Culture worlds: from urban worlds to global worlds

Diana Crane,

Department of Sociology

University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia, PA 19104

USA

E-mail: craneher@sas.upenn.edu

Abstract

This paper explores the implications of the globalization of culture worlds in art and fashion. A

global culture world is defined as one in which a small number of cultural organizations from

several countries dominates the global production and dissemination of a particular form of

culture. Participants in global culture worlds congregate in international art or trade fairs where

they develop a consensus about what they are doing and who is doing it best. Global culture

worlds are hierarchical settings in which the activities of the most powerful actors affect the

opportunities available to actors in regional and urban worlds. Differences in power and prestige

at the national level are magnified at the global level. Economic rewards take precedence over

symbolic rewards as seen in the types of culture that circulate in these worlds and the ways they

are produced. Dominated by Western organizations, global worlds fit a center-periphery model.

Keywords: art world; fashion world; trade fair; globalization

Since Howard Becker‟s path-breaking book on art worlds in 1982, sociologists of art have been

studying urban arts communities that consist of culture creators, gatekeepers, sellers and publics

who contribute in a variety of ways to the creation, evaluation, dissemination and reception of art

works. The existence of an art world implies that art is a collective activity based on shared

commitments to artistic conventions that define what is considered to be art in a specific period

and how it should be produced (Becker, 1982; Crane, 1987). The concept of an art world has been

applied fruitfully to many forms of creative activity.

In the past decade, there is increasing evidence that culture worlds are becoming global

as well as urban. In this paper, I will examine the characteristics of global culture worlds in

contemporary art and contemporary fashion in order to show how global culture worlds differ

from urban culture worlds. Specifically, the two types of culture worlds differ in the kinds of

locations where they take place, the characteristics of their participants, the level of emphasis on

symbolic as compared to material rewards, and the nature and production of the culture that is

produced for display and for sale.

I define a global culture world as one in which a small number of organizations from

several countries dominate the global production and dissemination of culture. Their activities

affect the opportunities for creators, sellers, and purchasers at the urban level. Global worlds need

places where producers, sellers and buyers congregate and in the process develop a consensus

about what they are doing and who is doing it best. This role is performed by international arts or

trade fairs which take place in temporary locations and bring together participants from many

countries. The same location for a temporary global culture world tends to be reused year after

year.

Trade fairs have steadily increased in the late twentieth century although very little has

been written about them (Skov, 2006). 1 The cultural significance of trade fairs is indicated by

1 Fairs have existed for centuries, having developed from medieval town markets. Until the nineteenth

century, fairs served primarily as import fairs to bring goods into a region to sell to local or regional

audiences or as export fairs, to sell goods to visiting buyers. Many fairs still have that function. World fairs

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their prevalence in a wide range of cultural activities, including toys, furniture, electronics, books,

television programs, computer games, animation films, and fashion accessories (shoes, handbags,

and jewelry) (Skov, 2006: 781). Fashion-related fairs are held somewhere in the world almost

every day of the year (Skov, 2006: 764), representing different types of clothing, regions, market

segments, and geographical location. Artprice has identified 41 international art fairs which take

place annually in 21 countries and attract participants from 61 countries (Quemin, 2010: 56;

Quemin, 2008: 83)). 2

Trade and arts fairs vary in their orientation from regional to international or global. Skov

(p. 771) proposes the term, „intermediary fairs‟, which applies to fairs that “have been detached

from a regional production base, and function increasingly as nodal points in geographically

dispersed systems.” Batheldt and Schuldt (2008: 864-865) refer to trade fairs as “a temporary

microcosm of an entire industry…they compress an industry‟s entire world market into a single

place…for a limited time period…They have become central nodes in the global political

economy.”

The increasing impact of globalization is seen in the fact that creators who are or who

would like to be successful now find it necessary to have outlets for their work in more than one

country. For example, successful artists are likely to be associated with galleries in the US,

Europe and Asia. Christie‟s, one of the two leading art auction houses, has 85 offices in forty-

three countries (Quemin, 2010: 52). Major fashion firms have shops in ninety to one hundred

countries.

What are the consequences of the emergence of a global culture world in a specific form

of culture? How do global worlds affect the behavior of creators, sellers, and purchasers? As I

will show in the following discussion, the most notable difference between urban culture worlds

and global culture worlds is in the extent to which the latter accentuate the importance of

economic resources. Differences in power and prestige at the national level are magnified at the

global level. Economic rewards take precedence over symbolic rewards, as seen in the types of

culture that circulate in global culture worlds and the ways in which they are produced. I

hypothesize that urban culture worlds are diminished rather than enhanced by these activities. The

relationships between participants from different countries tend to take the form of a center-

periphery model in which powerful actors from a few countries control or dominate creation,

production, sales and profits.

