The term system change has a political as well as a technological denotation, referring both to the switch from one political system to another and to the act of replacing the hardware and software components on which a computer runs. The ­systemic change of the art field, which we examine in this issue, implies a shift in those relations of forces and power differentials that control interpretive prerogatives and keep the art world running. The latter has gone through a comparable shift before, in the late 19th century, when, as Cynthia and Harrison White showed, the Salon system was supplanted by the dealer-critic system. It marked the emergence of the art dealer and the art critic as two figures who became vital to processes of value formation. The hypothesis we explore in the following is that today we seem to be witnessing a similar structural transformation: Criticism was the first to start losing significance in the 1990s (a development that Isabelle Graw has described as the shift toward a dealer-collector-curator system), and more recently, the power and influence of gallery owners and curators have also waned. Meanwhile, the art market – like the global market of which it is an integral part – is going through one of its periodic crises, which has affected the gallery business and art criticism as well.

One new development is that even ­prestigious galleries are offloading artists in an effort to slim down their programs and curb their steadily ­rising operating costs; others have closed branches or even shut down entirely, as Marlborough and Clearing recently did. Disappointing ­hammer prices have resulted in a crisis of confidence that is reflected by increasing risk aversion on the part of collectors: Instead of investing in the affordable works of promising artists with a substantive vision, as many did during the ­art-market crisis of the 1990s, collectors now tend to revert to established oeuvres with (putatively) sterling valuations.

Graw’s contribution to the present issue offers a summary analysis of this situation, in which, she writes, art critics are not often consulted. Yet her eight trenchant theses also outline ways in which criticism can build new strength in these circumstances. To square our assumptions about today’s tense situation in the market with perspectives from the auction business, the art trade, and art history, we invited Dirk Boll, Marc Glimcher, Nicole Hackert, and Anne ­Helmreich to a roundtable hosted by Natasha Degen, in which they bring their individual expertise and decades of experience to a ­discussion of the ongoing shifts in the distribution of power. Are the increasingly volatile prices in the art market an indication of a looming paradigm shift or merely an expression of normal market activity? Todd Levin’s answer is as pragmatic as it is provocative, and he has an unexpected piece of advice for art buyers who are looking for more than just monetary appreciation. ­Slumping prices are leading smaller and medium-sized galleries in particular to test cooperative survival ­strategies, as Tom McDonough points out, drawing a ­connection between such models and historical antecedents as well as the idea of “co-opetition” – a concept from economic sociology ­describing relationships in which collaboration and rivalry coincide.

Caroline Busta, Cem A., and Brigitte Weingart discuss the role that the totalizing influence of digital platforms plays in this new art economy and whether and how these spaces can be made productive for criticism. Their particular focus is on the meme, which is structurally congruent with the avant-gardist dissolution of the interrelation between art and everyday life yet remains dependent on the infrastructures of the platform economy. What sense can media and art theory make of artificial intelligence, and what does it mean when the means of production ­underlying large language models are controlled by a ­handful of tech billionaires with close ties to the US government? Those questions are explored in an email exchange between Paul Feigelfeld and David Joselit.

In an implicit rejoinder to Feigelfeld and Joselit’s prognosis of an advancing “intelligentrification,” Sophie Cras and Charlotte Guichard adopt a longue durée perspective, highlighting four scenarios from the history of art as examples to show what agency artists used to have in the market and what distribution channels they resorted to. Even today, those channels sometimes bypass both the conventional trade and newer alternatives – such as online platforms, agents, or law firms – and thrive, as the model that Henrike Naumann has devised illustrates. Instead of working with a gallery, Naumann represents herself: As the artist explains in conversation with Anna Sinofzik, this self-chosen strategy is motivated less by a loss of trust in the economic system than by her own practice and biography.

In today’s attention economy, artists also need to give thought to their own marketability. Against this backdrop, Kristina Nagel’s image spread “USER 41–46” reads as a comment on how body and subject become projection screen, speculative object, or content – and how they sometimes need to contort themselves vigorously in order to perform. As actors in the art market – whether critics, artists, dealers, or collectors – we can perhaps see Nagel’s photographs as prompting us to face increasingly difficult conditions with a combination of imperturbability and agility.

Ben Caton, Isabelle Graw, Leonie Huber, and Anna Sinofzik

Translation: Gerrit Jackson