The Artist-Manager Myth: A Harmful Contradiction

Christian Caliandro argues that the contemporary art market, driven by financial speculation, has become the most hostile environment for radical innovation. He distinguishes between two dissociated states of art: A) art as spectacle, product, consumption, performance, efficiency, result, gratification, profit; and B) art as research, experiment, pain, uncertainty, doubt, trauma, deviation, otherness, sharing, community, existence, everydayness, revolution, transformation, change, evolution. The market has forced art to fulfill extraneous roles like entertainment and concrete answers, while managerial culture has colonized art, distorting its premises. Caliandro cites Mark Fisher on capital as power and control, and references Robert Musil and Maurizio Fagiolo Dell’Arco. He sees glimmers of difference and alterity emerging, and the myth of the artist-manager finally revealed as an illusion.