CONTEMPORARY ART AS A GLOBAL CULTURE WORLD

Locations. The global market for contemporary art (Bellet, 2008a; Quemin, 2006: 539)

is centered around five major international art fairs, two auction markets, a few major art dealers

primarily from Germany, the US, Switzerland, France and the UK, and a small group of super-

rich collectors, several of whom are billionaires. The market for contemporary art works (i.e. art

works produced in the last twenty years) is a sub-set of the entire global art market which

includes sales of art works from earlier periods. 3

The most important international art fairs take place once a year in New York (The

Armory Show), London (Frieze Art Fair), Basel (Art Basel), Miami (Art Basel Miami Beach)

first appeared toward the middle of the nineteenth century in London, Paris and Chicago which were

emerging as major cities (The Great Exhibition, London, 1851; Exposition Universelle, Paris, 1889 and

1900; World‟s Fair, Chicago, 1900). 2 Arts festivals have also been increasing rapidly but their principal goal is to attract audiences to a specific

location. In spite of the international component in their programming, their benefits are primarily local

rather than international (Klaic, 2008: 268). 3 The value of transactions in the entire global art market increased from 27,7 billion euros in 2002 to 43,3

billion euros in 2006, an increase in value of 56% (Bellet, 2008a).

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and FIAC (Paris). 4 These fairs have the largest numbers of participants and the largest

percentages of foreign galleries (Quemin, 2010: 53; Quemin, 2008: 82). Major art galleries

display their wares at these fairs, permitting collectors, dealers, and other art market experts to

identify new trends rapidly and to locate new talent. Two of these major fairs were created in the

past decade, the Frieze Art Fair in 2003 and Art Basel Miami Beach in 2001.

For artists and their galleries, the costs of participation in these events are very high but it

is the only way to have access to the wealthiest collectors (Bellet, 2004). These events are a

major source of information for both dealers and collectors. Rather than visiting dozens of

galleries in cities, such as New York, London, and Paris, the major players in the global art

market come together in one place. In a very brief period, collectors and dealers can spot trends

and new movements and see works by new artists and new works by established artists. In other

words, in a few days, they accomplish the task of identifying and assessing new trends that occurs

over a much longer period each year in urban art worlds. Quemin (2008: 83) states:

“the important people in the art market—those who validate and „consecrate‟ (whether

major collector or museum curators, for example)—spend much more time visiting fairs

and biennials than visiting galleries (apart from those located in a couple of major cities

like New York) or surfing internet looking for new talent. In effect, the fairs have become

the key to the evolution of the market.” (my italics)

It is not surprising that these fairs have an enormous influence on prices in this market

(Ellison, 2004). According to Artprice, the number of art works worth more than $1 million was

154 in 1996; by 2007, the figure had increased over 8 times to 1,254 (Azimi, 2008).

Concomitantly with the emergence of art fairs, the major auction houses, Christie‟s and

Sotheby‟s, have become much more influential. 5 Because of the enormous importance in this

new type of art market of the monetary value of art works, sales of art works at auction have

become very significant because they establish publicly the value of specific art works.

Until the 1990s, major works of contemporary art were sold primarily in a few urban art

worlds, including New York, Paris, London, and, to a lesser extent, Berlin. These elite art worlds

embodied the standards against which less prestigious art worlds were compared. Art works were

displayed and sold in galleries. The auction market performed a secondary role, principally for

major works by artists who were deceased. Through their interactions with one another, artists

developed a consensus about the worth of the works they were creating. New aesthetic criteria

continually emerged as new groups of artists entered the art world. If these aesthetic criteria were

strongly opposed to the aesthetic criteria of established artists, the term „avant-garde‟ was often

appropriate. 6

These contemporary art communities were urban cultures (Crane, 1992). A recent article

about postwar contemporary art in New York begins: “In the art world, geography is destiny”

(Rosenberg, 2008). Specific neighborhoods in New York, such as Tenth Street, Greenwich

Village, the East Village, and SoHo were locations where communities of artists lived and

worked, exchanging ideas, and studying each other‟s work (Crane, 1987). For example, in the

early years of Abstract Expressionism, the artists formed “a loose community based on mutual

understanding and respect. Personal interactions were of great importance, for they gave rise to an

4 Contemporary art works are also exhibited at urban art biennials whose numbers are also increasing. Art

biennials are invited exhibitions; artists must be selected by curators in order to participate. Only a few,

such as the Venice Biennale and Documenta at Kassel, are major centers for international art sales. 5 Christie‟s and Sotheby‟s constitute 80 percent of the entire international fine art auction business (Ellison,

2004). 6 For recent reviews and reconceptualizations of the term, „avant-garde‟, see Cook, 2000; Crane, 2002;

Huston, 1992; and Pagani, 2001. Moulin (2000: 29) suggests that the term, „contemporary art‟, may now

have replaced the term, „avant-garde‟.

