Artpress editorial: Nationality as marketing in the art world

In an editorial for artpress, Richard Leydier argues that an artist's nationality has long influenced the reception of their work, citing sociologist Alain Quemin's 2000 analysis showing that top-selling artists are predominantly American, British, and German. While the art world claims to be colorblind, it is in fact protectionist. Historically, transnational movements like Dada and Cubism gave way to national labels after WWII—Abstract Expressionism, Pop, German Neo-Expressionists, Italian Transavanguardia. In the last decade, branding has become essentially national: Young British Artists, Chinese artists, now German painters ("good painting is necessarily German"), Californian artists, and emerging American and British sculptors. France, Leydier laments, has failed to export its artists effectively. He calls patriotic marketing a childish fashion system but acknowledges it drives the art world: collective announcements, reductive slogans, artificial labels that nonetheless produce talented individuals—"there must be Young British Artists for a Damien Hirst to emerge." The editorial asks whether France should adopt a "Made in France" label and who might coin the right formula.