‘Constructing a Critical Situation’: A Data-Based Approach to the Study of Cultural Periodicals and Art Criticism

Abstract

The article proposes a three-tier model for the analysis of cultural dynamics of the visual arts field, based on data extracted from cultural periodicals and art criticism. Originally developed on the case study of the visual arts scene in Croatia at the turn of the millennium, the model is flexible and can be applied to analyse the complexity of the art field in different (trans)national spaces and time periods. The article outlines the theoretical foundations of the model, developed at the intersection of (digital) art history, sociology of art, social network analysis and relational sociology, and gives a detailed description of the criteria that were used to define the network boundaries in the original research. The three-tier model foregrounds some of the central actors of the art field, such as cultural periodicals, art critics, artists and cultural institutions, who are approached using both quantitative and qualitative methods. It conceptualizes cultural periodicals and art critics that form part of their networks as sharing aesthetic and ideological values, and as producing specific cultural narratives within the structure of the scene. The analytic potential of the model is focused on determining the cohesiveness of different social circles present in an art scene, on identifying the changing cultural trends and narratives that permeate the field, and on revealing the contribution of different social circles to these network and cultural structures.

Keywords:

• Art Criticism; Artists’ Networks; Cultural Periodicals; Digital Art History; Network Analysis

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data Availability Statement

The data that support the findings of this research and that were presented in this article are openly available in the PODEST Repository: https://podest.ipu.hr/islandora/object/ipu:106, reference urn:nbn:hr:254:866657.

Notes

1 The data model presented in this article was developed as part of my PhD research project, defended in December 2021 at the University of Zadar, Croatia. See Sanja Sekelj, ‘Digitalna povijest umjetnosti i umjetničke mreže u Hrvatskoj 1990-ih i 2000-ih’ [Digital Art History and Artists’ Networks in Croatia in the 1990s and 2000s] (PhD diss., University of Zadar, 2021).

2 See for example Koenraad Brosens et al., ‘Slow Digital Art History in Action: Project Cornelia’s Computational Approach to Seventeenth-century Flemish Creative Communities’, Visual Resources 35, no. 1–2 (2019): 117–19; Anna Dot and Pablo Santa Olalla, ‘Noise Management in the Archival Ecosystem: Debating Principles for Classification’, in The Routledge Companion to Digital Humanities and Art History, ed. Kathryn Brown (London and New York: Routledge, 2020), 178–88; Miriam Kienle, ‘Between Nodes and Edges: Possibilities and Limits of Network Analysis in Art History’, Artl@s Bulletin 3 (2017): 56–77; Maximilian Schich, ‘Figuring Out Art History’, International Journal for Digital Art History 2 (2016): 55–57.

3 A straightforward explication of classification processes is available in Béatrice Joyeux-Prunel, ‘Digital Humanities for a Spatial, Global, and Social History of Art’, in Brown, The Routledge Companion to Digital Humanities and Art History, 88–108. The simplification and reduction of historical processes into data is one of the main points of critique of the field, most famously in Claire Bishop, ‘Against Digital Art History’, International Journal for Digital Art History 3 (2018): 122–31.

4 When it comes to network analysis, one such limitation is that most of the analytic potential of the available tools is directed toward the analysis of one-mode networks.

5 Ljiljana Kolešnik, Između Istoka i Zapada: hrvatska umjetnost i likovna kritika 50-ih godina [Between East and West: Croatian Art and Art Criticism in the 1950s] (Zagreb: Institute of Art History, 2006), 12–13. Translated by the author.

6 Barbara Pezzini, ‘Introduction’, Visual Resources 31, no. 1–2 (2015): 6.

7 Apart from postulating that the choices made by art critics point to a certain level of aesthetical and/or ideological affinity, the model does not question why a certain decision was made. A decision to write about a certain artist or cultural institution can be made, for example, in an effort of self-promotion, by way of aligning oneself with the most powerful artists in the scene, or as a result of friendship ties with an artist. In this sense, the ‘passive actors’ could also be conceptualized as having agency within the framework of the suggested model. This would involve, however, an in-depth approach to specific ties.

