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Arts & Communication Contemporary art from the Global South

have ushered in a new domain that can be described as a the newer and trendier, the better .” The research for
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globally decentralized market with such a wide range of this study aims to assess changes in taste by focusing on
inputs and actors that it can no longer be considered the artists from the Global South whose careers have taken off
same structure as existed before the advent of globalization. between 2020 and 2022, as evaluated based on a significant
Such developments in the market have been increase in auction values at contemporary auction
investigated extensively through two collected volumes sales at Christie’s, Sotheby’s, and Phillips auction houses
that have approached these questions from a variety of featuring the most contemporary work. The discoveries
perspectives . In addition, another collected volume of this research shed light on changes in taste in this brief
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focusing on the Art Market and the Global South has just period but further aim to anchor these market results in
been released by Brill . These studies, along with subsequent a review of institutional support for the careers of these
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publications on globalization and the art market, reveal a newly successful artists. By identifying stakeholders who
series of trends that have influenced our approach to this have contributed to the success of these artists at auction,
topic. In their contribution to the 2015 volume, Stefano this study aims to provide some of the empirical research
Baia Curioni, Laura Forte, and Ludovica Leone introduce that Baia Curioni, Forte, and Leone identify as part of
a fundamental dichotomy: the “competitive process” at work. The artists who are
“Multiplicity, variety, inclusion, but also assessment, selected by tastemakers for market success are supported
selection, and exclusion are the most evident — and by a network, first identified by White and White but
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only apparently contradictory — features of the later elaborated by Becker and Moulin, among others .
contemporary international art world… Actually, Isabelle Graw has observed a recent transformation,
these two sides of the art system interact in a much however, and updated the construct of the dealer-critic
more complex, reflexive, and path-dependent way. system first elaborated by White and White, replacing it
Economic/market potentials and critical/philosophical with a perceptible “dealer-collector system” in which the
evaluations coexist as the customer’s “tastes” interact market has achieved dominance over the cultural values
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with a moving, pervasive, hierarchical, and complex provided by art criticism . We tend to agree that the
regime enacted by commercial and non-commercial market dimension is now dominant. However, we find that
gatekeepers who legitimate the traded works as “art” external cultural transformations have significant impacts
works… It can, moreover, be seen as a competitive on market desirability and generate demand for novelty, or
process that results in a star system in which prices “multiplicity, variety, and inclusion,” as Baia Curioni, Forte,
and social assessments interact along patterns that still and Leone would have it.
wait to be pervasively and empirically observed .” As Anita Archer has pointed out, “The market value of
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Central to their description here is a multiplicity of an artist’s work is underpinned by the strategic activities of
processes that interact within the space of the market, some gallerists, curators, critics, and institutions in a mutually
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of which are economic, while others are philosophical. rewarding ecosystem .” While there is undoubtedly a
The notion of taste, and the selection process that significant transformation in a world that holds around
operates through the purchase of artworks, is the central 300 art fairs and 250 international biennial art exhibitions
component. This concept had been developed in previous annually, it is equally true that specific locations play
articles by Olav Velthuis and Noah Horowitz, whose essays a central role in diversifying the global art market and
in the earlier volume weighed in on this important crux of incorporating heretofore overlooked participants. Archer
the market. concludes her study of three art market nodes — Hong
Kong for contemporary Chinese art, Singapore for
In his essay, “Introduction: The Contemporary Art
Market between Stasis and Flux,” Velthuis intones: “Many contemporary Southeast Asian art, and Australia for
aboriginal art — by noting:
of the new super-wealthy collectors buy works of art when “These case studies have demonstrated that, in the last
the careers of their makers are already firmly established. two decades, the global footprints of the multinational
They behave more as taste-followers than as taste-makers. auction houses and their ability to physically
The economic power of these collectors may be enormous; translocate works of art around the world have been
their cultural power is limited .” For this author, collectors critical factors in the expansion of Global South art
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provide an element of stasis in the market, but Horowitz 11
sees taste as part of the changing dimension of the market, markets. But only to a certain point .”
pointing to a “paradigm shift away from conventional This study takes this idea seriously but aims to delve
forms of connoisseurship and toward more ouverte forms into a broader development that art auctions are involved
of speculation, trophy hunting, and lifestyle consumption: in. We seek to ascertain what points of focus, which

Volume 2 Issue 1 (2024) 2 https://doi.org/10.36922/ac.1608