The Map and the Territory
Info
Lev Manovich, The Map and the Territory: Four Art Worlds. 2026.
Article in Russian
Карта и территория - 4 мира современного искусства.
Article in English - see Download PDF above.
Abstract
This text maps four parallel art worlds — the market (art fairs, global galleries, auction houses), social media and platforms (Instagram, ArtStation, DeviantArt, etc.), the institutions (museums, biennials, grants), and the local art worlds of artists' societies and local galleries. Each has its own system of support, its own institutions, and its own criteria of success — and they barely intersect. The last of these is not one world but thousands — one per region, each complete in itself and largely unaware of the others.
Next, I examine in more detail the institutional art world, and in particular its "social art" — research-based, documentary, speaking from a definite position — setting it beside its predecessors in critical realism, social photography, and Soviet socialist realism, with which it shares not content but structure: state and foundation money, an approved range of subjects, and a language one must master in order to receive a grant or enter a biennial.
The text closes by setting my map against another, drawn in 1989 by Tate director Alan Bowness, who described artistic fame as four successive circles of recognition. In his model these are stages of one ascent within a single art world; I describe three others, each with its own judges and its own measures of importance.