8 Paul Jaskot, ‘Digital Art History as the Social History of Art: Towards the Disciplinary Relevance of Digital Methods’, Visual Resources 35, no. 1–2 (2019): 21–33, 27.

9 Howard S. Becker, Art Worlds (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 1982).

10 Ibid., X, 1.

11 For more recent interpretations and application of Becker’s model, see for example Hans van Maanen, ‘The Institutional Pragmatism of Howard S. Becker and Paul DiMaggio’, in How to Study Art Worlds (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2009), 31–51; Lee Robert Blackstone, ‘“The Spider Is Alive”: Reassessing Becker’s Theory of Artistic Conventions through Southern Italian Music’, Symbolic Interaction 3 (2009): 184–206; Paula Guerra and Pedro Costa, eds., Redefining Art Worlds in the Late Modernity (Porto: University of Porto, 2016).

12 See Wendy Bottero and Nick Crossley, ‘Worlds, Fields and Networks: Becker, Bourdieu and the Structure of Social Relations’, Cultural Sociology 5 (2011): 104.

13 Ibid., 100.

14 Mustafa Emirbayer and Jeff Goodwin, ‘Network Analysis, Culture, and the Problem of Agency’, American Journal of Sociology 6 (1994): 1411–1454.

15 Ibid., 1440.

16 The need to approach the research object through both quantitative and qualitative means is commonly highlighted in relational sociology. See for example Ann Mische, ‘Relational Sociology, Culture, and Agency’, in The SAGE Handbook of Social Network Analysis, ed. John Scott and Peter J. Carrington (London, Thousand Oaks and New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2011), 80–97; Betina Hollstein, ‘Qualitative Approaches’, in Scott and Carrington, The SAGE Handbook of Social Network Analysis, 404–16; Nick Crossley, ‘Relational Sociology and Culture: A Preliminary Framework’, International Review of Sociology 1 (2015): 65–85. See also Sanja Sekelj, ‘Qualitative Approaches to Network Analysis in Art History: Research on Contemporary Artists’ Networks’, in Brown, The Routledge Companion to Digital Humanities and Art History, 120–34.

17 Johanna Drucker, Graphesis: Visual Forms of Knowledge Production (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014), 128, italics in original.

18 See for example Johanna Drucker, ‘Humanities Approaches to Graphical Display’, Digital Humanities Quarterly 1 (2011), http://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/5/1/000091/000091.html (accessed September 24, 2022); Kienle, ‘Between Nodes and Edges’; Angela Daly, Kate S. Devitt and Monique Mann, Good Data (Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures, 2019).

19 The opposite approach is the ‘realist strategy’, in which network boundaries are defined by the network participants themselves. According to Stephen Borgatti and Daniel Halgin, the realist strategy works from the idea that ‘there is a “true” network of relationships out there’ that the researcher is supposed to discover, while the nominalist strategy ‘holds that every network question (such as “Who are you friends with?” or “Who do you seek advice from?”) generates its own network’. See Stephen P. Borgatti and Daniel S. Halgin, ‘On Network Theory’, Organization Science 5 (2011): 1169–70.

20 The time limits for the original research were based on historiographic research of the visual arts scene in Croatia: 1991 was the year of the brutal dissolution of Yugoslavia and of the independence of Croatia, while in December 2006 Croatia finished negotiations on culture and cultural heritage with the European Union, meaning that it could participate in the ‘Culture 2007–2013’ programme from 2007 onward. The conditions postulated by these open calls drastically changed the local networking practices. Another reason for defining the year 2006 as the upper limit of the research is that it saw the closing of Soros’ Open Society Institute in Zagreb, and could be seen as a symbolic end of the period which started with the 1990s.