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aesthetic climate in which innovation and extreme positions were accepted and encouraged”

(Sandler, 1976: 79). At the beginning of the twentieth century, art styles were also identified with

specific neighborhoods in Paris, such as Montparnasse and Montmartre.

Participants. Why has the sale of contemporary art works and art works in general

become so important? One explanation is the enormous amount of disposable wealth that is being

created in the global economy, much of which is concentrated in the hands of a small group of

businessmen and entrepreneurs.

Unlike art markets in the past, the global contemporary art market is driven by the tastes

of very wealthy collectors who belong to a new class that has recently emerged in the global

economy, the super-rich, defined as people whose personal fortunes are greater than $30 million.

It has been estimated that in 2007 there were 103,320 people in this group in the entire world

(“Le nombre de riches dépasse les dix millions dans le monde”, 2008). These people are avid

consumers of luxury items of all kinds. In this context, art works become luxury items, along with

jewelry, yachts, fancy cars, and haute couture. These collectors are so powerful that they have

been called “mega-collectors”. They are said to represent 80% of recent buyers of contemporary

art. Consequently, the tastes of members of this new class are reshaping the characteristics of art

objects and of the art markets in which they are sold. These mega-collectors can afford to finance

galleries and to invest in the production of art works by leading artists. They often have teams of

art experts and advisors who assist them with their purchases and may even build museums to

house their own collections. Buyers of contemporary art are more geographically diverse than

ever before with Russian and Chinese buyers becoming increasingly prominent (Melikian, 2007a;

Melikian, 2008a).

Some mega-collections are huge. François Pinault, a French collector, owns 2,500 art

works, as well as Christie‟s (the auction house), and a museum in Venice. He works with ten

consultants and specialists who assist him with purchases and conservation of the collection. An

American collector, Eli Broad, a financier, has over 2000 works of modern and contemporary art

(Wyatt, 2008). Broad‟s collection has doubled in size in the past five years. He keeps most of his

art works in a foundation that lends them to museums. Another American collector, Martin

Margulies, a real estate entrepreneur, owns 4000 art works. A multi-billionaire hedge-fund owner,

Steven Cohen, bought close to one billion dollars worth of art between 2000 and 2006 (Tomkins,

2007b: 72).

A prominent dealer claims that, in the 1970s, collectors did not belong to the business

elite. They were psychiatrists and lawyers who established long-term relationships with dealers

(Tomkins, 2007b: 72). Unlike today‟s megacollectors who tend to purchase art works very

rapidly, often without having seen anything more than a digital version, these collectors

frequently borrowed paintings and lived with them for several months before deciding whether or

not to purchase them.

Because of the enormous increase in prices of some art works today, art works tend to be

purchased as a form of investment. The editor of ARTnews (Esterow, 2008: 121) quotes a

London dealer as saying: “The best works are proving to be as sound an investment as you can

make these days.” A recent study of the investments of millionaires all over the world found that

“more than ever, millionaires, particularly Europeans, consider art collections as “alternatives to

financial investment” (Vulser, 2010). Not surprisingly, 30% of the leading collectors of

contemporary art are employed in various forms of financial activity (e.g. financial services,

hedge funds, investment, investment banking, and venture capital) (see Table 1).7 Fifty-two

percent are employed in some form of business (e.g. industry, manufacturing, real estate, and

retail). Eleven percent are employed in the media (e.g. advertising, film, publishing, radio, and

7 In order to compile a list of leading art collectors, ARTnews correspondents in 22 countries interviewed

collectors, dealers, auctioneers, museum directors, curators, and consultants (Esterow, 2008: 121).

5

television). Only two percent of these collectors are professionals, such as doctors and lawyers

(see Table 1). Only one of these major collectors is an artist (Damien Hirst, see below).

_________________________________________________________________

TABLE 1: OCCUPATIONS OF LEADING ART COLLECTORS, 2008

Specializing in:

Occupations: Contemporary art Other types of art

Business, industry, retail 52% 46%

Finance, banking, investment 30 18

Media, publishing 11 13

Inheritance 4 14

Professions 2 6

Other 1 3

(127) (73)

Note: Based on a list of the top 200 art collectors appearing in ARTnews (Esterow, 2008).

