Artworld versus Arthome
Artworld versus Arthome

Summary/Abstract: The paper provides a critical analysis of the artworld, which holds a monopoly The artworld holds a monopoly on the redistribution of art’s ideas and hierarchies. Today we are observing the unification and centralization of the artworld – by the logic of the market, mass media and ideology (e.g. feminism and post-Marxism). It reduces art just to its public and social functioning – art is seen as a commodity, a mass media event or a means of political re/education. This brings art to the level of the street and a crowd of passersby. The artworld generates its own (sham) “alternativeness” by putting the rest of the society into consternation (with the works’ obscenity or banality). It equates professional competence with the auctioning of openness. It seems that art is becoming an instrument in the domination game for currency. It transforms art into post-art, which is useful mainly to the artworld officers and activists. What do all of those topical events, tendencies, rankings and celebrities produced by the artworld have to do with us? To do with art? We need art to be free, not barely of “the ignorance of the masses”, but also of the usurpations of the “omniscient” experts and furious activists. The author proposes the concept of the ARTHOME opposed to the concept of the artworld. The arthome should be rooted in individual experience and the existential game for values and meanings. It could be characterized by the prevalence of the interior human reality, contemplative (self)reflection, subjectivity, critical anti/fragmentariness and anti/topicality, the search for the wider dimensions of individual existence, personalization instead of globalization. Its singularity is constantly re/constructed in the dialogue with the general. The paper should not be interpreted as total criticism of the newest art. The author appeals here just for a discussion of its meanings and functions. The call is addressed to all mature people, not only to the artworld activists and officers.

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