21 Arkzin (1991–1998) was originally established as a fanzine of the Anti-War Campaign in Croatia, but extended its thematic scope from 1993 onward, especially in the sense of following and participating in new media international networks. Originally established as a periodical of art history students at the University of Zagreb, Kontura (1991–present) started to become a more ambitious periodical focused on visual arts from 1992 onward. It was and is dedicated to establishing an art market in Croatia, and is connected to a homonymous art gallery and auction house. Vijenac (1993–today) is a bi-monthly periodical published by Matica hrvatska, one of the oldest cultural institutions in Croatia, connected to the nineteenth-century national revival movement. Zarez (1999–2016) was a bi-monthly established after a rupture between the editorial staff of Vijenac and its publisher, and was perceived as connected to the independent cultural scene in Croatia.

22 Pezzini, ‘Introduction’, 6.

23 The data was structured and entered into the Croatian Artists’ Networks Information System (CAN_IS), inaugurated within the ARTNET project (HRZZ 6270, Institute of Art History in Zagreb, 2014–2018), and further developed within the GLOB_EXCHANGE project (HRZZ 3992, Institute of Art History in Zagreb, 2020–2023). It is a relational database with a complementary visualization interface, that enables research on a number of different individual and collective actors who are significant for the structure of the art field. For more information on the possibilities of the database refer to Ljiljana Kolešnik and Sanja Horvatinčić, eds., Modern and Contemporary Artists’ Networks. An Inquiry into Digital History of Art and Architecture (Zagreb: Institute of Art History, 2018). The datasets structured within this research are readily available within the database. See http://artnet.s2.novenaweb.info/web/Login.aspx?ReturnUrl=%2f (accessed September 29, 2022). The data for the examples used in this article are openly available in the PODEST Repository: https://podest.ipu.hr/islandora/object/ipu:106 (accessed October 13, 2022).

24 Social cohesion in network analysis rests on the idea that actors with similar characteristics will be better connected within the network. For more on social cohesion see Alain Degenne and Michel Forsé, Introducing Social Networks (London, Thousand Oaks and New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1999), 78–85; Walter de Nooy, Andrej Mrvar and Vladimir Batagelj, Exploratory Social Network Analysis with Pajek (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 61–76.

25 In this sense, the approach presented in this article is similar to the ‘slow digital art history’ approach advocated by the Project Cornelia team. It involves, as well, a time-consuming process of extracting and sorting of data, in which all of the actors are documented. As explained by the Project Cornelia team: ‘as we do not pretend to know who “deserves” to be included in the database and as we do not believe that we can ignore any of the roles and relationships documented in our sources, we sidestep the confirmation bias that is typical of most art-historical research. In addition, by listening patiently to the archival documents, we allow for a serendipitous “record data first, ask questions later” approach’. Brosens et al., ‘Slow Digital Art History in Action’, 108–09.

26 Relative to the general lack of scholarship on the original time-place of the research, an added research interest was to make available the names and positions of as many active and passive actors as possible, in order to facilitate further digital or ‘analogue’ research on the period.

27 The transformation of bimodal into unimodal affiliation networks is a common procedure when a researcher is interested in only one type of node. The transformation process considers the participation in the same event as a signal of a relation between the two nodes or as a possibility that a relation can be established. For more on the procedure see Stephen P. Borgatti and Daniel S. Halgin, ‘Analyzing Affiliation Networks’, in Scott and Carrington, The SAGE Handbook of Social Network Analysis, 417–33. While the initial visualizations were made with the help of the CAN_IS database, further manipulations were carried out with the open-source visualization platform Gephi.

28 For a more thorough explanation of average degree see de Nooy, Mrvar and Batagelj, Exploratory Social Network Analysis with Pajek, 63–4.

29 For more information on the Anti-War Campaign in Croatia and the anti-war movements in the Post-Yugoslav region, refer to Bojan Bilić, We Were Gasping for Air: [Post-]Yugoslav Anti-War Activism and Its Legacy (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2012).