Collectors were classified in the two specialties based on their primary interest as collectors.

Collectors of contemporary art and collectors of other types of art vary. Eighty-two

percent of the collectors specializing in contemporary art were employed in some form of

business or finance, compared to 64% of the collectors specializing in other types of art. Fourteen

percent of collectors specializing in other types of art obtained their incomes from inheritances

compared to 4% of the collectors specializing in contemporary art.

The emergence of a group of collectors for whom business and financial investment are

major concerns is accelerating changes, which were already under way, in the nature of reward

systems in art worlds, the characteristics and production of art works, and the extent to which the

concept of an avant-garde is still meaningful.

Reward system: The nature of the reward system surrounding the production of this type

of art is the antithesis of the reward system that existed in the art world at the beginning of the

postwar period. The monetary value of a painting was less important than its consecration by a

few major museums (such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York) whose curators

performed important roles in putting together exhibitions of leading artists and purchasing

important works. The auction market performed a secondary role. Artists were motivated less by

financial gain than by their aesthetic goals and assessments of their works by their peers.

According to an American art critic, “prices now determine reputations” (Tomkins,

2007b: 71). Prices are set through sales at auction houses. Traditional art gatekeepers, such as

critics and museum curators, now perform less important roles in the reception of new art.

Consequently, auction houses are competing with museums in the process of defining

contemporary art. Museums follow trends set in the international art market but they no longer

have the financial means to set trends by buying major contemporary art works (Bellet, 2004). 8

They rely on galleries and collectors to help finance exhibitions of huge contemporary works that

are difficult to transport and install (Finkel, 2007).

In the postwar period, the contemporary art market was small and relatively inactive; a

few critics, like Clement Greenberg, were very influential. When Abstract Expressionism was

8 In 2010, a sculpture by the French postwar sculptor, Giacometti, was sold at auction for 74 million euros.

This sum represents the equivalent of more than sixteen years of the budget for acquisitions of one of the

major museums of modern art in Paris, the Centre Pompidou (Bellet, 2010).

6

emerging, rewards were few. Visitors to art galleries in which paintings in that style were

exhibited were rare. A leading art historian recalls that during the three years when he ran an

influential cooperative gallery in New York, he sold only one work (Sandler, 1984: 12). Most of

these artists worked for many years before achieving any economic success. Ironically, their

paintings are now worth millions.

By contrast, the importance of contemporary artists is more likely to be measured in

terms of their presence in the collections of mega-collectors rather than in prestigious museums

and the extent to which their works are present at international art fairs (Quemin, 2008: 87).

Production. A relatively small number of contemporary artists, along with another larger

group of artists who emerged in the postwar period, are the subject of intense speculation in the

global art market (Bellet, 2004; Tomkins, 2007b: 71). Works by these artists have been sold for at

least one million dollars on the auction market.

Many of these artists share an outlook toward the nature of art which derives from the

twentieth century French artist, Marcel Duchamp (d. 1968) as reinterpreted by Andy Warhol, a

postwar artist. Rather than visual attributes or craftsmanship, the selection of the subject matter

of the art work is the major element in making an artistic statement. These artists appear to

compete with one another to find new types of subject matter, ranging from the bizarre and the

hideous to the mundane and the kitsch, as exemplified by Damien Hirst‟s glass tanks holding

animals in formaldehyde, Jeffrey Koon‟s huge steel heart in the shape of a valentine, or Richard

Price‟s comical sentences in red letters on an olive background. 9 Alternatively, contemporary

artists recycle Duchamp‟s major contribution to art history, the “ready-made”, the idea that the

significance of an object depends on its context. A recent example of such a work is “No-one

Ever Leaves” by Jim Hodges which consists of a leather jacket tossed in a corner with a spider

web made of silver chains attached to the hem of the jacket and to the wall (Melikian, 2007b). 10

In works like these, a concept or an idea is more important than the subject matter itself. 11

In many cases, popular culture is the subject of contemporary art. There is a fusion of art

and entertainment, as seen in the cases of three of the artists mentioned above whose works are

among those that have attained the highest prices in recent years. One of Hirst‟s recent works is

an enormous skull encrusted with diamonds which, at $78 million, 12

is one of the most

expensive art works in the world. Koons, who has been called “the superstar of kitsch” (Azimi,

2007b), produces gigantic reproductions of children‟s toys (e.g. a forty-foot high likeness of a

