artworld

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noun

A group or network of people involved in the production, commission, preservation, promotion, criticism, and sale of art.

UncommonScrabble 12

Meanings

nounartworld (plural artworlds)

plural artworlds · alternative art world

  1. A group or network of people involved in the production, commission, preservation, promotion, criticism, and sale of art.

    Yet while Gauguin went native, taking teenage mistresses, wearing local costumes and building his own wooden hut, his ultimate purpose was to impress the art world back home.

    2003 October 14, Alan Riding, “The Colors of Paradise As Imagined by Gauguin”, in The New York Times, →ISSN
    3 more examples

    Fashion, as it happens, favors certain rows of the style matrix: museums, connoisseurs, and others are makeweights in the Artworld. […] Brillo boxes enter the artworld with that same tonic incongruity the commedia dell'arte characters bring into Ariadne auf Naxos.

    1964 October 15, Arthur Danto, “The Artworld”, in The Journal of Philosophy, volume 61, number 19, page 584

    Probably he would maintain that at least some of the regards intended for artworks are common to all the artworlds there are and that it is this feature that unifies these artworlds as of a single type.

    2007, Stephen Davies, Philosophical perspectives on art, page 67

    Rather than being in conflict, it is more accurate to suggest that these institutions lack a clear understanding of how they relate to each other under the emergence of an academy artworld.

    2010, Hazel Gardiner, Charlie Gere, Art Practice in a Digital Culture, page 19

Origin

From art + world, popularized by art critic Arthur Danto (1924–2013), see quotations.

Full word history & related roots →
Cite this entry
APA

artworld. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 2, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/artworld

MLA

“artworld.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/artworld. Accessed November 2, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “artworld,” accessed November 2, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/artworld.

Source: artworld on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.