30 See ‘Was ist Arkzin [6] ili Ideologija novinarskog profesionalizma’ [Was ist Arkzin or the Ideology of Journalistic Professionalism], Arkzin 68 (1996): 2; ‘Was ist Arkzin [10] … P od Politike!’ [Was ist Arkzin [10] … the P of Politics!], Arkzin 73 (1996): 2.

31 Within the periodicals included in the original research, Arkzin is the only one that has until now received more scholarly attention. The network analysis presented here makes a small adjustment to the previously defined development phases of the periodical, in which its third and last phase was determined according to its format and placed in 1997–1998. See Tomislav Medak and Petar Milat, eds., Prospects of Arkzin (Zagreb: Arkzin and Multimedia Institute, 2013), 14–15.

32 Franco Moretti, Graphs, Maps, Trees: Abstract Models for Literary History (London and New York: Verso, 2005), 1.

33 In some of the networks with mentioned artists, a handful of actors performed dual roles: they were both active art critics and artists. In such cases the networks were, thus, multimodal, and the activities of these actors were considered separately.

34 The year 2000 was determined as a milestone in the development of the visual arts scene in Croatia based on extensive historiographic research. That year saw a change in government (from the nationalist right wing to the liberal left), which resulted in some positive changes in cultural policy (such as the establishment of cultural councils within the Ministry of Culture and more transparent criteria in financing), as well as in a general thaw toward critical artistic practices. For more context on the change in 2000 see Željka Tonković and Sanja Sekelj, ‘Duality of Culture and Structure: A Network Perspective on the Independent Cultural Scene in Zagreb and the Formation of the WHW Curatorial Collective’, in Modern and Contemporary Artists’ Networks. An Inquiry into Digital History of Art and Architecture, ed. Ljiljana Kolešnik and Sanja Horvatinčić (Zagreb: Institute of Art History, 2018), 166–213. See also Sepp Eckenhaussen, Scenes of Independence. Cultural Ruptures in Zagreb (1991–2019) (Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures, 2019).

35 Based on other research endeavours, exponential growth over time is one of the constant characteristics of the art field. See Maximilan Schich et al., ‘A Network Framework of Cultural History’, Science 6196 (2014): 558–62; Schich, ‘Figuring Out Art History’; Lev Manovich, ‘Culture in the Pandemics Era? Examining the Growth of Art Biennials from 1895 to 2019’ (2021), http://manovich.net/index.php/projects/culture-in-the-pandemics-era-examining-the-growth-of-art-biennales-from-1895-to-2019 (accessed October 12, 2022).

36 In the original research, the 1990s were further divided into two time periods, with the first one comprising the years 1991–1993. This was done because of the nature of the dataset: Kontura was the only one of the periodicals consistently publishing art criticism in this period, so the results could not be interpreted as pertaining to the entire art field, but rather only to one specific social circle. Arkzin started actively publishing art criticism only in 1994, while the first issue of Vijenac appeared in the end of December 1993.

37 Scale-free networks are characterized by a power law distribution of edges. This means that the majority of nodes have very few connections, while only a couple of them have a huge number of relations. The nodes that have many connections in such networks are called hubs or concentrators. For more on scale-free networks refer to Albert-László Barabási, Linked: The New Science of Networks (Cambridge, MA: Perseus Publishing, 2002), 65–78. The weighted degree is a centrality measure that takes into account the number of edges directly established between nodes, ponderated by the weight of each edge. In this concrete case, the weight of an edge corresponds to the number of texts in which a specific art critic mentioned the same artist.

