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Seven Days in the Art World is a social history of the recent past. Set in New York, Los Angeles, London, Basel, Venice, and Tokyo, the book is populated by colorful characters who espouse conflicting definitions of art. Some see it as a luxury good or entertainment, others view it as an intellectual calling, a job description, or a kind of alternative religion. In a series of day-in-the-life narratives, Thornton investigates the minute dramas of a Christie’s evening sale, life in a notorious CalArts seminar, the elite trade of the Basel Art Fair, the competition behind the Tate’s Turner Prize, the peculiarities of Artforum and its critics, the high jinks of Takashi Murakami’s studios, and the curatorial wonderland that is the Venice Biennale.
Thornton’s entertaining ethnography explores the dynamics of creativity, taste, judgment, status, money, and the search for meaning and beauty in life. CHAPTERS Published by WW Norton (USA & Canada) and Granta (UK & English worldwide). Forthcoming: De Bezige Bij (The Netherlands), S. Fischer Verlage (Germany), Feltrinelli (Italy), Autrement (France), Edhasa Argentina (worldwide Spanish), Ediouro/Agir (Brazil), Random House Kodansha (Japan), ScienceBooks/Minumsa (Korea), the China Times Publishing Company (Taiwan) and China Renmin University Press (Mainland China). Buy this book: |
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Club Cultures is a highly innovative study of contemporary culture. Focusing on the youth cultures that revolve around dance clubs and raves, Sarah Thornton interrogates the values of authenticity and hipness and explores the complex hierarchies that emerge within the domain of popular culture.
Using a rich combination of methods, Thornton paints a picture of of club cultures as “taste cultures” brought together by micro-media (such as flyers and listings), transformed into self-conscious “subcultures” by niche media (like the music and style press), and sometimes recast as “movements” with the aid of mass media (like tabloid front pages). She also analyses the changing status of the medium of recording, from a marginal, second-class entertainment in the 1950s to the much celebrated, dominant form of clubs and raves in the 1990s. Drawing from the work of Pierre Bourdieu, Thornton coins the term “subcultural capital” to make sense to the distinctions made by “cool” youth, paying particular attention to their disparagement of the “mainstream” against which they measure their alternative cultural worth. Published by Polity in the UK and Wesleyan University Press in the USA in 1995. Buy this book: |
