Whats the point of "two economies of world art" by Malcolm Bull?

[Sophia Rani]

Its a 8-page thing. I dont know if i can give the link (its not an open link but if anyone have nothing better to do I can give out the article personally), but if anyone have read this, can you help me- what are the two economies?

The english is very deep and I have a hard time understanding it. I've read it 3 times and I'm still confused.

Thanks!

[Thomas]

I think he is talking about the two economies of the traditional art market with galleries and all of that as opposed to social media and likes and that part of it. I think this quote from an interview with Malcolm Bull sums up his position:

Malcolm Bull: "It‘s true, success in the art market is related to medium in a hierarchy that goes from painting, to sculpture, to photography, to video and performance, whereas the attention economy is relatively indifferent to medium, but closely reflects an artist‘s proximity to Western culture, measured in terms of country of origin or residence. What this means, of course, is that if you are, say, a Yemeni video artist, your chances of becoming an international art star aren‘t too good, but that there might be two ways forward – become a painter, or move to Berlin."

So he is talking about traditional ways of selling art versus social media ways of marketing and selling interest in art. The two are different. They have different methods, styles and hierarchies.

The interview I read with him is here:

http://www.courtauld.ac.uk/people/stalla...s/Bull.pdf

Yes, his language is kind of dense. Also social media is complicated so he is talking about it in detail.

He calls Social Media the 'attention economy'.