[Commlist] CFP, Symposium The art press today: towards the reconfiguration of a media genre?

*THE ART PRESS TODAY: TOWARDS A RECONFIGURATION OF A MEDIA GENRE?*

**

*9-10, May 2022*

*Université Paris II Panthéon-Assas,*

*391, rue de Vaugirard, 75015 Paris*

*Paris, France*

****

**

**

Nowadays, the cultural press can take a variety of formats and aspects, 
depending on the angle chosen, the readership or the specific issues 
being tackled: a well-reputed journal like /Artforum/; a generalist 
magazine like /ArtNews/, a cultural guide such as /Time Out/ or a single 
medium-targeted publication like /Film Quaterly/. Going beyond those 
paper publications, one also has to encounter the great variety of 
online publications, from blogs to podcasts and e-magazines or cultural 
pure players (such as /ArtViewer/).

This international symposium has the ambition of shedding light on this 
broad spectrum and outline the different ways in which media (both 
traditional and digital) can examine and write about visual arts, 
architecture, graphic design, cinema, music, literature, and so on. 
Papers may also focus on cultural industries (video games, movies, 
television shows…).

Furthermore, the art press, whose print runs are often low and 
readership somewhat specialized, deserves to be analysed through the 
scope of media studies and with the help of info-communicational tools. 
Indeed, this particular segment of the media has a lot to teach us about 
collective representations, beliefs and values given to contemporary 
art, cultural practices and ways of debating in society around it. 
Papers may tackle any aspect of artistic or cultural activity.

Our goal in this conference is to implement an interdisciplinary 
approach to the matter of the artistic and cultural press. This 
conference also intends to encourage exchanges between researchers and 
actors from the media and artistic fields, in order to allow for 
discussions at the intersection of practical and theoretical viewpoints. 
Scholars and practitioners from various disciplines and approaches 
(history, media and communication studies, art history, literature, 
sociology, etc.) are welcome to submit abstracts for papers dealing 
critically with one or several of the following topics.

**

***1 – Historical models and influences*

**

This first line of research intends to question the variety of editorial 
forms that the “art journal”, the “cultural magazine” or the “cultural 
news magazine” can adopt. If a very rich bibliography is devoted to 
artistic and cultural periodicals of the XIX^th and the first half of 
the XX^th centuries, the more recent period is often excluded from these 
studies that are privileging a chronological and diachronic approach. 
Periodicals that focus on the contemporary art world is thus a territory 
that is yet to be explored. This first axis intends to encourage 
reflections on the filiation of this rich editorial heritage by 
insisting on the contemporary period.

It is then necessary to take a deeper look at examples of magazines that 
are currently being published, so as to wonder which models they derive 
from, which filiation they are the fruit of. Studies on long lasting 
periodicals such as /Art in America/ (founded in 1912) are welcome. 
Papers in this section might take a monographic and historical 
perspective, question art journals over time, or consider memorable 
titles that have been decisive for more recent journals. Papers may also 
engage a transnational or trans-media perspective.**

*2 – Diversification of online editorial forms***

**

How do art journals manage to explore new territories, especially 
digital ones? Cultural magazines are nowadays extended by blogs, 
webzines, accounts on social networks, collaborative platforms, 
audio-visual formats such as podcasts or filmed interviews, and so on. 
Art journals and magazines are thus rapidly moving away from the 
traditional paper model and heading towards a greater variety of 
formats, starting with the exploration of a digital/paper 
complementarity. Let us mention the French blog /Jeunes Critiques d'art/ 
(Young Art Critics), podcasts such as /Le bruit de l'art/, webzines like 
the Italian /Cura/ or the American /Triple Canopy/, amateur websites 
such as /Sens critique/ for movies. We can also mention hybrid formats 
offered by certain social networks and digital platforms such as the 
Twitch channels ("The Blank Contemporary Art"), Instagram accounts, 
YouTube channels, etc.

To what extent are digital devices the result of editorial experiments? 
Papers in this section might focus on case studies and rely on the 
analysis of socio-technical devices that allow a diversification of 
cultural consumption. Papers may also focus on the reconfiguration of 
journalistic practices of art criticism and the adaptability of 
magazines to the digital world, their editorial line and the formats 
they use.


*3 – Editorial and discursive norms: from specificity to adaptation*

**

The specificity of the terms "review", "journal" or "magazine" when 
considered through the lens of art press is yet to be determined, 
especially in a context where the obsolescence of art criticism is more 
and more often pointed out. However, this type of press is remarkably 
vivid, on a local as well as on an international scale. Although the art 
world is facing important mutations and issues (financial speculation, 
globalization, or more recently the Covid-19 crisis), the most 
established formats – starting with the exhibition review or the 
interview with an artist – are remarkably resisting and adapting to this 
moving context. How does the art press position itself /vis-à-vis/ other 
genres of the press, and other types of discourse on art (institutional, 
academic)? Are there specificities inherent to cultural media?

