Globalization is often defined as, “the process of interaction and integration among the people, companies, and governments of different nations, a process driven by international trade and investment and aided by information technology”. New York has been and still is the heart of the art market where the “largest and most influential art dealers headqu
artered and the main contemporary art auctions are organized”. Throughout history, art has changed significantly because of the impact both the economy and society has made. The art industry suffers because of global economic crisis. There has been an increased rivalry with the contemporary side of the art market and auction houses. In the reading it mentions the increased demand for contemporary art and how this affects the prices. “This increased demand is reflected in price levels for the top segment of contemporary art, which between 1990 and the peak of the market in 2008, rose more than sixfold. In other market segments, price increases were more modest. Between 2
003 and 2007 the size of the contemporary art market grew spectacularly by 851 percent worldwide, again much higher than the 311 percent growth of the overall art market”. Because of todays society, art works that were created centuries ago remain precious. For example, Pablo Picasso’s “Le Rêve” sales for $155 Million. Europe and the United States were once the hot spots for the art industry. The emerging art markets has caused the art industry to grow tremendously in countries all around the world such as, India, China, Russia and the UAE. “As a culmination of this ecommerce development, in January 2011, the first online art fair took place, in which many established dealers from the United States and Europe participated. As in the case of auctions, globalization may further spur this development; especially in India, internet sales and online auctions are considered much more legitimate and more common as sales venues than in Europe and the United States”.
Appropriation is a technique used in art and is often defined as, “the use of pre-existing objects or images with little or no transformation applied to them”. The image to the right is an example of the use of appropriation. The Composition with Fruit, Guitar and Glass. Made in 1912 by Pablo Picasso. This technique has been used throughout art history and has made a significant impact in literary, visual, musical and performing arts. Throughout this reading, appropriation is used in the digital age. Many people would argue that this changes the true definition of art and they would question if this is really art anymore. I think the reading really brought to life how today’s society is and how it is affecting everything around us. Especially something that has been around for centuries, like art. For example, Social media. It is a huge issue today. It takes away from what use to be cherished back then. Whether it was art works, or nature around
us. In the past it was about living in the moment. But now, people’s lives are “fake”. This reading ties into the previous reading, Zombie Manifesto. We basically live in a society where we are Zombies. We are not really living life. For example, Facebook. Your life on Facebook shows only the good things that happen and you don’t see the hardships. We rely way too much on our phones. Our lives revolve around it. Everything we do is a representation of something. Sort of like a spectacle. This can be defined as, “Images produced by and for capitalist project.t image put out there that alienates people’s actions and respons
e”. A spectacle doesn’t capture reality. You are able to put up representations at will. Again, Facebook. It is not real life because no one sees the struggles that you may be going through. It is just a digital representation. All you are able to see is the “perfect” life. There is a diversion between the idea of concrete visibility. How it diverts from the spectacle, brought up as a style of art. Cindy Sherman used images and film and reproduced the piece also including herself. This was appropriation but also determinant. She makes a point about how society is undermining women. This image is related to the 
idea of “high art”, Post Modern. Bill Viola-Silent Mountain (2001). It ,”exemplifies a ‘truly creative’ engagement with digital technology that reworks perception and ushers in a new age of image-making, thereby reconfiguring the ‘correlation of the human with the technical’ and exploiting ‘the potential of information to enlarge the scope of the human grasp over the material world”.
man flesh. Zombies are most commonly found in horror and fantasy genre works. The term comes from
Haitian folklore where a zombie is a dead body animated by magic. Modern depictions of zombies do not necessarily involve magic but invoke other methods such as a virus”. Zombies are the face of Capitalism. They mock our mortality. “The zombies embody the classic Marxist critiques of capitalism. The heartless creatures mindlessly devour resources (i.e. human brains) in the same way that capitalism pursues profit for its own sake”. Capitalisms main goal is to dominate. Always unsatisfied needing to expand, needing more in order to sustain itself. This relates to art in a sense that a lot of the works today are meaningless and empty. They are created just for fame with no real purpose or underlying meaning to it. It all leads to society and how much it has changed. When todays art works are viewed there is a sense of mindless to it. In todays society, it is all about fame and wealth. Greed is consuming the world. Most individuals are never really satisfied with what they have. They always want more and more until there’s nothing left. Exactly like both Capitalism and Zombies. “Society suddenly finds itself put back into a state of momentary barbarism; it appears as if a famine, a universal war of devastation, had cut off the supply of every means of subsistence; industry and commerce seem to be destroyed…” Karl Marx 
em. Because of Elisson, people just noticed something that has been there all along. It really makes you take a step back and look at things differently. The Weather Project was another one of his creations. Eliasson used the open space of the gallery’s Turbine Hall. He used humidifiers to create mist while having a huge “circular disk made up of hundreds of monochromatic lamps which radiated yellow light”. The walls were covered with mirrors, “which allowed the visitors to see themselves as tiny black shadows against a mass of orange light. Many visitors responded to this exhibition by lying on their backs and waving their hands and legs”. This is exactly the reaction Eliasson wanted to get from his viewers. “The Weather project is a work about an audience living in a counterfeit environment, mesmerized by dematerialization, tricked by the duplicated space, and subject to its own perception. Once the clouds dissipate the mirrors reflect the image of the viewers beneath caught in the act of seeing”. Eliasson’s art focused on “perception, movement, embodied experience, and feelings of self”. These are the main ideas that drove his works and made them what they are today.