When is Artification? Processes
Processes of Artification
Artification is a process of processes, with ten constituent processes:
Displacement: Extracting or displacing a production from its initial context is a prerequisite for artification. This happened when jazz was first transcribed in musical notation, when film broke away from its initial site at fairs, when graffiti was photographed and published in books, and when breakdancers left the street for the stage.
Renaming: Terminological change e.g. the case of painting in France, the word imagiers (image makers) that designated craftsmen was progressively replaced by that of artistes during the eighteenth century.
Recategorisation: This example also highlights the institutional change seen in the shift from the guilds to the Royal Academy and changes in classification, such as the shift from the mechanical to the liberal arts and changes in the hierarchy of pictorial genres. Under the Academy system, the king bestowed pensions on a very small elite of painters; now, the institutionalization of government grants provides for endowments. These support systems enhance the perception of an ontological difference between art and those activities deemed unworthy of such official monetary support. In France today, government support favours the artification of circus, magic, and breakdancing.
Institutional and organisational change: see above
Legal consolidation: Legal consolidation is another important step. French painters confirmed their new status in the courts in the seventeenth century and writers and composers were granted intellectual property of their work in the nineteenth century. In the United States, legal decisions that culminated with the end of censorship restrictions in the 1960s furthered the artification of cinema.
Individualisation of labour: Another significant process is the individualization of labor. As painting moved from the master’s workshop to the painter’s studio, it underwent a continuing process of individualization; by the nineteenth century, activity that was once collective progressively became solitary. When breakdancing first appeared on stage in France, most choreography was collective; today individual auteurs choreograph hip-hop ballets.
Intellectualisation: Finally, discursive reinforcement and the intellectualization of practice are an essential part of artification. Biographies of painters were first published in the Renaissance, art critique was first published in the eighteenth century, and academic art history developed dramatically during the nineteenth century. These elements intensified the growing trend toward the intellectualization of the relationship onlookers and painters have with paintings. In France, media discourse on breakdancing took an aesthetic turn by 1992, with journalists referring to art and art history rather than to the social and cultural traits of the dancers. In turn, the content of hip-hop ballets has become increasingly reflexive.
