Where in the World is the Art World?

Marie Leduc

The Blue Marble, NASA/Apollo 17 crew,, 1972

In the previous essays, I used the capitalized term, Art World. I thought it would be helpful to provide more on how I understand this term.

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Contemporary art, like all art, exists in the world but also in the Art World. The Art World is not a specific place, it is what makes art art.¹ It is the social systems and institutions that make objects and activities “special” and recognizes them as art.²

The Art World is also the people who participate in the creation of art: the artists, administrators, supporters, and the public. The public participates by enjoying, appreciating, criticizing and, most importantly, believing in the forms of art they find in their social space. The public’s belief in the specialness of art is what maintains its relevance.

Finally, the Art World is the many theories that shape our awareness of the special nature of art. It is these theories, as philosopher Arthur Danto reminds us, that take an object “up into the world of art, and keeps it from collapsing into the real object which it is.”³

But, like the earthly globe we live on, the Art World is a divided space. Groups or factions representing the many different genres of art are always vying for the dominant position of power in what sociologist Pierre Bourdieu calls the “field of power.” The field of power is the nexus of capital – money, resources, goods, relationships, special status – that circulate and fuel competition in every society around the globe. The modern state is perhaps the most familiar example of the field of power in action. The state represents a “concentration of [ ] different species of capital – economic (thanks to taxation), military, cultural, juridical and, more generally, symbolic.”⁴ The state manages this capital in a social field where different competing groups (the arts, the police, education, sciences, and so on) all vie for a greater share of capital whether it is in the form of increased funding or social prestige. The field of power is thus a “space of play in which holders of various forms of capital struggle” for the dominant social position.⁵ It is this struggle that creates divisions, borders, and hierarchies in every social field, including the Art World.

In Western nations the Art World is divided into many factions. We might recognize these as the many different genres of art such as religious art, landscape painting, photography, craft, and so on, each of which creates its own theory or concept about what is and is not art. Each of these groups also struggles to attain a position of social importance within the larger society and the field of power. Contemporary art is just one of these factions and holds a very powerful place in the hierarchy of art genres. The significant social status of contemporary art in Western nations is evidenced in how it is the one genre of art, made by living artists, that is exhibited in national museums such as the Tate Modern in London, the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, or the National Gallery in Ottawa. It is also the genre of art featured in significant international events like the Venice Biennale and Documenta. And, it is one of the only art genres, again produced by living artists, that is purchased for the greatest sums by the wealthiest collectors. This means that, in Western nations, contemporary art has a much greater share of economic, cultural, and symbolic capital.

The Art World is also divided into centres and peripheries, and contemporary art provides a good example. Centres are the geographical locations where there is a high concentration of capital supporting the recognition of a particular art genre or faction. The largest concentration of contemporary art’s capital is found primarily in a few cities: New York, Paris, London and, to some degree, Berlin. These are the locations of the most significant art museums that feature contemporary artists, the location of commercial galleries specializing in the sales of contemporary art, the urban bases of many of the collectors who buy the artworks, and the locations where the public comes to view the work. It is then, primarily in these locations, that contemporary art is defined and affirmed as a genre.

The periphery is all the regions outside these centres where different genres of art, including contemporary art, are also produced. The periphery has a competitive and sometimes antagonistic relationship with the centre. Since the majority of capital supporting a certain genre of art is highly concentrated in the centre, artists from the periphery often aspire to be recognized in the centre. In Canada, for example, contemporary artists live and work across the country, but recognition from a museum, gallery, or collector in Toronto, Montreal, or Vancouver (the centres of contemporary art in Canada) has a greater value than recognition in a smaller community. Better yet, recognition in New York or Paris awards an aspiring Canadian artist even greater value. The social recognition and prestige that follows an exhibition in one of these locations, especially if the exhibition is in an important museum or gallery, then increases an artist’s symbolic, cultural, and ultimately, economic capital.⁶

As a result, artists from the periphery often relocate to the centre where they can benefit from the proximity to the concentration of capital. These artists must meet the artistic expectations of the centre in order to be recognized, but they also bring fresh ideas and art forms that often challenge the definition of art. Over time, these changes contribute to reshaping the expectations and conventions in the centre. When these same artists return to the periphery, however, their new art practices bring sometimes startling changes that may threaten the established local genres and initiate a competition for capital resources. The movement, then, between centre and periphery is significant in that it slowly instigates artistic change across social fields.⁷

The powerful significance of contemporary art in the Art World, like modern art before it, means that contemporary art has significant global influence. Since the 1990s, contemporary art institutions in the West have featured artists from around the world and employed curators and other professionals in selecting the art that qualifies as “contemporary.” This has given value to many new artists and artistic approaches. Nations outside of Euro-America have also begun to demonstrate their support for contemporary art by participating in international art events like the Venice Biennale, by hosting contemporary art biennales in their major cities (Dakar, Istanbul, Gwangju, Shanghai), and by building museums dedicated to contemporary art (China, Saudi Arabia). In other words, like Western nations, these nations are investing immense amounts of capital in promoting this one particular art genre. Over time, this investment in contemporary art may shift the locations of its artistic centres, and give new centres more power to shape what is and is not contemporary art.⁸

So where in the world is the Art World? The Art World is everywhere and nowhere in particular. It is a social field where centre and periphery are intertwined in a constant tension as individuals, artworks, and different forms of capital are moved around the globe. The Art World, as sociologist Larissa Buchholz suggests “cannot be reduced to the logics of singular national (or regional) fields.”⁹  Rather, it is better understood as “a shared vision” of art and as a “symbolic battleground”¹⁰ where the definition of what is and is not art is always in a state of play.

1. Under the term art, I would also include all the different forms of art such as dance, drama, and music. They are also part of what I understand as the Art World but to keep my discussion manageable, I am using visual art as my example.

2. See

When is a Chair Art? Part I

3. Arthur Danto, “The Art World,” The Journal of Philosophy 61 (19), American Philosophical Association Eastern Division Sixty-First Annual Meeting (Oct. 15, 1964): 571-584. Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2022937

4. Pierre Bourdieu and Loïc J. D.Wacquant, An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 114.

5. Bourdieu & Wacquant, 114

6. Pierre Bourdieu, The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Literature, edited by  Randal Johnson (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993).

7. I am thinking here of how the American regional artists resisted the incursion of European art practices in the1930s and 40s, or how contemporary art practices explored by Chinese artists in the 1980s challenged the dominance of social realism and traditional ink painting in China.

8. A good example is how New York emerged as an important art centre in the 1950s. Serge Guilbaut provides a good study of this shift in How New York Stole the Idea of Modern Art: Abstract Expressionism, Freedom, and the Cold War, translated by Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983).

9. Larissa Buchholz, The Global Rules of Art (Princeton UP, 2022), 15.

10. Buchholz, 17.