Papers may explore the editorial norms most commonly adopted by art 
journals, whether printed or online, as well as their evolution in order 
to question the values that underlie them. Graphic design, layout, 
rubric, editorial line... What are the formats, the editorial standards 
most characteristic of the art journal? In what ways do they evolve, in 
the face of the adaptation of titles to digital formats and to economic 
and social imperatives? In what ways do these norms adapt to such a 
diversification?

**

*4 – The art press in the “expanded field”*

**

The cultural press seems to be torn between, on the one hand, a 
democratization of its contents and a hybridization of its forms (with, 
in particular, news magazine, fashion magazine, news bulletin...), and 
on the other hand an increasing fragmentation. This is made evident with 
the great increase of periodicals more and more specialized, dedicated 
to specific mediums even within the field of visual arts, such as 
drawing (/Roven/), amateur practices (/Profane/), or the youth of renown 
artists (/L’incroyable/). Increasingly strong constraints weigh on the 
exercise of cultural criticism, and consequently on the editorial 
production of reviews: increase in the number of exhibitions and art 
shows, internationalization of artistic trajectories, financial 
pressure, lack of means for public institutions, etc. Those are some of 
the many elements which come to complicate the task of art critics, who 
face important issues of payment and independence. Art criticism as a 
whole is threatened by the pitfall of “cultural promotion”: when 
advertisers (art galleries, foundations, etc.) finance a publication by 
the purchase of advertising spaces, the critic, as well as the magazine 
in which he/she publishes, can experience pressure to value and promote 
the advertiser in question. Moreover, with reviews financed and 
published by institutions as /Palais/ (Palais de Tokyo in Paris) or /Les 
Cahiers du MNAM/ (published by the MNAM-Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris), 
the art review appears as essential to uncover mechanisms and networks 
structuring the artistic network and the values which determine its 
organization. However, in spite of these various pitfalls, the sector of 
the cultural press is dynamic and diversified, constitutes an attractive 
pole for journalists and often arouses professional aspirations. The 
vitality of free magazines, such as in France /Zérodeux/ or /Le 
Châssis/, is a good witness of this phenomenon.

Papers in this section could focus on the economic models of the art 
press and the strategies deployed to ensure its sustainability, as well 
as the different factors that allow the cultural press to fight against 
competition, especially that of the general press. Submissions may also 
underline the relations of collaboration, competition, or even 
“coopétition” of the art magazines with each other, as well as in their 
networking within the art world (galeries, museums), and beyond: 
mainstream media, creative industries.

Last but not least, the recent Covid-19 crisis calls to question the 
ways critics from the cultural sector have accommodated their practices 
with the mutations of cultural agenda during quarantine.

**

***Bibliography*

**

ALLEN Gwen (dir.), /The Magazine/, London, MIT Press « Documents for 
Contemporary Art », 2016

BAUDOIN Jean et HOURMANT François (dir.), /Les Revues et la dynamique 
des ruptures/, Rennes, Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2007

BOIVENT  Marie, /La Revue d’artiste, enjeu et spécificité d’une pratique 
artistique/, Rennes, Incertain sens, 2015

BONACORSI Julia et CROISSANT Valérie, « "Votre mémoire culturelle" : 
entre logistique numérique de la recommandation et médiation 
patrimoniale. Le cas de /Sens Critique/ », /Études de communication/, 
2015/2, n° 45, p. 129-148

BOURE Robert, « Sociologie des revues de sciences sociales et humaines 
», /Réseaux, /n° 58, 1993, p. 91-105

BOURGATTE Michaël, « Pour une analyse informatisée de la critique de 
cinéma. Ce que dit la critique de la structure du champ 
cinématographique », /Questions de communication/, 2017/1, n° 31, p. 315-333

CHÈVREFILS-DESBIOLLES Yves et FROISSART-PEZONE Rossella (dir.), /Les 
revues d’art/, Rennes, Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2011

COLOMINA Beatriz, /Clip, Stamp, Fold: The Radical Architecture of Little 
Magazines, 196X to 197X/, Barcelone, Actar, 2010

CORPET Olivier, FRANCK Thomas et GLORIE Caroline, « La revue comme 
discours d’intervention », /Cahiers du GRM/, 12/2017 [En ligne], URL : 
<https://journals.openedition.org/grm/1055>https://journals.openedition.org/grm/1055 
<https://journals.openedition.org/grm/1055>

CROISSANT Valérie (dir.), /L’avis des autres./ /Prescription et 
recommandation culturelle à l’ère numériqu/e, Éditions des archives 
contemporaines, 2019

