On the charts with a bullet
A bit more on the Artist.Ranking (A.R) system mentioned in our Rousseau biography, as found at ArtFacts.net.
As mentioned, lonely old Henri is currently ranked #724 with a bullet on this overtly mercenary chart, which arranges 62,436 artists by volume of exhibitions over the last five years.
Picasso is #1, Cezanne 32 and Monet 62, just to grab some examples.
“The basis of the A.R thinking is the so-called economy of attention (after a book from Georg Franck),” the website explains. “Franck says that attention (fame) in the cultural world is an economy that works with the same mechanisms as capitalism. Capitalist, or economic, behaviour is based on property, lending money and charging interest.
“For Franck, the curator (eg the museum director or the gallery owner) acts as a financial investor. The curator/investor lends their property (their exhibition space and their fame) to an artist from whom they expect a return on their investment in the form of more attention (reputation, fame etc).”
Here’s the top 10 after Picasso: Andy Warhol, Bruce Nauman, Gerhard Richter, Joseph Beuys, Paul Klee, Robert Rauschenberg, Henri Matisse, Edward Ruscha and Cindy Sherman.*
Uncle Salvador comes in at #26, surprisingly six places behind Max Ernst. Other well-known names in the top 100 include Cézanne at 32, van Gogh at 45, David Hockney at 49, Jackson Pollock at 52, Degas at 54, Monet at 62, Damien Hirst at 70, Chagall at 71, Gauguin at 74, Magritte at 84, Christo and Jeanne-Claude at 89 and Edvard Munch at 94.
Exhibitions by Christo are that much in demand? Something to wrap your mind around.
* There are four names in the top 10 that I have to admit I don’t know, so for my benefit at least, a quick consultation with Wikipedia. Rather embarrassing, but I have been away from the art world for a while after all.
American Midwesterner Bruce Nauman, 65, is a sculptor, photographer, video maker and performance artist who was originally groomed in math and physics as well as art. He’s best known for the mischief he gets up to with wordplay in the name of broadening the scope of communication.
German Gerhard Richter, 74, sells his paintings for millions of dollars and churns out stacks of writing about art as well. His artwork is “full of tension between depicted reality and the actuality of painting: process and material”, the Wiki says. “Richter’s subject is the range of relationships between illusion and this reality, his painting.”
Nebraskan Edward Ruscha (”rew-SHAY”), 68, is a lithographer, photographer and filmmaker who achieved recognition for paintings incorporating words and phrases, influenced by the deadpan irreverence of pop art. In later work, you look for Catholic evidence in the light beams.
Cindy Sherman from New Jersey, 52, is a photographer and film director known for her conceptual self-portraits, notably the collection “The Complete Untitled Film Stills”. In 1989 she protested the censoring of Robert Mapplethorpe and Andres Serrano with a series called “Sex” – photos pf medical dummies doing the dirty. Billy Bragg was singing about her in “Cindy of a Thousand Lives”.
I was shocked Van Gogh was not in the top 10. And this forced me to look at some of Picasso’s work though ofcourse I know he has been the most celebrated painter in the 20th century. Inevitably, this also led me to read about his personal life, Francois Gilot et al.. and a surprising assessment by Arianne Huffington of the meaning of his art..