West Highland terrier, called “Puppy”), cartoon monkey heads, and life-size images of naked

girls from Playboy centerfolds (Tompkins, 2007a). A few years ago, he produced a sculpture of

Michael Jackson with his pet monkey. Prince‟s work recycles various forms of popular culture,

including “advertising photographs…soft-core pornography, motorcyle-cult ephemera, pulp-

novel covers, “Dukes of Hazzard”-era car parts, and celebrity memorabilia” (Schjeldahl, 2007:

90). He also copies works by established post-war artists, such as Jasper Johns, Robert

Rauschenberg, Ed Ruscha, and Willem de Kooning (Schjeldahl, 2007). He was recently given a

large retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum in New York.

The traditional type of avant-garde which represented a relatively coherent movement

consisting of a group of artists who were engaged in attacking and redefining the current aesthetic

premises of art is notably absent. Some exhibitions of provocative and sensational art works

generate a great deal of publicity but they do not represent genuine avant-garde movements.

9 The sentences read: “A pink elephant, a green kangaroo and two yellow snakes strolled up to the bar.

„You‟re a little early, boys,‟ said the bar tended. „He ain‟t here yet.‟” This work was recently auctioned for

$1.38 million (Melikian, 2007d). 10

This work sold at auction in 2007 for $689,600 (Melikian, 2007b). 11

This style of art has recently been the subject of a devastating critique by a British critic who claims that

conceptual art has become a parody (Lewis, 2010). 12

This price represents a direct sale to a collector rather than an auction sale.

7

Koons claims that contemporary artists do not need to be familiar with art history, but at times he

includes details that represent a nod to avant-gardes of the past. Superimposed on his painting,

“Three Elvises”, which is based on a Playboy centerfold, is a crab‟s claw, a motif used by

Salvador Dali in the 1930s.

Rather than being a proponent of an avant-garde, the successful contemporary artist can

be characterized as an entrepreneur running a business which operates in a global market. As

such, artists, like Damien Hirst, claim that they are not concerned with being original but with

establishing brand names that represent a “trademark” style (Lury, 2005). He has applied his

„brand name‟ to about 500 paintings of brightly colored spots on a white background that are

made according to his exacting specifications by his assistants.

How do these artists conceptualize the audience for their works? Hirst appears to see the

audience as a homogenous mass, not unlike the way Hollywood sees its audience for

blockbusters. Hirst describes the effects of his formulaic paintings of spots on viewers as being

similar to the effects of anti-depressive pills. He has been quoted as saying: “The spot paintings

are an unfailing formula for brightening up people‟s fucking lives” (Lury 2005: 100). In other

words, he believes that these paintings have the same effect on everyone and is not interested in

any variations in the public‟s reactions to this work.

Following Marcel Duchamp, for whom the viewer was an important part of the creative

process, Koons claims to be more concerned about the viewer than about the art work but in

contrast to Duchamp‟s idea that the role of the viewer was to complete the work by interpreting

its meaning and its place in art history, Koons says (Tompkins, 2007a: 67): “I just try to do work

that makes people feel good about themselves, their history and their potential.” His goal is “to

help people accept their own cultural background.” He believes that contact with his work makes

people “feel very good” (p. 66). In other words, his art works are intended to have a positive

effect on viewers and to require a minimum of input from them.

The production of art works in this market often involves huge investments by dealers

and collectors and large staffs of assistants or, in many cases, separate firms, that actually produce

the art works under the artist‟s direction. Jeff Koons and Takashi Murakami (another highly

successful contemporary artist) employ between eighty and one hundred people to produce their

art works (Tomkins, 2007a; Schjeldahl, 2008). Each of Koons‟ canvases may have three people

working on it at the same time, “copying from digital printouts in which the colors are marked

and identified by number” (Tompkins, 2007a: 6).

When art works are very large, industrial, labor intensive or time-consuming,

professional art fabricators construct them for the artist (Finkel, 2008; Fineman, 2006). Many

artists no longer possess the technical skills to produce the works they imagine. Minimalist artists

in the 1960s frequently had their complicated sculptures produced by industrial firms but, today,

the practice of having art works constructed by firms that specialize in this type of work is much

more widespread.

The increasing division of labor between “art workers” and “art thinkers” raises the

question of what is the role of a contemporary artist. Jeffrey Deitch, who owns a gallery in SoHo,

suggests that we are moving toward an understanding of the artist as a philosopher rather than as

a craftsman (Fineman, 2006). Deitch says: “The artist‟s idea and vision are prized, rather than the

ability to master the crafts that support the work.” Another contemporary artist (Maurizio

Cattelan) says (Corrias, 2005): “The idea that the artist manipulates materials is not something

that I agree with. I don‟t design. I don‟t paint. I don‟t sculpt. I absolutely never touch my works.”

