There is a very beautiful and unexplored aspect of this story: the word “star” and its function. Sociologist Pierre Bourdieu remarked that “sociology and art do not make good bedfellows.” His reasoning was grounded in the tension between the art world’s desire to focus on individual creative genius, and sociology’s insistent aim to explain phenomena in terms of social forces. No better term than “star” describes how easily men—no matter how many conscious public programs one has attended and despite how many women have warned about the dangers of assigning them power—have been able to sit as heads of museum boards and entice journalists to cover them. But the “stars” find their own Bourdieu-predicted predator: the influencer. The influencer is like an avenger defined positively in market terms: it modifies the course of a decision and reunites all like-minded thinkers—like a shepherd—under its influence. If a “star” is like a king or an old-fashioned boss, the influencers are the true children of the model developed by big companies in defining and putting to work indirect leadership—that is, acting upon very large structures in which the message reaches the recipient through an indirect source of command.
Before I proceed, I would like the reader to set aside all prejudices against the word “teaching,” as well as against the possible roles a teacher may have. Those prejudices are key to understanding the radicality of what these artists did and the potential of what I would love to describe as a proposal for the future of contemporary-art culture.