The Global Art Compass: New Directions in 21st Century Art (Küresel Sanat Pusulası 21.Yüzyıl Sanatında Yeni Yönelimler)

Alistair Hicks, YKY, 2016

Follow the art, listen to the artists, thrust your reactions.

The Global Art Compass, your guide to the maze of the contemporary art world, helps you to solve the mysteries of today's art.

In the old times, authors and critics such as Goethe, Ruskin and Clement Greenberg spread some particular ideas about art, they even dictated these opinions to the artists. Nevertheless, the artists have been rebelling ever since. Nowadays, they don't feel like they have to follow an existing theory or go to a specific city. New York, London, Paris, Berlin and Beijing, they are all wonderful places to perform art, but none of them dominates the art scenery. With The Global Art Compass, Alistair Hicks proves that, no curator, critic or art agent is controlling or can have power over what is happening in the present day's art world all by herself. On the contrary, he shows how exciting and beneficial to be an artist, who listens to herself and follows her own path.

The sections of The Global Art Compass is categorized by the continents, and it contains excerpts from the interviews with various dissimilar artists like Laure Prouvost (France), Anri Sala (Albania), Gabriel Orozco (Mexico), Sandra Gamarra (Peru), Cai Guo-Qiang (China) and Nandan Ghiya (India). The book also contains records of discoveries made by the author in the field of contemporary art. Furthermore, it is a manifest that encourages us to indulge in the fields of art that is more attractive and meaningful to us, and consequently find the art compass in ourselves.

The result of Hicks's work, including the "Compass in Turkey" section especially written for this version, shows us that the topics and issues in which twenty first century artists are interested in are generally universal: Communication networks, which continuously increase their speed are being balanced by the resistance to globalization; even though many people see art as a merchandize, it is also a tool that has the ability to reanimate; although mass media's spectrum is constantly expanding, artists are generally searching for and finding simple stories that can connect with larger crowds and can change lives towards a better direction.