seven days in the art world by sarah thornton

There are several worlds within the art world, and Thornton focuses only on Power Institutions. It's a group of people in constant communication, talking and sharing and part of a community. The world of tourists and the world of NYers rarely interacts, unless a fat-ass tourist is in a NYers way while they're walking to work. All interesting, I suppose, but really boring and obvious tourist attractions that capture nothing of the workaday quotidian NYC the NYC that NYers experience. It's similar to a guidebook to NYC that focuses on the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building, the Statue of Liberty, etc. What I hate is the tourist highlights she focuses on.

It's Seven Days, which is the length of time most tourists give to some 'foreign locale.' In seven days, you won't really experience the destination, but you will see the same ridiculous highlights fellow tourists from the U.S., Germany, Australia, and the UK have seen. The book is titled Seven Days in the Art World, which very clearly labels it as a tourist's guidebook, so it might as well be labelled Lonely Planet: Art World, or Let's Go! Art World, or How to Travel the Art World with No Money and Without Leaving Your Couch. Now I need to state that my hatred is pretty moronic. Or more accurately, I hate what this book focuses on. A judicious and juicy account of the institutions that have the power to shape art history, based on hundreds of interviews with high-profile players, Thornton's entertaining ethnography will change the way you look at contemporary culture.

She reveals the new dynamics of creativity, taste, status, money, and the search for meaning in life.

In a series of beautifully paced narratives, Sarah Thornton investigates the drama of a Christie's auction, the workings in Takashi Murakami's studios, the elite at the Basel Art Fair, the eccentricities of Artforum magazine, the competition behind an important art prize, life in a notorious art-school seminar, and the wonderland of the Venice Biennale. Contemporary art has become a mass entertainment, a luxury good, a job description, and, for some, a kind of alternative religion. More people than ever call themselves artists. Named one of the best art books of 2008 by The New York Times and The Sunday Times : “An indelible portrait of a peculiar society.”- Vogue

Seven days in the art world by sarah thornton