Understanding 'art worlds'

This chapter traces the notion of the art world from its foundations in the work of Danto to its most recent and influential rendering by Howard Becker. With reference to the work of Bourdieu, the chapter also highlights key conceptual limitations of Becker’s framework, including the absence of a mechanism for taking power relations into account. Also missing is a language that can counter the highly reductionist discourse of the creative industries and the associated logics of economics that increasing dominate art, culture, and cultural policy. From a consideration of these issues, the chapter introduces the synthetic notion of the art world complex as a way of understanding the intricacies of the field as well the various networks, interests, institutions, and power relations that interact to shape it.