Introduction

Artists emerged as the agents who led the rest of artists to artworks, and they developed thereafter as specialist members of distinctive art worlds. Artists in some fields gained the status of professionals, with claims for cognitive training and expertise greater than that of their clients. Both in arts for the populace and in arts for elites, star systems have emerged to offer enormous disparities in reward and recognition across artists and artworks. Such systems compete with alternative systems centered around education or around careers sponsored by governments and other bureaucracies. Just as priests in their religious creed pay heed to social networks and attend to social intimacies and closeness, so also do critics trace and help to build networks of cultural cues in ways that resonate among patrons and other audiences. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.