Sarah Thornton's Seven Days in the Art World (2008) is a selection of seven events based on rigorous observation. The detailed stories in each chapter expose different people, times and spaces, as well as their antagonistic roles and dialogues. Artists, dealers, curators, critics, collectors, and auction-house experts all contribute their thoughts to define not just the art world, but art. More than being concerned with definitions, Seven Days in the Art World exposes the distinct faces of different temporal episodes: the contrasts between the languages in an auction at Christie's and in a Crit at CalArts; the privacy of a Studio Visit with an artist such as Takashi Murakami and the public nature of a competition such as the Turner Prize; the commodities offered in Art Basel and the exclusiveness of Artforum magazine; as well as the diverse publics and stratified structure of the Venice Biennale. As she states in this interview, 'the art world is a cluster of squabbling subcultures, more conflicted and hierarchical than the youth cultures that revolve around clubs and raves.' This interview attempts to look at some of the academic roots and interconnected discourses with her previous book Club Cultures: Music, Media and Subcultural Capital (1995).

Soledad Garcia: Seven Days in the Art World took five years to research. It is based on interviews with more than 250 'players' and many hours of hard-earned access for participant observation. How did your ethnographic method affect the final book?
Sarah Thornton: Being an ethnographer is part of my sense of self as a writer. It's the way I think about my research. Many ethnographers are committed to empathy and they feel a sense of responsibility to represent the perspective of their 'subjects.' They see overt judgment, moral indignation, and the kind of 'outrage' that is prevalent in the British press as obstacles to understanding. It was as a non-judgmental participant observer that I gained access, sought to understand the milieus thoroughly, and handled myself 'in the field.' The art world is so full of warring factions that I have no idea how I would have handled the conflict if it were not as an ethnographer.

Some readers of Seven Days in the Art World are confused by the fact that the book doesn't read like a sociological or academic book. When I was writing up my doctoral research on clubs, I read Tales of the Field: On Writing Ethnography by John Van Maanen. It had a big impact on me. It made me feel liberated to describe these social worlds in whichever way I thought best brought them to life. In the middle of my Club Cultures book, there is a timed narrative called 'A Night of Research.' It was the template for Seven Days.

For me, the writing in Seven Days is ethnographic in several ways. First, ethnography is an experiential way to learn and gather evidence. It's a figurative form, which contrasts with the more abstract data brought forth by the archival research of historians or the statistics of economists. Seven Days mimics this experiential mode in attempting to give the reader a strong sense of being there, so he/she can understand these art spheres by going through them vicariously. Second, my choice of verbal and visual details is driven by whether they seem to reveal social structures or institutional frameworks or cultural patterns. In fact, a fair amount of salacious and sensational material was left on the cutting room floor because it was either anomalous or distracting and I thought it would give the book a shorter shelf life.

SG: Was it your feeling that there was a lack of histories around the recent art world?
ST: I have always preferred working in terrains that were relatively empty. There are many terrific art critics out there, doing a wonderful job, writing about the art itself. When I started researching Seven Days in the Art World, there were a few over-arching sociologies, an assortment of great art historical case studies, and some solid academic economic analyses, but no one book that tried to make sense of the international contemporary art world based on recent first-hand research. Similarly, when I started researching Club Cultures, there were a handful of interesting books and articles, but no single study like the one I wanted to conduct.

'Art events generate a sense of community around shared interests.'

SG: In Seven Days in the Art World you argue that 'great works do not just arise, they are made'. Is 'support' from the different sectors of the art world essential?
ST: Yes. Many interesting artists receive little recognition. The difference between them and many 'name' artists is in part about support. The work itself is germane, but it alone does not determine the way it moves through the world.
The idea of the autonomy of art is kind of ridiculous. It takes a huge effort of denial to cut art off from its many makers, its dealers, consumers, and critics. Ages ago, Pierre Bourdieu explored the question 'Who creates the creator?' and almost everyone in the art world knows that art objects are not self-determining, but there is still a relatively strong, somewhat self-righteous orthodoxy that you should only think about the work and write about the work, rather than observe what swarms and swirls around it. That thinking is quite literally 'boxed in' in that it declines to venture outside the frame or off the plinth.
By the same token, Seven Days argues implicitly against the cliche that the art world is not about art. Over and over again, people explain in various ways that they are there because art is integral to their existence or means so much to them.

'If the art world shares one principle, it would probably be that nothing is more important that the art itself.'

