ARTS / THE VISUAL ARTS - PHOTOGRAPHY, PAINTING AND SCULPTURE

List: Top Ten Artists measured by International Gallery Showings and Exhibitions

Date: February 2007

Source: Artfacts.net

Base: The "Artist Ranking" orders artists in an ordinal scaling according to their recognition in the eyes of professionals (i.e. curators, gallery owners). Artists are ranked by their exhibition history. The A.R evaluates exhibitions held on an international level over the last five years from a database list of over 13,000 artists.

Notes: The basis of the A.R thinking is the so-called economy of attention (after a book from Georg Franck). Franck says that attention (fame) in the cultural world is an economy that works with the same mechanisms as capitalism. Capitalist, or economic, behaviour is based on property, lending money and charging interest. For Franck, the curator (e.g. the museum director or the gallery owner) acts as a financial investor. The curator/investor lends their property (their exhibition space and their fame) to an artist from whom they expect a return on their investment in the form of more attention (reputation, fame etc). Therefore, the relationship between gallery owner and artist relates to that between investor and entrepreneur. With the above stated theory in mind, the A.R system aims to rank only the artists who are rank-worthy. This does not mean that any artist who is not in the ranking or is not highly ranked is a bad artist. It simply means that in comparison to other artists they do not have as much exhibition activity. For more information please see the Artfacts.net site. Apparently Picasso and Warhol have tended to share top spot over the last few years.