Concept of Artistic Brand As a Tool for Analysing Art World

Social construction of artistic reputation and artistic success have been an important issues in sociological research from many years now. In my paper I am going to present the idea of artistic brand as a tool for analysing art world and construction of artistic career – mainly the careers of contemporary visual artists.

Artistic brand can be a person (artist, gallery owner, collector, curator, critic) or an institution (gallery, museum, art fair). The most important criterion for distinguishing the artistic brand from non-branded artist or institution is its recognition by the representatives of the various spheres of social life. I separate three spheres of social life in which artistic brands can be present: art world, media and ordinary social life. In every of those three spheres could exists different artistic brands, which are also constructed and sustained in different ways.

Phenomena that have recently occurred in the art world (development of conceptual art, separating the artist from the art work, the lack of clear criteria for evaluation works of art, professionalization of the art market) made that artistic brand  have gain an importance in the art world. Artistic brand simplify the complexity of the art world, improve the decision making process, add value to the art world product. Artistic brand is  a guarantee of quality, a mean of communication with customers and agents. Brand is also a tool of negotiating rules in the artistic field,  a tool for building hierarchy in the art world and a tool for building artistic field autonomy towards other fields.

As the exemplification of my conception of artistic brand I am going to present the outline of my research project concerning the in-depth analysis of the presence of artistic brand (contemporary visual artists and institutions dealing with contemporary art) in Poland.