Katy Siegel, an art critic and professor of contemporary art history, speaks of “a real class

divide in the art world between the art workers and the art thinkers” (Fineman, 2006). Although a

8

few of Damien Hirst‟s assistants have later had careers as artists, hundreds of aspiring artists are

relegated to careers in which they fabricate the works of a few, highly successful artists. 13

The emphasis on art works as ideas rather than as objects is indicated by the fact that

collectors often buy art works without seeing the work itself except in digital form on the

Internet (Tomkins, 2007b: 72). In the past, when reproductions of art works were invariably

considered to be inferior to the original, buying an art work without having seen it would have

been unthinkable. The current practice of buying on the basis of digital images suggests that the

value of an art work now depends on the discourse surrounding the work in the media rather than

on its visual characteristics and quality (Melikian, 2008c).

The contemporary art world itself has been described as an industry, comparable to the

film industry or the fashion industry. The dealer, Jeffrey Deitch, has been quoted as saying

(Tomkins, 2007b: 72), “The art world used to be a community, but now it‟s an industry. It‟s not

just a market—it‟s a visual culture industry, like the film industry or the fashion industry, and it

merges with both of them.”

Jasper Johns, a leading artist of the postwar period, recently told an interviewer that he

still executes all his work by hand. He does not rely on assistants or on computers. He added the

following comment (Vogel, 2008): “It‟s a different art world from the one I grew up in.

Artists…are more aware of the market than they once were. There seems to something in the air

that art is commerce itself.”

Consequences of the global art world. To summarize, in the high-end enclave of the art

market today, very expensive art works circulate among extremely wealthy collectors whose

tastes shape the symbolic and material aspects of the products. Sales at auction houses provide

reliable indicators of demand for these products. Bypassing urban art markets and art

communities, these transactions take place at a small number of international art fairs under the

aegis of a small group of powerful dealers. As Quemin (2008: 79; 2006: 539) has shown,

participants are drawn from a large number of countries, but the global art market is dominated

by fairs, galleries and artists associated with a small number of Western countries.

This relatively closed circuit has produced a type of art that tends to recycle cultural

images and symbols that have already been widely disseminated in popular culture and the media.

In spite of the fact that this content is readily accessible to a larger public, these art works tend to

have a relatively limited and elite audience. Many of the works are located in private collections.

They reach a somewhat larger audience if they are purchased or exhibited by museums or if the

collectors create viewing spaces for their works.

The huge sums available for purchase and for investment in these types of art works have

produced a predilection for extremely large and expensive works that are manufactured

industrially or semi-industrially, a system that requires the employment of large numbers of

artists in relatively menial roles. Other artists provide high-level technical skills for the

production of these works. Neither group receives any type of recognition or reward, other than

wages. For the artists who design the art works and who profit enormously from their production

in terms of both economic and symbolic rewards, aesthetic issues are minimized in comparison to

the problems of maximizing sales and profit in order to maintain these systems of industrial

production. Communities of artists at this level of the art market appear to be virtually

nonexistent.

FASHION AS A GLOBAL CULTURE WORLD While hundreds of fashion firms from dozens of countries compete in the global fashion

market, it is possible to discern the outlines of a relatively coherent global fashion world within

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In May, 2010, a painting by Picasso that he had made in a single afternoon in 1964 became the most

expensive art work ever sold in the auction market at over $106.5 million (Melikian, 2010). In this context,

it is interesting to point out that Picasso painted the picture himself.

9

this seemingly chaotic situation. This global fashion world includes two sets of firms, fast fashion

and luxury fashion, which dominate this market as a result of their mastery of the complex

conditions that affect cultural and economic production and sale of goods at the global level. The

global fashion world also includes an increasing number of international trade fairs where

manufacturers and retailers meet, display their wares, and exchange ideas. These shows are „the

marketplace‟ of fast fashion (Majima, 2008:85).

Location. Although products are exhibited with enormous care and imagination at

international fashion trade fairs, there are few purchases because buying takes place at intervals

throughout the year. What do global fashion fairs accomplish? According to Florio (1994: 270),

“there is an intense and concentrated exchange of information.” In his opinion, “the exchange of

information is the main driving force behind contemporary trade fairs.” Types of information

include press conferences, trade magazines, seminars about new trends, markets, technology, and

management, and, of course, fashion shows (Skov, 2006: 776).

