So I was doing some art reading. Hopping from blog to blog and trying to get my bookmarks in order. Came across this article in The Art Newspaper.
http://www.theartnewspaper.com/article01.asp?id=681
The author, Jane Kallir, talks about the disproportionate influence of collectors on the artworld. Having just come back from China, the new hottest art market, I would have to agree with most of her points (well… basically the article is descriptive in nature.) Artists have always made their work in relation to the market (the church, the wealthy patrons, etc) but the whole process has sped up in the past few decades and art auctions definitely don’t help the situation.
What I think has happened is that artists don’t have enough time to develop and when faced with a robust market and the fact that they are considered “emerging” for only so long they start grabbing onto certain artworld tropes/trends purely on the visual level (big photo=good, big photo+nudity=even better) without understanding “why” they emerged in the first place.
Gotta talk with a few art historian friends. Maybe they can put some historical perspective on the crazy race happening around me 
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