Sociologies (Nov 2013)
Les temporalités de la réussite : le moment charnière des quarante ans chez les artistes d’art contemporain
Abstract
The analysis of the temporalities of visual artists' paths highlights a normalization of artists' career on the basis of the model found in firms. The valorization of youth both by institutional public actors as well as individual actors from the contemporary art scene can be observed with regard to the rise of the taxonomical category of « young artist ». This has led to a rigid establishment of temporal prescriptions on the age of forty as a turning point: artists should have achieved their full creative potential before this age in order not to fall in oblivion. What kind of strategies do the artists use in order to cope with this ageist norm?