Skov (2006: 768) argues that the global or intermediary fair reproduces and reinforces the

social relationships and hierarchies among participants in the global fashion market. The self-

presentation of companies at intermediary fashion fairs is an indication of their relative

importance in the market. Firms observe and emulate their competitors closely, thereby setting

standards for their activities in the market.

Skov (2006: 773ff) suggests that information exchange and social interactions at fairs

create a kind of coherence in the highly fragmented fashion industry. She draws an analogy

between the way in which urban fashion worlds in the past contributed to a common outlook and

convergence of tastes among creators, producers and consumers of fashion (Blumer, 1969) and

the effects of multiple social interactions at global fairs in which participants have the opportunity

to observe large numbers of their colleagues from many different countries. These sites are

replacing urban culture worlds in some respects as well as extending their capacity to channel

new trends over a much broader geographical area.

As is the case with global art worlds, the most important trade fairs take place in a few

West European countries (France, Italy, Germany and Spain) and the U.S. (Majima, 2008: 86).

One major fair takes place in Hong Kong. The number of major fashion trade shows is greater for

fashion than for art because of the complexity of the production process which includes fairs

devoted to color, thread, cloth, and clothing styles (p. 86). The major goal of attendees is to gather

information and ascertain trends without having to visit hundreds of showrooms. Majima refers to

the process of locating trends at these fairs as a “layered collective selection process” because

each type of fair sets one type of trend which feeds into the final product.

So-called „trend orchestration‟ also takes place at these fairs. Based on the results of

extensive trend forecasting, the organizers of Première Vision, the world‟s leading fair in the

fabric and textile industry, develop their „authoritative view‟ of future trends with which

exhibitors‟ collections at the fair are expected to be compatible. Because the fair is attended by

professionals from many other consumer industries and from many countries, the trends

promoted at the fair receive worldwide visibility and recognition and are immediately imitated

(Rinallo and Golfetto, 2006).

Production. Fast fashion, which has replaced luxury fashion as the leader of the global

fashion world, consists of a small number of firms whose goal is to locate and exploit fashion

trends by producing them very rapidly and disseminating them to consumers in a large number of

countries (Tokatli, 2008). Because they assimilate and copy fashion ideas but do not create them,

the prestige of fast fashion firms in the fashion business is relatively low. In order to have access

to huge clothing inventories rapidly, they own manufacturers or outsource to numerous suppliers

in many countries. To sell rapidly, they need large numbers of stores which they either own or

franchise. In 2007, Zara, which is possibly the best known fast fashion firm, had suppliers in 12

countries and about 1000 shops in 64 countries (Tokatli, 2008: 33). Other leading fast fashion

firms, H&M, Gap and Benetton, had 1400, 3000, and 5000 stores, respectively.

10

A major component of this type of business is a highly developed and efficient

information system in which statistics on the firm‟s sales are collected and processed along with

qualitative information from trend-spotters and customers. A representative of Zara has been

quoted as saying (Tungate, 2005: 52):

“we need to know what the trends are, so we follow them through magazines, fashion

shows, movies and city streets. We use trend trackers and forecasting companies.”

On the one hand, the Internet facilitates trend-spotting because websites post designer

collections almost immediately. On the other hand, Zara is very adept at obtaining customer

feedback from their stores that informs them of customers‟ reactions to trends. Information is

translated into a continual flow of new clothing items that replaces the notion of seasonal

collections that are typical of luxury fashion. In a market where customers are primarily

interested in trends rather than quality or originality, the capacity to provide a continual turnover

in trends at low cost leads to enormous profits. A fast fashion garment‟s shelf life is measured in

weeks not months (Young, 2009).

The luxury fashion business is dominated by a few conglomerates, based primarily in

Europe, which own numerous small designer brands. Although they claim that quality is their

principal goal, many of their products are outsourced in emerging countries (Reinach, 2005).

Unlike fast fashion, these firms, which are generally very profitable (Vulser, 2010), do not

specialize in fashionable clothing. They use fashionable clothing to create an image for their

brands that will facilitate the sale of other items, such as accessories and perfumes (Crane, 2000).

Consumers. The typical consumer of fast fashion is young, fickle, and changeable and

has modest means with which to pursue continually changing conceptions of her social identity

(Reinach, 2005: 47). Consumers‟ budgets are limited but the fact that they are very numerous

compensates for their small budgets. They reside in many countries, both in the East and the

West.

