134.
11 Bourriaud, Nicolas. Postproduction, 25.
12 Benjamin, Walter. The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility, I.

3! of !6
 The notion of emphasis on the tools and process is nothing new and can easily be
reworded into the modernist trope of medium-specificity, but the emphasis on aesthetic idea
rather than aesthetic practice is where the contemporary ventures into uncharted territory. For
instance, Richard Princes 2014 show New Portraits, a series of prints of screenshots from
various Instagram accounts13, could be seen as a continuation of the Warholian print tradition,
falling in line with Benjamins idea of object reproducibility. However, it falls more in line with
Bourriauds deconstruction of the tools of production, the consumption of contemporary culture
through technological means, a sifting of the digital flea market.14. The focus is less on the
aestheticization of the object being reproduced, and more on the importance of the object itself.
Prince did not filter the images through screen printing color, but left them as they were. This is
not to say these two similar concepts are at odds, but rather Bourriauds notion of the expanded
production/consumption process through appropriation being a continuation of Benjamins
ruminations on reproducibility in art.
The Prince exhibit poses interesting questions of the process of production and the
concept of ownership. In addition to rocking media outlets for their $100,000 price tag, Richard
Prince was harassed by owners of the accounts he appropriated. One went so far as to sue Prince
for violating the copyright on his photograph15. Who then is the owner of the work? Does the
reproduction of appropriated images for the purposes of artwork transcend copyrights and
plagiarism? Princes process of production was the appropriation, but in the act something new
was created. This work also functioned as a lite form of institutional critique, as Prince was
thrusting unaltered pictures into the context of the art gallery in an undisguised manner
forcing the object it displaced into the center of the institution itself 16. The artwork was the idea
of the work, in that Prince shifted the parameters of the Instagram post to become something
new, much in the same way Bourriaud cites how Duchamp gave the ready-made object a new
idea17. Thierry de Duve calls this type of practice in the contemporary deconstruction, as

13 gagosian.com. Richard Prince - New Portraits.

14 Bourriaud, Nicolas. Postproduction, 28.
15 Kinsella, Eileen. Photographer Sues Gagosian.
16 Crimp, Douglas. Appropriating Appropriation, 135.
17 Bourriaud, Nicolas. Postproduction, 28.

4! of !6
opposed to imitation or invention18. That is to say, the artwork functions critically to an
aesthetic concept, the notion of ownership over production in the field of social and mass media.
The failures of this example lay in the lining of Richard Princes pockets. Julian
Stallabrass, in attempt to defining the contemporary, deconstructs the arguments of three 20th
century aesthetic philosophers in his 2006 essay The Rules of Art Now. One of which was Dave
Hickeys neoliberal market-based approach to defining the contemporary phenomenon of the late
1990s art scene. In the same line of thought of freer the market, freer the people, Hickey points
to the then rising gallery scene, which has grown exponentially even since then, in the reductive
view of the freedom of viewership and understanding of art 19. Much like the critique of
institutional critique that only those involved in the institution understand it and thus retracting
its intent, the works are free to be seen by any, but the understanding of the work is largely
limited to the cultural elite in the art world. Anyone could walk into the Gagosian Gallery and
see Richard Princes Instagram works, but the intent and aesthetic concepts behind are self-
serving. This combined with the enormous profits garnered by Prince through the appropriation
(stealing) of others artworks seem to nullifying the importance of its groundbreaking
postproduction aesthetics. The role of production and appropriation play a more interesting role
in the concepts and philosophy behind works like Princes than they do in reality.
The tools of production are critical to the theories behind contemporary art, and in the
tradition of Bourriaud and Benjamin, it is important to include a Marxist critique of both the
tools and the work itself. Marx pointed out that consumption is a mode of production, and
subversion of the traditional methods of artistic labor in pointing out the structural flaws in the
ideology of property is an inherently Marxist practice. Where Marx and the contemporary art
scene would differ, however, is the globalist market. Look no further than artnet.com to see the
late capitalist dystopia Marx had envisioned. Globalism has permeated throughout the artworld,
and has placed a thin facade over the deeply rooted structural issues present. In consuming
contemporary art, it is deeply important to understand the institutions behind it. To understand
the intention, it is important to examine the tools of production. To understand the institution, it
is important to examine the role of globalist, neo-imperialist markets in the art world.

18 de Duve, Thierry. When Form Has Become Attitude, 31.

19 Julian Stallabrass. The Rules of Art Now, 21.

5! of !6
Works Cited
Araeen, Rasheed. "Our Bauhaus, Others Mudhouse." Third Text, no. 6 (1989): 3-14.
Benjamin, Walter. "The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility." In Walter Benjamin:
Selected Writings 1935-1938, edited by Howard Eiland and Michael W. Jennings, 101-33. Vol. 3.
Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard, 2002.
Bourriaud, Nicolas. Postproduction: Culture as Screenplay: How Art Reprograms the World. New York:
Lukas et Sternberg, 2007.
Crimp, Douglas. "Appropriating Appropriation." In On The Museum's Ruins, 127-36. Cambridge, MA:
MIT Press, 1993.
De Duve, Thierry. "When Form Has Become Attitude - And Beyond." In Theory in Contemporary Art
since 1985, edited by Zoya Kocur and Simon Leung, 21-33. 2nd ed. Oxford, UK: Wiley-
Blackwell, 2013.
Kinsella, Eileen. "Photographer Sues Gagosian and Richard Prince." Artnet News. January 05, 2016.
Accessed March 23, 2017. https://news.artnet.com/market/donald-graham-sues-gagosian-richard-
prince-401498.
Lee, Pamela. "Boundary Issues: The Art World Under the Sign of Globalism." Edited by Brian Sholis. In
The Uncertain States of America Reader, edited by Noah Horowitz, 40-44. New York: Sternberg
Press, 2006.
Papastergiadis, Nikos. "The Limits of Cultural Translation." In Out There: International Perspectives on
Art and Culture, edited by Gerardo Mosquere and Jean Fisher, 320-46. Cambridge: MIT Press,
2004.
"Richard Prince - New Portraits." Gagosian Gallery. Accessed March 23, 2017. http://www.gagosian.com/
exhibitions/richard-prince--september-19-2014
Stallabrass, Julian. "The Rules of Art Now," in The Uncertain States of America Reader, ed. Noah
Horowitz and Brian Sholis (New York: Sternberg Press, 2006).

6! of !6