38 Guido Caldarelli and Michele Catanzaro, Networks: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 65.

39 See, for example, Ljiljana Kolešnik, ‘Conflicting Visions of Modernity and the Post-war Modern Art’, in Socialism and Modernity: Art, Culture, Politics 1950–1974, ed. Ljiljana Kolešnik (Zagreb: Museum of Contemporary Art and Institute of Art History, 2012), 107–79; Ana Ofak, Agents of Abstraction (Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2019); Piotr Piotrowski, In the Shadow of Yalta: Art and the Avant-Garde in Eastern Europe 1945–1989 (London: Reaktion Books, 2009), 108–12, 179–87, 304–06.

40 See, for example, Piotrowski, In the Shadow of Yalta, 302–13, 326–30, 354–9, 374–5, 429–30; Armin Medosch, ‘Cutting the Networks in Former Yugoslavia: From New Tendencies to the New Art Practice’, Third Text 32, no. 4 (2018): 546–61; Ivana Bago, ‘Dematerialization and Politicisation of the Exhibition: Curation as Institutional Critique in Yugoslavia during the 1960s and 1970s’, Museum and Curatorial Studies Review 2, no. 1 (Spring 2014): 7–37.

41 For more information on exhibitions organized by the SCCA-Zagreb see Željka Tonković and Sanja Sekelj, ‘Annual Exhibitions of the Soros Center for Contemporary Art Zagreb as a Place of Networking’, Život umjetnosti 99 (2016): 78–93.

42 After the year 2000, there was a proliferation of non-governmental organizations working in contemporary art in Croatia, mostly established by a younger generation of cultural workers. This cultural complex is usually interpreted as forming the independent cultural scene in Croatia. For more on the independent cultural scene see Tonković and Sekelj, ‘Duality of Culture and Structure’; Eckenhaussen, Scenes of Independence; Marko Golub, ‘A Story Told in Reverse: Patterns in the Urban Scene of Zagreb’, Život umjetnosti 73 (2004): 30–39.

43 Because of a lack of space, and the initial goal of this article to present the theoretical and methodological model, only a handful of identified conventions are mentioned.

44 Betweenness centrality is used to find nodes that serve as bridges between parts of the network, by way of calculating how often a specific node lies on the shortest path between other nodes. It is useful to determine information control within the networks, as well as to identify potential gatekeepers.

45 Compare, for example, Saša Pavković, ‘ZGRAF 6’, Kontura 3 (1991): 14; Marija Gattin, ‘La coesistenza dell’arte’, Kontura 17–18 (1993): 23; Željko Kipke, ‘Između Beča i New Yorka’ [Between Vienna and New York], Vijenac 6 (1994): 28; Želimir Koščević, ‘Drugi korijen Europe’ [The Other Origin of Europe], Vijenac 14 (1994): 29; Nada Beroš, ‘Petercol na 4. Biennalu u Carigradu’ [Petercol on the 4^th Istanbul Biennial], Vijenac 52 (1995): 17; Nada Beroš, ‘Istočni izazov’ [The Eastern Challenge], Vijenac 41–42 (1995): 34; Dejan Kršić, ‘Izvještaj o stanju’ [Status Report], Arkzin 76 (1996): 19; Nada Beroš, ‘Surfanje sa znojem’ [Sweaty Surfing], Vijenac 91 (1997): 23; Goran Blagus, ‘Nacionalno i transnacionalno’ [National and Transnational], Kontura 53 (1997): 20–21; Igor Marković, ‘Brza kultura’ [Fast Culture], Zarez 4 (1999): 20; Marijan Špoljar, ‘Umjetnost je refleksija globalnih tendencija’ [Art is a Reflection of Global Tendencies], Zarez 36–37 (2000): 21.

46 Based on the research of museum collections of Centre Georges Pompidou, Tate Modern and MoMA in New York, as proposed by Júlia Perczel, the structure of the choices within a periodical over a longer time period could be considered as their ‘historical imprint’. See Júlia Perczel, ‘Is Structure Context or Content? A Data-Driven Method of Comparing Museum Collections’, Život umjetnosti 105 (2019): 76–108.

