The linguistic economy of looking : production of values and creative subjectivities in the illustration industry in New York.

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This PhD project proposes to look at how practices of evaluation of artworks imbue visual forms with aesthetic,economic, political and ethical values in the context of the creative industry and how in turn these practices shape theidentities and relationships between creatives. Particular attention will be paid to the activities of illustrators and the artdirectors who hire them in the (co)production of illustrations. This ecosystem is particularly interesting because itoccupies a liminal space between a romantic conception of creativity as unalienated work and the capitalist pressure ofalienated labour in a highly competitive market. The practices of evaluation I'm interested in are both formal and informal,constituted of acts of looking entangled with acts of language to evaluate assemblages of form, colours, etc. understoodas significant "styles" with certain values. The concept of style is a regulative principle of the creative industry and servesboth as an indexical icon of the artist's interiority as well as one of a given market niche. I will look closely at theprocesses through which aesthetic judgments of artworks are aligned with moral judgments of the people who makethem in the context of the precarious and competitive freelance practice illustration often is. Tying together aesthetics,economics and ethics, this projects seeks to investigate ethnographically the acts of looking and acts of language at thecore of the production of value of creative work.