JAPAN KOREA ART GRAFFITI NETWORKING PROPAGANDA POSTERS ART TRENDS
What are Art Radar‘s most popular search terms? Japan tops other Asian countries with most-searched-for art, graffiti moves out from the underground and Chinese art and politics are brought once again to the fore.
Art Radar Asia has now published two lists of original data on our most searched contemporary Asian artists, one in December 2009 and the other in July 2010. With these lists, we attempted to offer some insight into which artists are currently enjoying popularity in the international and Asian art markets.
Chinese propaganda poster.
While doing this research we also noticed that a number of common search engine terms were leading people to our articles. Just as we did for our most searched artists, we have decided to publish a list of most searched terms used by readers, which could hint at current trends within the contemporary art community. This list covers searches undertaken between 30 June 2009 to 30 June 2010.
1. Contemporary art
3,164 searches2. Japanese art
1,680 searches (including: Japanese art – 503 searches; modern Japanese art – 372 searches; Japanese contemporary art – 334 searches; Japanese artist – 471 searches)3. Propaganda posters
863 searches (including: Propaganda posters – 546 searches; Chinese propaganda posters – 317 searches)4. Contemporary art collectors
394 searches5. Graffiti (Banksy)
374 searches6. Art networking sites
340 searches7. Korean art
246 searches8. Chinese propaganda
320 searches
Art Radar Asia receives over 27,000 page views in a month. Our readers come to us from numerous places across the Internet: search engines like Google, social networking sites such as Twitter or Facebook, our weekly email newsletter and word of mouth. Our readers are art collectors, gallerists and dealers, art professionals, scholars and artists. For all these people, it is important to understand current trends in art, whether they are influenced by them or not.
We can’t claim that this list is a reliable proxy for the most-searched art terms on the Internet overall (take a look at our notes at the bottom of this article). However, we do think the list throws up some fascinating data. Below, we attempt to decipher some of the standout results from the tallies in this list.
Japanese art in top search spot
Takashi Murakami
Perhaps unsurprisingly, “Japanese art” sits in second place with an overall total of 1,680 searches. In both the December 2009 artist list and the June 2010 artist list, Japanese contemporary artist Takashi Murakami held the number one spot as most searched artist on Art Radar. The desire to know more about this artist could be one of the factors driving this search result.
Propaganda posters and Chinese propaganda
With the work of contemporary Chinese artists continuing to sell for high prices and the artists themselves continuing to make headlines – as artists in China work under strong censorship laws they often create reactionary works – contemporary Chinese art has remained popular for some time. In addition, the current political situation in China drives external interest in the history of the country, ensuring propaganda posters created decades ago remain both relevant to contemporary study and highly collectable.
Art Radar Asia has published a number of stories on Chinese contemporary art and on propaganda art and Chinese propaganda posters.
Banksy, North London.
Art Radar graffiti series proves popular
In January this year, we published a two part series (Part I and Part II) explaining graffiti and street art. These articles have proven extremely popular, hinting at a desire to know more about this contradictory art form; it is one that is still often underground and sometimes even illegal (therefore inaccessible) and at the same time, with artists such as Banksy becoming known internationally, increasingly commercialised and collectible. We think this goes some way to explaining the 374 searches for “graffiti”.
Desire to connect to the international art community
We recorded 340 searches for “art networking sites”. Increasingly popular as a marketing and information tool, social networking sites tailored to art professionals can give members access to the knowledge of other art collectors and investors as well as the opportunity to view the work of artists from around the world. In March 2009, we linked to an excellent list of current social networking sites first published on Art Market Blog.
Notes
This list is not a reliable proxy for the most-searched art terms on the Internet overall. Here is why: If we have not written a story on or tagged this art term, the search engines will not bring us traffic for this search term and it won’t appear on our traffic analysis stats page. As we have only been up for just over two years it is quite possible that we have not yet covered some highly-searched art terms. And even if we have referenced an art term on our site and the art term is highly-searched, the searcher will not come to us unless we have a good page ranking for the story on the search engine. For example if the story is, say, after page 4 of the search engine results, the searcher probably won’t find our story and will not appear in our stats. Despite these limitations the data is likely to be a reliable indicator for certain trends. Finally even if we have a story and the story is well-ranked, it may be that other stories on the same page are more alluring than ours and readers do not find their way to us.
KN/KCE
Related Topics: lists, from Art Radar, trends
Related Posts:
- Top 20 Asian artists June 2010: Art Radar Asia’s most-searched artists – July 2010 – evaluates the results with regards to artist activities
- What is street art? Top 5 street artists in the art world – Part II – March 2010 – an insightful overview of this controversial art form
- What is street art? Vandalism, graffiti or public art – Part I – January 2010 – an insightful overview of this controversial art form
- Top 17 Asian artists 2009: Art Radar Asia’s most-searched artists – December 2009 – includes some information on each artist
- Top 10 social networking sites for art – March 2009 – extremely useful, even readers’ comments left on this post point out some helpful sites
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