SG: How is the art world subcultural?
ST: The art world is not a system or a smooth functioning machine. It is conflicted and full of paradoxes. I see the art world as a bunch of wrangling subcultures that embrace diverse definitions of art. In fact, in every chapter, you find different definitions that prevail over art's basic meaning-making thought-provoking function. In 'The Auction,' art is positioned as an investment and luxury good. In 'The Crit,' it's an intellectual endeavor, a lifestyle, and an occupation. In 'The Fair,' art is a fetish and a leisure activity - a slightly different commodity to that seen in 'The Auction.' In 'The Prize,' art is a museum attraction, a media story and evidence of an artist's worth. In 'The Magazine,' art is an excuse for words; it's something to debate and promote. In 'The Studio Visit,' art is all of the above - that's one reason I find Murakami fascinating. Finally, in 'The Biennale,' art is an alibi for networking, an international curiosity and a tourist activity.

Not surprisingly then, the art world is full of discord. Within chapters, there are debates, tensions, feuds. Between chapters, there are huge clashes of opinion. For example, 'The Crit' can be seen as a critique of 'The Auction.' And the curators in 'The Biennale' can be seen as struggling to bring a sense of memory to the perpetual present of 'The Fair.' While 'The Magazine' presents art critics with values that contrast dramatically with many of the media who cover 'The Prize.'

SG: Can you describe the different kinds of events and time structures of Seven Days in the Art World?
ST: Although the book took five years to research and write, the textual timeline is two and a half years - from Chapter 1, which takes place on the 10th November 2004 to chapter 7, which is set on the 6th July 2007. As I worked on it, I was very conscious that the project was a social history of the present that by the time of its publication would, by necessity, turn into a history of the recent past.
Time is an obsessive part of the book. The clock ticks on every page. Some of the chapters are major events, others might initially seem like non-events, except that I see social life as performative so even the lesser events feel like stagy ordeals.
The time dynamics of the individual events are diverse. 'The Crit' is weekly. 'The Magazine,' which revolves around closing an issue, is monthly. 'The Auction' is twice yearly. 'The Prize' and 'The Fair' are annual events, while 'The Biennale' is every two years and 'The Studio Visit' is sporadic.
Then the chapters all have their own internal temporal structures, which get more and more complicated as the book progresses. The Auction has the simplest structure because it is a public event structured by numbered lots, which I mostly recount in real time. By the time you get to chapter 7, 'The Biennale,' the story is almost entirely told through flashbacks, which is appropriate to its theme that hindsight is essential to making sense of the contemporary.
'The Fair' and 'The Biennale' were the hardest chapters to write because they are events with loose temporality but strict spatiality. We make sense of them not through the way time progresses but by where things are in space to the extent that everyone runs around them clinging to a map and has difficulty making and keeping appointments.
Time - or more specifically timing - is integral to the dynamics of a culture that was once identified as 'avant-garde,' then referred to as 'cutting edge' and more recently started to focus on the 'emergent.' Many of the characters in the book are obsessed with the 'right moment' - be it of their retrospective, their magazine cover, their prize nomination, or their price increase.  

'Art needs motives that are more profound than profit if it is to maintain its difference from - and position above - other cultural forms.'

SG: There are many people who appear behind the scenes in your book but at the same time are key actors of an event - like in the case of the Chief Auctioneer. Is there any analogy to the role of a DJ?
ST: I didn't think of that, but yes! They are both conductors or maestros of a crowd. They have to be able to read the crowd. They don't control as much as instigate or orchestrate. There is some predictability but much spontaneity. The auctioneer knows who's going to be sitting in the sixth row just as the DJ who works in the same club every Saturday night is familiar with the behaviour of the regulars.

SG: The media often seem to assume that the art world is a totality like a mainstream but, in Seven Days, the art world is depicted as seven temporal subcultures. In Club Cultures, you analyze the notion of the mainstream at length. Can you relate these theories to the art world?
ST: In Club Cultures, I argue that the 'mainstream' is a mythical entity, a social construct, and an imagined other against which youths define their authenticity. I think that is even more true now, with the decline of network television and the proliferation of opinion powered by internet - we live in a world that has no mass culture, but a lot of subcultures. Seven Days on the Art World explores that odd combination of fragmentation and cohesion that characterizes subcultural clusters. Only this time, it's international, all ages, and live-work.
The book also contains many examples of 'subcultural capital' or alternative forms of cultural distinction, even if I don't use the term in the book. The art world is much more intensely hierarchical than the youth cultures that revolve around dance clubs and raves. But the hierarchies are very volatile and depend on the perspective of the participant.
The volatility relates to the fact that the art world is a social sphere where rule breaking (or maybe rule tweaking) is the official rule - not just for artists but for all the players. Curators talk of breaking the mold, moving things forward, not replicating the consensus. Collectors see themselves as acquiring creatively through their adventurous 'eye.' Almost every dealer I've met sees him/herself as a maverick. The art world loves exceptions to the rule and most everyone in it sees him/herself as a square peg. It's really rather sweet.

© Courtesy of Mark James

Sarah Thornton is a writer and sociologist of culture. She writes about art, the art world, and the art market for many publications. Her PhD was published as Club Cultures: Music, Media and Subcultural Capital. She was co-editor of the first edition of The Subcultures Reader.