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How the Mainstream Art World Works: An Interview with Professor Lane Relyea

Many artist, collectors, and gallery owner ask me question on how to break into the mainstream art system. So, I found a leading expert to find out Special thanks to Rony Crawford of the School of the art Institute who made this interview possible.

Professor Lane Relyea is one of American's leading art critics, He is an Assistance Professor of Graduate Studies at Northwestern University and he has contributed to dozens of national art publications. Also he is America s leading expert on System Theory applications in the to Visual Art field. In this interview using the dying pratice of art criticism as an anchor. Professor Relyea provides a overview of current professional art world practice.

Question: Do artists create art with critics and institutions in mind?

Relyea: A dominant trend among artists today is to make-work with institutions in mind. Not with criticism in mind. Actually, the two things might be mutually exclusive. Institutions are where the action is right now. The heyday of art criticism dawned with the demise of the official salons in the mid 1800s; there was something like art criticism before that but it really took off once new art began getting shown in private galleries run by dealers rather than at the once-a-year hoax the state-run salon had become. In this new arrangement, critics were "first responders," intermediaries who brought public attention to the galleries but also judged the worth of artworks that debuted there before the public. Critics do not have that same role today. More and more museums have gotten into the contemporary art business, they commission very young artists to produce art specifically for their spaces, and the work then goes immediately into the collection. Artists debut in museums. Critics are not underwriters or producers of art. Curators have taken over the role of critics; curators are first responders now, they discover and promote art by having their employer-institution subsidize its creation. Unlike critics, curators have institutions bankrolling their travel; and so curators are the only ones who can now keep up with the itineraries of the most interesting artworks as they travel the now global map of the international artworld; they now do what critics once were thought to do, which is to produce synoptic, informed judgments through a comparison of the period's most important art. Criticism exerts ever less influence over

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