1 Introduction: Aesthetic Judgment in the Contemporary Art
World
2 The Eccentric Artist: Negotiating Creative Autonomy in the Art
World
3 Experimentation and Emotion: Developing Distinctive Creative
Visions
4 Interpretive Guides: Exhibiting Work and Shaping Meaning
5 Eyes and Ears: Collecting Work and Maintaining
Connoisseurship
6 Producing Creative Visions: Presenting Evolving Trajectories over
Careers
7 Conclusion: Aesthetic Judgment in the Creative Process
Acknowledgments
Methodological Appendix
Notes
References
Index
Hannah Wohl is assistant professor of sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
"Sociological research and theories on creativity assume that
creativity is based on collective processes, social evaluations and
judgments, and the result of social networks, interactions, and
shared beliefs. Hannah Wohl’s book Bound by Creativity: How
Contemporary Art Is Created and Judged addresses this sociological
assumption by providing in-depth insights that she has gathered
from a long-term ethnography within the contemporary art world in
New York."
*American Journal of Sociology*
"Wohl's intriguing book explores the mystery of creativity, the
whatever-it-is that informs artists’ visions as they shape
successful and moving works of art and finds its explanation in the
shared and socially supported understanding of the idea of creative
vision. An original and profound contribution to the sociology of
art."
*Howard S. Becker*
"Bound by Creativity escorts us into a world of radical
uncertainty--the contemporary art market in New York City. Wohl
brings us with her as she witnesses artists engaging with their
publics, explaining their worth, and struggling against
misinterpretations, or worse. What should count and why? And what
to do when the counting goes wrong? These questions animate the
creative process where genius emerges or fails to emerge. Artists,
art critics, humanists, and social scientists will long debate this
book and its findings. And those who care only about the creative
process, no matter its field of application, will benefit from the
clarity with which that process is described and acted upon.
Powerful and evocative, this work shows how creative genius is
generated and why it sometimes survives assaults on its worth."
*Frederick F. Wherry, Princeton University*
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