Bound by Creativity - by Hannah Wohl (Hardcover)

About the Book

"In Creative Visions, sociologist Hannah Wohl draws on more than one hundred interviews and two years of ethnographic research in the New York contemporary art market, developing a sociological perspective on creativity through the analytic lens of judgment. The artists she encountered range from those trying to land their first solo exhibition to those with several dozens of museum exhibitions. She visited their studios and saw firsthand how they decided which works to leave unfinished, or to destroy, put into storage, or exhibit. She observed the installation of exhibitions in galleries, assisted in selling artwork for a gallery, and followed private collectors around art fairs and VIP collector events. Moments of judgment-whether by artists, curators, dealers, or buyers-led her to uncover that artistic practices are deeply sociological: both because artists' decisions are informed by their interactions with others, and because artists' decisions about their work affect the objects which circulate through the social world. Artists recognize that exhibitors and collectors prefer artists whom they deem to display a clear signature style. Wohl also explores judgment in art as part of the creative process. Evaluation, she says, is both a way that one judges how good a work is, and how one makes decisions about producing work. Our understanding of creative work rests on these highly social dynamics, Wohl shows, shedding new light on the production of cultural objects and prestige"--

Book Synopsis

What is creativity? While our traditional view of creative work might lead us to think of artists as solitary visionaries, the creative process is profoundly influenced by social interactions even when artists work alone. Sociologist Hannah Wohl draws on more than one hundred interviews and two years of ethnographic research in the New York contemporary art market to develop a rich sociological perspective of creativity. From inside the studio, we see how artists experiment with new ideas and decide which works to abandon, destroy, put into storage, or exhibit. Wohl then transports readers into the art world, where we discover how artists' understandings of their work are shaped through interactions in studio visits, galleries, international art fairs, and collectors' homes.

Bound by Creativity reveals how artists develop conceptions of their distinctive creative visions through experimentation and social interactions. Ultimately, we come to appreciate how judgment is integral to the creative process, both resulting in the creation of original works while also limiting an artist's ability to break new ground. Exploring creativity through the lens of judgment sheds new light on the production of cultural objects, markets, and prestige.

Review Quotes

"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"

"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

"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

About the Author

Hannah Wohl is assistant professor of sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara.