Procesos de legitimación en el arte contemporáneoanálisis del fenómeno mediático, comercial e institucional del colectivo de los "jóvenes artistas británicos" durante las décadas de cambio de los siglos XX-XXI

Abstract

In the present study we will try to analyze and define the contemporary art system as a whole. Specifically we will focus on the processes of legitimation of the current artist and his works. Assuming the very conformation of the art system, its agents and its legitimating capacity during the period of the nineties and the beginning of the twenty-first century, the fundamental axis on which the entire study revolves. At the specific level, it will be framed in the English sociopolitical reality of the end of the century, which will promote the artistic consecration of a group of creators called then the Young British Artists (YBA). A generation of current artists who knew how to profit and incorporate into the realm of art, elements of marketing, advertising and the media to deliberately attract media attention to their proposals. An important part of the purpose of this study is not only to analyze the elements necessary for the development of the process of legitimation, but also to identify these factors that make up the value of artists and their works of art. So we will focus our vision, both on these factors that are decisive in the construction of great recognizable marks of the art world, and at the same time, we will try to analyze the concrete socio-cultural circumstances that surrounded the phenomenon of legitimation of the case study of the YBA. Although our main focus of the case study will focus on the trajectory and figure of Damien Hirst, the controversial standard bearer of this generation of artists. We will emphasize as an objective, to analyze how the figure of this artist has crossed the different stages of the process of legitimation until reaching, to a greater or lesser extent, to the top of the international contemporary art scene. We will also address the creation of the nominative label: YBA, by advertising magnate Charles Saatchi, analyzing the style, valuation and legitimation at the same time of the work of Damien Hirst. With the explicit aim of showing that the exaltation of certain artists and concrete works, does not happen in an arbitrary or random way, but rather, it is structured in an organized way within a certain formal logic...