In general, tastes within and across social classes have become increasingly

unpredictable. Social classes are riddled with niches in which different combinations of age, race,

ethnicity, and income make tastes increasingly difficult to explain. Gabriel and Lang (2008) argue

that it is impossible to generalize about consumers. They state (p. 325):

“The consumer…is unmanageable, both as a concept, since no one can pin it down to one

specific conceptualization at the expense of all others, and as an entity, since attempts to

control and manage the consumer lead to the consumer mutating from one impersonation

to another.”

Because of the variety of sources of fashion trends and the speed with which they change,

locating new fashion trends has become a business in itself. Trend-spotters comb cities and

regions around the globe and scour the media looking for ideas that might be assimilated by the

fashion industry and by other businesses that are attempting to publicize new products or

reposition an old product (Roux, 2009; Vulser, 2009). Within these agencies, staff members often

specialize in different aspects of fashion, such as form, shape, or color. The gift of the trend-

spotter lies in her ability to synthesize an enormous amount of seemingly trivial information from

many different locations about what people at all social levels are wearing and what they are

doing and saying in order to make predictions about what they will prefer to wear and to do in

subsequent months. This situation is ideally suited for fast fashion firms because they have the

capacity to adapt to changing trends very rapidly.

Consequences of the global fashion world. Luxury fashion was formerly the symbolic

if not the economic leader of the global fashion world but has been upstaged by fast fashion.

Luxury fashion firms specialize in the creation of high quality garments for consumers who

maintain high income life styles but in this process their creativity and cultural production has

been increasingly challenged by competition from media, popular culture, celebrity culture, and

street culture. Fast fashion firms create „budget interpretations‟ of high-fashion and ready-to-wear

11

collections which reach the market long before these firms are able to produce their wares and

stock them in their stores. According to Reinach (2005: 54):

“Presented until now as a „gated commodity‟ to protect it from a reality and paradox that

descended from it, prêt à porter is a mass-produced product and can now be easily copied

by fast fashion, imitated by fake brands, endangered by the counterfeiting of goods and

brands, and subjected to all kinds of transformations that compromise its glamour and

embodiment of luxury goods.”

The implications for luxury fashion are seen in the fact that fast fashion stores are

replacing haute couture and designer stores in prestigious locations such as Fifth Avenue in New

York (Tokatli, 2008: 24). French luxury fashion designers have recently been accused in Le

Monde, of not being original and of not moving fashion toward the future in a meaningful way

(Maliszewski, 2009). Either they are no longer adept at identifying and expressing through their

designs what will be considered the „zeitgeist‟ or the „air du temps‟ or their prognostications carry

less weight than before in the global fashion system. Doeringer and Crean (2006) deplore the

decline of the US apparel industry while Courault and Doeringer (2008) describe attempts by

small French fashion firms to adapt to changes in the global market. This situation is typical of

global culture worlds in which certain types of organizations dominate and their activities have

repercussions for all the other actors in the system.

To summarize, a new form of global fashion world reproduces the hierarchical and

competitive relationships between firms that exist at local and regional levels and supersedes

urban fashion worlds in the identification and recognition of fashion trends.

CONCLUSION

Global culture worlds are hierarchical settings in which the largest and most powerful

firms dominate; their activities affect the viability and strategies of other global, regional and

local firms. The global cultural marketplace favors firms with substantial amounts of capital that

are able to develop products that appeal to global audiences or to highly lucrative, specialized

audiences. In addition to contemporary art and fast fashion, examples include the Hollywood film

industry and the television industry. Global culture worlds require temporary settings such as

intermediary trade fairs where cultural goods can be displayed to large numbers of creators,

producers and sellers and where, most importantly, an unwritten consensus can be reached about

the nature and direction of their activities.

Canclini (2009) argues that digital convergence has made local culture worlds obsolete.

He claims that formerly:

“the definition, valorization, and understanding of artistic processes happened in

autonomous circuits and spaces. This independence and self-sufficiency in artistic

practices has vanished. In contemporary societies, art has lost autonomy and aesthetics

has seen its object of study disperse. The predominance of symbolic over economic value

has diminished at the same time as the tendency toward commercialization of artistic

practices has strengthened.”

According to Canclini, the phenomenon of digital convergence has created interrelated

structures for the production of texts and images that are available simultaneously on television,

on line and in mobile technology (p. 142). The radical integration of all media leads to

transnational or „denationalized‟ production which in turn diminishes the cultures and cultural

fields of national states (p. 145). Although Canclini does not mention fashion as a form of culture,

there are analogies between his analysis of the consequences of digital convergence and the

emergence of a global fashion world in which trends produced in urban culture worlds are rapidly

assimilated as a result of digital convergence and exploited at the global level.

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