What do art viewers really think about artists?

ARTSURVEY is Phillip Buehler and Jennifer Dalton’s first large-scale survey of art viewers’ attitudes and opinions about art and artists. Based on Phillip Buehler’s years of experience working in market research at one of the world’s premier advertising agencies and Jennifer Dalton’s years of experience working at one of the world’s largest auction houses, the two artists have developed a survey which will assess artists and their work as though they were consumer brands — which, in the defining sense of the art market, they are. To borrow a phrase from The Hidden Persuaders, Vance Packard’s seminal 1950s exposé of advertising methods, artists and their dealers are in the business of “selling symbols to upward strivers.”

The survey employs techniques developed by the advertising industry to assess the public’s perception of market brands. The surveys list 44 artists whose works have recently appeared at auction and invite responders to rate these artists on each of 24 attributes. The attributes range from the marketing-specific (“distinctive,” “speaks to me”) to the laudatory (“brilliant,” “intelligent”) to the catty (“passé,” “connected,” “pretentious”). 7,000 postcard-sized surveys appeared citywide and this website launched September 24th.

The surveys also collect demographic information on respondents, such as their age, gender and frequency of art viewing. There is also space for respondents to add their own personal favorite artist.

Questions that may be answered by our project include, for example:

• Who is the art world’s most overrated artist? Who is the most undervalued?

• How do the public’s opinions of artists relate to those artists’ prices at auction?

• Who is the art world’s Most Popular artist? Who has the Best Personality?

• Is artwork just like any other luxury consumer brand?

Artsurvey is an examination of the types of pleasure people receive from visual art; the desires, demands and expectations viewers place on art; the connection between one’s relationship to artmaking and one’s viewing experiences; and what “value” — in all senses of the word — means to those who love art and to the larger society.

Sophisticated multivariate statistical techniques (such as factor analysis and cluster analysis), developed to analyze market data, will reveal the underlying shape of consumer perceptions of artists.