Reputation, Status Networks, and the Art Market

P2P E INOVAÇÃO, 2016

This article analyzes social relations among the most influential people in the contemporary art field. It tests the hypothesis of whether commercial connections can be an index of the relations of influence and legitimacy in the visual art world and whether these relations affect the cultural capital they possess and the position they occupy in the field. The Power 100 ranking – a guide to the most influential figures in contemporary art – and the commercial relations among the people listed were used to design six ego networks. Data regarding the social connections was collected from the Artsy online platform. The article identifies the mechanisms of social legitimation and artistic influence, as well as the cultural and social implications of social networks in the contemporary artistic field, now perceived in digital environments. A ESTRUTURA DO CAPITAL SOCIAL NO CAMPO ARTÍSTICO CONTEMPORÂNEO: AS LÓGICAS DE LEGITIMAÇÃO E PRESTÍGIO NAS REDES EGO DA POWER 100 Resumo Este artigo a...

2015

This paper investigates the way the contemporary art market works through a quantitative analysis of the first 155 most famous contemporary artists in the world. It empirically confirms Rosen's Superstar model (1981) and the phenomenon of density dependence proposed by Adler (1985). Results on the sample show that: 1) the contemporary art market is a winner-take-all market subject to network effects; 2) the artist's international prestige increases with the number of collections; 3) the contemporary art market is driven by the "economy of attention" (Frank 1998): the quantity sold does not depend on notoriety but on the investments of the curator/investor; market success depends on cultural success (and vice versa); trend setters foster the "star system": exhibitions depend on quantity sold and collections.

2009

SN Business & Economics, 2022

Art experts and intermediaries play a crucial role in art markets. Artworks are goods whose quality is difficult to determine. Therefore, it seems necessary to restrict competition in the market for art experts to a certain extent, but not too much, in order to provide high-quality know-how. This paper contains an empirical analysis of the extent to which the market for art experts is concentrated. To this end, different methods for measuring the market concentration are applied, with an emphasis on the determination of the distribution function of a newly defined Power Index. The annual Power 100 ranking in the magazine ArtReview from 2002 to 2019 is used to study concentration in the art expert market. The results reveal not only several indications of a hierarchically tiered, but also highly concentrated market power in this market. First, the selection of nationalities of the so-called power members is biased, given that particularly Americans and western Europeans are overrepre...

Academy of Management Journal, 2015

We study the effects of actors' audience-specific reputations on their levels of success with different audiences in the same field. Extending recent work that has emphasized the presence of multiple audiences with different concerns, we demonstrate that considering audience specificity leads to an improved understanding of reputation effects. Using data on emerging artists in the field of contemporary art from 2001 to 2010, we investigate the manner in which artists' audience-specific reputations affect their subsequent success with two distinct audiences: museums and galleries. Our findings suggest that audience-specific reputations have systematically different effects with respect to success with museums and galleries. Our findings also illuminate the extent to which audience-specific reputations are relevant for emerging research on the contingent effects of reputation. In particular, our findings support our predictions that audiences differ from one another in terms of the extent to which other signals (specifically, status and interaction with other audiences) enhance or reduce the value of audience-specific reputations. Our study thus advances theory by providing empirical evidence for the value of incorporating audience-specific reputations into the general study of reputation.

This research examines artist networks created by shared museum exhibition. While previous research on artistic careers assesses self-cultivated networks, historical recognition may be further influenced by connections created by important others, such as museum curators and art historians. I argue when museum exhibitions show artists together, curators are creating symbolic associations between artists that signal the artist's import and contextualization within his or her peer group. These exhibition-created associations, in turn, influence historians who must choose a small selection of artists to exemplify a historical cohort. The research tests this idea through a cohort of 125 artists' exhibition networks in the Museum of Modern Art, New York, from 1929 to 1968 (996 exhibitions). Individual network variables, such as number and quality of connections, are examined for impact on an artist's recognition in current art history textbooks (2012-2014). Results indicate certain connections created by exhibition have a positive effect on historical recognition, even when controlling for individual accomplishments of the artist (such as solo exhibitions). Artists connected with prestigious artists through " strong symbolic ties " (i.e., repeated exhibition) tend to garner the most historical recognition, suggesting robust associations with historical peers may signify an artist's exemplary status within his or her cohort, and consequent " good fit " into the historical narrative.

Why do some organizations become famous? We argue that fame results from a conjunction of several audience-specific reputations. Expert reputation (i.e., reputation among members of a knowledgeable group, such as a cultural elite or critics) acts as a mediator for achieving fame for organizations held in esteem by their peers and clients. Based on a unique database of 103 architecture companies in France, our analysis uses structural equation modelling (SEM) combined with mediation effects to reveal that expert reputation can lead to fame by mediating peer and client reputations. We contribute by explaining why only some organizations already reputed among peers and clients become famous in society at large.

This article examines the effects of neoliberal marketization of art worlds on the price formation of artworks in the auction market. Based on the distinction between market status and professional status of an artist, we argue that the two types of status not only differ in their effects on price formation but also interact with each other in determining the price of artwork. Analysis of an original dataset of all artworks traded at a major Korean fine art auction from 1998 to 2007 indicates that the price of an artwork sold at the auction is positively affected by the market status of its artist and negatively affected by the same artist's professional status. We also find that the negative effect of professional status on the price of artwork is greater for those artists with high market status than for those with low market status. Our results also show that the adoption of neoliberal art investment practices has increased the prices of artworks traded at the auction by reinforcing the institutional logic of marketization. Moreover, the adoption of neoliberal investment practices is found to further enhance the positive effect of market status on price. General implications are discussed.

Social Forces 2015 doi: 10.1093/sf/sov116 This study examines differential recognition of top art collectors. Using the population of 617 international art collectors named by ARTnews, ArtReview, and Art+Auction from 1990 to 2011, I examine factors that affect the extent of a collector’s recognition through naming on ARTnews’s annual list of the world’s top collectors. The research draws on both humanities and sociological perspectives to model two sets of characteristics that may affect the amount of critical recognition conferred on a collector. First, conceiving that recognition is based on the art object, status characteristics of art collections are considered. Next, characteristics of the art collection’s owner (rather than the art objects themselves) are considered. Findings indicate that the extent of recognition a collector receives is based on both collection and collector attributes, even when holding the other constant. Notably, collections specializing in art originating from both culturally dominant and peripheral regions are favored with extended critical recognition, though only collectors residing in culturally dominant regions are consistently distinguished. Overall, results suggest that important overarching status characteristics of object and owner affect the extent to which elite taste and expertise are critically recognized, with the expectation that the greater the extent of recognition, the greater the validation.