47 Filtering according to weighted degree of two removes the artists or cultural institutions that were mentioned only once. The result of filtering according to weighted degree is that the networks retain artists that were mentioned by only one art critic, but in two different texts.

48 Zlatan Razbor, ‘Nebo’ [The Sky], Arkzin 14 (1994): 24; Zlatan Razbor, ‘Tri dana užitka’ [Three Days of Pleasure], Arkzin 48 (1995): 32–3; Nada Beroš, ‘Prirodno i umjetno’ [Natural and Artificial], Vijenac 8 (1994): 26; Beroš, ‘Istočni izazov’; Želimir Koščević, ‘Kip kao masa, energija, kretanje’ [Sculpture as Mass, Energy, Movement], Vijenac 21 (1994): 4–5; Sandra Križić Roban, ‘Naopaka stvarnost nastajanja’ [An Inverted Reality of Coming Into Being], Kontura 27 (1994): 22–3; Enes Quien, ‘Peti triennale hrvatskog kiparstva’ [The Fifth Triennial of Croatian Sculpture], Kontura 30 (1994): 17–20.

49 For example, a focus on close reading of art criticism in the second and third tier of the analysis, in which central passive actors were mentioned, also takes into account texts that were written by art critics with low centrality values.

50 ‘Netdom’ is a term coined by Harrison White, with which he wished to emphasize that social networks are socio-cultural formations. They are influenced both by ties and by the ‘stories’ that link different identities in their effort to gain control. See Harrison White, Identity and Control: How Social Formations Emerge (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008). For a shorter overview of White’s theoretical contribution to the field of relational sociology see Jan A. Fuhse, ‘Theorizing Social Networks: The Relational Sociology of and around Harrison White’, International Review of Sociology 25, no. 1 (2015): 15–44.

51 Nuria Rodríguez Ortega, ‘Art History and the Global Challenge: A Critical Perspective’, Artl@s Bulletin 6, no. 1 (2017): 13.

52 For example, in the case of the network of mentioned artists in the period 1994–1999, which was the one most often cited in this article, only 41.33% of artists were born in Croatia. The rest of the dataset included a better representation of European countries and the USA, and a peripheral representation of countries located in Africa, Asia and South America.

53 The syntagm is borrowed from Beáta Hock, ‘Introduction – Globalizing East European Art Histories. The Legacy of Piotr Piotrowski and a Conference’ in Globalizing East European Art Histories: Past and Present, ed. Beáta Hock and Anu Allas (New York and London: Routledge, 2018), 6.

Additional information

Funding

This article is a result of research conducted at the project ‘GLOB_EXCHANGE. Models and Practices of Global Cultural Exchange and Non-aligned Movement. Research in the Spatio-Temporal Cultural Dynamics’ (HRZZ-IPS-2020-01-3992) supported by Croatian Science Foundation.

Notes on contributors

Sanja Sekelj

SANJA SEKELJ, PhD, is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Institute of Art History in Zagreb, Croatia. She has a Master’s Degree in Art History and French Language and Literature from the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb (2014). In 2021, she defended her PhD thesis ‘Digital Art History and Artists’ Networks in Croatia in the 1990s and 2000s’ at the University of Zadar, Croatia. Apart from focusing on cultural dynamics and networking practices of the visual arts scene actors at the turn of the millennium, she is currently also working on mechanisms of international cultural exchange in Yugoslavia during the 1980s. She was a member of the scientific research project ARTNET (Institute of Art History, 2014–2018) and a member of the curatorial team of the Miroslav Kraljević Gallery in Zagreb (until 2016). She is currently a team member of the research projects ‘Models and Practices of Global Cultural Exchange and the Non-Aligned Movement: Research on Spatio-Temporal Cultural Dynamics’ (Institute of Art History, 2020–2023) and ‘New public culture and spaces of sociability’ (Clubture, 2022–2023). She was the co-editor of the thematic issue of Život umjetnosti, focused on the topic of Digital Art History (105-2019).