시장에 의한 현대 서구 미술계의 운영

The Role of Capital In the Western Art World - Focusing on the Art Market in New York City

This paper addresses the development process of New York art market in order to investigate the background and primary factors of how capital and market overtook the power of criticism and discourse. The paper begins with World War Ⅱ, a watershed in the development of American culture including art and the market as well. During this decade, critics and museum curators were main forces in the art world, while the number of galleries in the city stagnated at a mere 30. Although the number of galleries drastically increased to over 300 in the next two decades, the art world turned on the same pivot of power dominated by critics. It was the 1980s when the topographical map of the art world dramatically changed and the art dealers’ influence surpassed criticism. The inflow of large-scaled capital and/or speculative capital into the art market due to Reagan’s new economic policy was the direct reason lor this radical change. In the 1990s, Sotheby’s and Christie’s established contemporary art auctions, and accordingly the art market expanded its scale. It continued to expand and art became one of the primary investment porttolios in the 21st Century. The lact that the most frequently quoted buzzwords now are art fund and art index illustrates these social phenomena very well. Under this condition, what would be the role of the discourse and which way should the criticism go? This paper will probe for answers to those questions.