Journal of Art Historiography (Jun 2011)
The Provincialism problem
Abstract
The system through which art is created, exhibited, collected, interpreted, and, in some special cases, enters the history of art is not a 'natural' order built around the development of Art as such. It is profoundly shaped by an inequitable distribution of reputation-conferring power that is centered on the New York artworld. While artists, critics, curators and others living elsewhere are subject to the provincialising effects of distance from the centre, those working at the centre are also provincials in that they are subject to an internal hierarchy that confers star status on just a few artists at a time. The article explores the patterns of artmaking at peripheries through the example of Australian art, and at the centre through its institutionalized acceptance of 'accelerated avant-gardism'. Can the provincialist bind be broken? Only through exceptional acts of critical reflexivity on the part of artists, critics and curators. This must occur at all points in this iniquitous, self-perpetuating system––something that, at the moment, does not seem likely.
