Title: Art Journalism and the impact of ‘globalisation’: New fugal modalities of storytelling in Austral-Asian writing

Author: Ruth Skilbeck, Ph.D.

Publication: Pacific Journalism Review 14(2) 2008 pp. 139-159

Abstract:

The writing of art journalism has played a key yet little acknowledged role in the ongoing expansion of the international contemporary art world, and the multi-billion dollar global art economy. This article discusses some contradictory impacts of globalisation on art journalism-from extremes of sensationalist record-breaking art market reporting in the global mass media to the emergence of innovative modalities of story-telling in Australian independent journalistic art writing. Using aspects of Bourdieu’s field theory, the article discusses complexities of overlapping fields of economic and cultural production in art journalism and proposes a new modalitry of cultural criticism based on musical fugue form. Reflecting on two case studies-magazine feature stories on contemporary artists, Guo Jian from China and Charlie Co from the Philippines-the article considers the attribution of value, ‘the new global aesthetic’, and new forms of autonomous independent art journalism as cultural production.