CROISSANT Valérie et SPANO William, /Le journalisme en miroir dans la 
presse culturelle lyonnaise au XIX^e siècle/, /Le Temps des médias. 
Revue d’histoire/, vol 23, n° 2, 2014, p. 165‑181

DA COSTA KAUFMANN Thomas, DOSSIN Catherine et  JOYEUX-PRUNEL Béatrice 
(dir.), /Circulations in the Global History of a Art/, Londres, 
Routledge, 2015

HEIN Fabien, « Le critique rock, le fanzine et le magazine ; ça s’en va 
et ça revient », /Volume/, n°5 , 2006, p. 83-106

JOYEUX-PRUNEL Béatrice, /Les avant-gardes artistiques. Une histoire 
transnationale. Volume 1 (1848-1918) ;  Volume 2 (1918-1945)/,//Paris, 
Gallimard, 2016 et 2017

LEENAERTS Danielle, /Petite histoire du magazine VU (1928-1940). Entre 
photographie d’information et photographie d’art/, Bruxelles, PIE Peter 
Lang, 2010

NEWMAN Amy, /Challenging Art: Artforum 1962-1974/, New York, Soho Press, 
2000

REGIMBEAU Gérard, « Les index des revues d’art contemporain : outils 
documentaires et documents ». Actes du séminaire annuel « Les revues de 
sciences humaines et sociales : évolutions et figures », 1996, p. 37-50, 
[En ligne], URL : https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00605217v2 
<https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00605217v2>

STEAD Evanghelia et VÉDRINE Hélène (dirs.), /L’Europe des revues 
(1880-1920). Estampes, photographies, illustrations/, Paris, Presses 
Universitaires Paris Sorbonne, 2008

STEAD Evanghelia,/Sisyphe heureux. Les revues artistiques et 
littéraires : approches et figures, /Rennes, Presses Universitaires de 
Rennes, 2020

TRIGGS Teal, /Fanzines/, Londres, Thames & Hudson, 2010

WEBB Sheila, "Magazines and the visual arts: the ideal showcase", in 
ABRAHAMSON David et PRIOR-MILLER Maria R., /The Routledge Handbook of 
Magazine ResearchThe Future of the Magazine Form/,//New York, Routledge, 
2015, p. 347-361

**

*Guidelines*

**

●**On the first page of your document, please state your paper’s title 
and a short bio (100 words) specifying your name, institutional 
affiliation and e-mail address.

●Your abstract (300 words) is to be sent in .doc or .odt format to 
(presseculturelle2022 /at/ gmail.com) <mailto:(presseculturelle2022 /at/ gmail.com)>, 
by *December 20th^th 2021.*

Members of the scientific committee will anonymously peer-review the 
abstracts.

A peer-reviewed volume of a selection of papers will follow the conference.

*Agenda*

Launch for abstracts: 20/10/2021

Abstract submission deadline: 20/12/2021

Notification of acceptance/refusal: 20/01/2021

Symposium: 9-10/05/2021

**

***Organizing committee ***

Lucie ALEXIS, Assistant Professor, Université Grenoble Alpes, Institut 
de la Communication et des Médias, GRESEC, associate researcher with 
Institut national de l’audiovisuel and CARISM

Flore DI SCIULLO, PhD in Communication and media studies, ATER, 
Université Paris 2 Panthéon-Assas, Institut Français de Presse, 
associate researcher with CARISM

**

*Scientific committee ***

BLANDIN Claire (Professor, Université Sorbonne Paris Nord, LabSIC)

BOIVENT Marie (Assistant Professor, Université Rennes 2, laboratoire PTAC)

BULLICH Vincent (Assistant Professor, Université Grenoble Alpes, GRESEC)

CROISSANT Valérie (Assistant Professor, Université Lyon 2, ELICO)

DESEILLIGNY Oriane (Assistant Professor, Université Sorbonne Paris Nord, 
GRIPIC)

DESMET Nathalie (Curator, Assistant Professor, Université Paris 8, AIAC)

DEVILLARD Valérie (Professor, Université Paris 2 Panthéon-Assas, CARISM)

LAFON Benoît (Professor, Université Grenoble Alpes, GRESEC)

LAMBERT Frédéric (Professor, Université Paris 2, CARISM)

MOURATIDOU Eleni  (Assistant Professor, Université Sorbonne Paris Nord, 
LabSIC)

STEAD Evanghelia (Professor, USVQ, CHCSC)

RIEFFEL Rémy (Professor, Université Paris 2 Panthéon-Assas, CARISM)

RINGOOT Roselyne (Professor, Université Grenoble Alpes, GRESEC)

SAEMMER Alexandra, (Professor, Université Paris 8, CEMTI)

WRONA Adeline (Professor, Université Paris IV, GRIPIC)



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