Other rules of art

Abstract

Review of the book The Global Rules of Art by Larissa Buchholz. In this book, published in 2022 – nine years after the author defended her doctoral dissertation of the same name at Columbia University – Larissa Buchholz analyzes recent transformations in  contemporary  art  through Pierre  Bourdieu’s  notion  of  field.  Reconstructing  the last two decades of the twentieth century and the first of the twenty-first, Buchholz captures the development of a global art field by articulating a structural analysis of the field (macro), a broad set of trajectories (meso), and a close examination of two specific artistic careers (micro). Another goal of the book is to analyze the correlation (or its  absence)  between  the  internationalization  of  the field  and  the  increase  in diversity especially national diversity – among the artists who are part of this field, a phenomenon often emphasized in the discourse produced by the field itself. In addition to situating itself within the studies of the sociology of art and contemporary culture –fields to which it aims to contribute with a global field approach – the book also engages with recent studies on the transnationalization of cultural phenomena.