HOW HAS THE ART INDUSTRY CHANGED OVER THE LAST 25 YEARS?
The transformative power of art is unlike anything else in this world. With just their creative vision, artists have the ability to incite political movements, champion human rights and influence new technologies. Over the last 25 years, the art industry has gone through a seismic change, and we’d like to revisit some of its key moments with you.
British rave music, along with a bold exploration of subjects such as LGBT rights, race and AIDS. Performance, conceptual and body art made household names of Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin, while transgressive street art adorned the world’s capitals and a digital revolution produced the first ‘internet art’. Activists like the Guerrilla Girls also infiltrated the industry to fight against gender and ethnic bias. In 1992, at the opening of the Guggenheim in NYC, their organised demonstration in response to an exclusively white male show included handing out bags with gorilla heads printed on them for protestors to wear over their faces.
Globalisation and the rise of the internet heralded the use of new media and an increased focus on multiculturism. African-American artists like Lorna Simpson and Pat Ward Williams took centre stage at the infamous 1993 Whitney Biennial (regarded by some as ‘America’s most controversial art show’), while critics and consumers alike embraced works by Latino and Asian-American artists. A market crash in the early 1990s was set against a backdrop of influences from German techno and
The Guerrilla Girls at the V&A Museum in London. Credit: Eric Huybrechts
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