For three years, I took a break from the real world and began to play with ideas, building whatever I wanted. The ideas quickly outgrew the physical spaces I had access to. And so began the investigation: how I could access these new spaces and the institutions that controlled them.
Professionally, I am a Product Manager. It is my job to leverage data, understand behavior, and build products accordingly. It was the foundation of this discipline that guided my process and eventually led me to Quantifying Reputation and Success in Art—a research paper that had a profound impact on where my art would go next.
A key takeaway and no surprise is that access, the privileged pipeline that gets one “there,” still determines who gets to do what, who ends up celebrated. There are exceptions to the rule. But they are just that: exceptions. Everyone wants to believe they’re different. I made it on merit. Artists becoming defenders of meritocracy.
But the data made it clear. As an outsider, I had close to no chance of entering the spaces I so desperately wanted to build in. I’d need to find another way.
The art we hear about, the commodified kind, functions mostly as business. A place for the rich to park capital, avoid taxes, and flaunt status. In this context, “art” is reduced to objects with market value. Aesthetics as asset class.
So if art is a big business, can a business be art?
That is where the exploration began.
It started with BRAND RIP LLC, a fashion label that existed only to cover up other brands. I used machine embroidery to overwrite existing branded clothing with the word BRAND. It was a pure brand. I made nothing. It was only an idea. A contradiction made visible.
That fashion concept is no longer.
In its place are LowStatus and Pact.
People often tell me this isn’t art. I don’t care.
Robert Irwin once said, “Art and the art world are two different things.” He believed the role of the artist is to focus on the quality of the question. I will use any medium, any form, any way I can reach people. To ask my questions.
So if I can’t access the institutions, I will leverage what they have become.
A business.
https://barabasi.com/art/work/art-network
https://barabasi.com/media/Fraiberger-Quantifying-2018_i4Qtv3z.pdf
Art appreciation is highly subjective. Fraiberger et al. used an extensive record of exhibition and auction data to study and model the career trajectory of individual artists relative to a network of galleries and museums. They observed a lock-in effect among highly reputed artists who started their career in high-prestige institutions and a long struggle for access to elite institutions among those who started their career at the network periphery.
Science, this issue p. 825
In areas of human activity where performance is difficult to quantify in an objective fashion, reputation and networks of influence play a key role in determining access to resources and rewards. To understand the role of these factors, we reconstructed the exhibition history of half a million artists, mapping out the coexhibition network that captures the movement of art between institutions. Centrality within this network captured institutional prestige, allowing us to explore the career trajectory of individual artists in terms of access to coveted institutions. Early access to prestigious central institutions offered life-long access to high-prestige venues and reduced dropout rate. By contrast, starting at the network periphery resulted in a high dropout rate, limiting access to central institutions. A Markov model predicts the career trajectory of individual artists and documents the strong path and history dependence of valuation in art.
https://barabasi.com/art/about
The BarabasiLab, also known as The Center for Complex Network Research at Northeastern University, has changed the way the world understands networks. For 25 years, under the leadership of Albert-László Barabási, the Lab has been developing the visual vocabulary of complexity based on the team’s pioneering research into a broad range of topics, from protein interactions to success in the art world. Their 2-D visualizations, 3-D data sculptures, and virtual reality environments have made complex scientific concepts approachable and relatable, offering a window into how the many systems that govern our world actually function. From the first simplistic diagrams to today’s elaborate aesthetic creations, the Lab’s visualization work has evolved into an expressive language that creates a new relationship between art and science.