Portrait of the Artist as a Non-Artist. Matryoshka Roles and the Heteronomization of the Italian Art Field

Abstract This paper examines how Italian visual artists are now structurally encouraged to be proficient in performing activities unrelated to field-specific criteria, or – to use the words of one respondent – why they are supposed to “be good at being incredibly good at doing stuff they don’t know how to do.” Drawing on qualitative data ( N = 135), four dimensions of unartistic yet binding concerns are explored: networking relationality, bureaucratic “callification,” systemic politics, and outward visibility. To analyze this dynamic, the concept of “Matryoshka roles” is introduced. Although uncharacteristic of artists’ work and nested inside its surface depiction (Matryoshka), each dimension entails a set of injunctions and sanctioned behavior (roles) that reconfigure the reality of contemporary visual artists and vitiate the separation between internal vs. external principles of hierarchization. Reflecting on the autonomy of the field of visual art as a transitory historical phase, mechanisms of fields’ heteronomization are addressed. By considering a series of factors (e.g., differences among early- and late-career artists, presence on social media, perception of heteronomous practices, most distinctive accomplishments, career junctions), the increasing pressure of meta-fields of economics, power, and state is detailed.