Abstract
This book deals with a phenomenon we propose calling the “mediatization of the artist.” With mediatization, we refer in the first instance to the presence of visual artists in the mass media and the active usage of those media, from the written word to the moving image, by various agents in the cultural field—including artists themselves—with the overarching goal of producing a certain image of the artist.
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Notes
- 1.
We first coined this concept for the international conference The Mediatization of the Artist (2014), in which the increasing presence of the visual artist in the media from the nineteenth century to the present was addressed.
- 2.
Rachel Esner, Sandra Kisters, and Ann-Sophie Lehmann, eds., Hiding Making—Showing Creation: The Studio from Turner to Tacita Dean (Amsterdam: AUP, 2013).
- 3.
The literature on the artist’s studio is vast and growing; for an analysis of this phenomenon and an overview of recent publications see Rachel Esner, “Ateliers d’artistes aux XXe et XXIe siècles, du lieu à l’oeuvre,” Perspective—La revue de l’INHA 3 (2010–2011): 599–604; and idem, “Pourquoi l’atelier compte-t-il plus que jamais?” Perspective—La revue de l’INHA 1 (2014): 7–9.
- 4.
This idea is elaborated on in, among others in “Manet and the Institutionalization of Anomie,” in The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Literature (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1993), 238–53; and The Rules of Art: Genesis and Structure of the Literary Field (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996), in particular the chapter “The Conquest of Autonomy” (47–112).
- 5.
Oskar Bätschmann, The Artist in the Modern World—A Conflict between Market and Self-Expression (Cologne: Dumont, 1997).
- 6.
Sarah Burns, Inventing the Modern Artist: Art and Culture in Gilded Age America (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1996), 2.
- 7.
See Julie Codell, The Victorian Artist: Artists’ Lifewritings in Britain ca. 1870–1910 (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012).
- 8.
Burns, Inventing the Modern Artist, 5.
- 9.
Codell, The Victorian Artist, 244–45.
- 10.
Greenblatt’s concept does not specifically refer to self-promotion or self-representation, but more to a moral formation, as well as the authors’ representation both within and beyond their texts. For a more comprehensive approach to artists’ self-representation through other kinds of media, including (auto)biographies, published editions of letters, artists’ houses, monographic museums, monographic exhibitions, as well as a discussion of (self)-representation in new media, see Sandra Kisters, The Lure of the Biographical: On the (Self)-Representation of Modern Artists (Amsterdam: Valiz, 2017).
- 11.
In fact, this was demonstrated by Michael Klant in Künstler bei der Arbeit von Fotografen gesehen (Ostfildern-Ruit: Cantz, 1995).
- 12.
See, among others, Sabine Fastert et al., eds., Die Wiederkehr des Künstlers: Themen und Positionen der aktuellen Künstler/Innenforschung (Cologne: Böhlau, 2011); Beatrice von Bismarck, Auftritt als Künstler: Funktionen eines Mythos (Cologne: Walter König, 2010); Camiel van Winkel, De mythe van het kunstenaarschap (Amsterdam: Fonds BKVB, 2007); Caroline A. Jones, Machine in the Studio . Constructing the Postwar American Artist (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1996); and Codell, The Victorian Artist.
- 13.
See Roland Barthes , “The Death of the Author,” Image—Music—Text (1977; repr., New York , 1987), 142–48; and Michel Foucault, “What is an Author?,” in The Foucault Reader, ed. P. Rabinow (1984; repr. New York: Pantheon Books, 1986), 101–20. Although the structuralist approach was very influential, there was also critique, as in the 1990s Sean Burke, The Death and Return of the Author: Criticism and Subjectivity in Barthes, Foucault and Derrida (1992; repr. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1998).
- 14.
For example, projects such as the Rembrandt Research Project http://www.rembrandtresearchproject.org and the Van Gogh Letter Project http://vangoghletters.org/vg/specifically focus on an individual artist.
- 15.
See, for example, Ira Bruce Nadel, Biography : Fiction, Fact and Form (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1984); Michael Diers, Lars Blunck, and Hans Ulrich Obrist , eds., Das Interview: Formen und Foren des Künstlergesprächs (Hamburg: Philo Fine Arts, 2013); Bill Nichols, Introduction to Documentary (Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2010), or Robert A. Rosenstone, History on Film / Film on History (Harlow: Pearson Education, 2006).
- 16.
See George Custen, Bio/Pics: How Hollywood Constructed Public History (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1992). In addition, the element of stardom as a construction, commodity and ideology is discussed by Richard Dyer in Stars (London: British Film Institute , 1979) and Heavenly Bodies: Film Stars and Society (London: Routledge, 1986).
- 17.
For a discussion of artists’ biopics see Helmut Korte and Johannes Zahlten, eds., Kunst und Künstler im Film (Hameln: Niemeyer, 1990); John A. Walker, Art and Artists on Screen (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1993); Jürgen Felix, ed., Genie und Leidenschaft: Künstlerleben im Film (Sint Augustin: Gardez, 2000); Sandra Kisters, “Faction en Film: Reflecties op de verfilmde kunstenaarsbiografie,” Jong Holland 21, no. 1 (2005): 23–31; and Doris Berger, Projected Art History: Biopics, Celebrity Culture, and the Popularizing of American Art (New York et al.: Bloomsbury Academic, 2014). The point of reference when discussing Hollywood biopics remains Custen, Bio/Pics, as well as idem, “The Mechanical Life in the Age of Human Reproduction: American Biopics, 1961–1980,” in G. Man, ed., Biography : An Interdisciplinary Quarterly 23 (Winter 2000): 127–59.
- 18.
Also see John A. Walker, Art and Celebrity (London, Sterling, Virginia: Pluto Press, 2002); Chris Rojek, Celebrity (London: Reaktion Books, 2004); Isabelle Graw , High Price: Art between the Market and Celebrity Culture (Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2010); and Kisters, The Lure of the Biographical.
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Esner, R., Kisters, S. (2018). Introduction. In: Esner, R., Kisters, S. (eds) The Mediatization of the Artist. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-66230-5_1
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