At the end of the millennium, after the fall of communist systems, a new international ideology appears, based on the principle of the inevitable connection of the whole planet, of its economic and cultural unification under the leadership of America. This unity is not achieved through war but through commerce, consumption, entertainment, art. The ambition is to create, thanks to uninhibited mercantilism, a global culture. In a way, the Mercantile and Multicultural International replaces the Bolshevik International, disappeared body and property.
This multiculturalism has America as its heart and the planet as its kingdom. It developed in the United States in 1965, and was gradually implemented by federal and municipal institutions. However, It didn't carry out its international apostolate until the 1990s, thanks to theorists who would teach around the world the winning urban, cultural and artistic formulas that guaranteed economic development.
New York, The New Financial Capital of the Arts
During this first decade, everything is put in place, everything is interconnected in New York which has the largest deposit of billionaires in the world. She launched the trends, spelled out the doxa and decided the ratings, in spring and fall, thanks to Christie's and Sotheby's becoming universal references.
The identity of America is essential to the trends and sides of art. New York at the beginning of the millennium masters the market and the various stages of value creation. She is the creator of a new model that links art to all kinds of other sectors such as the entertainment industry, the arty trade, design, fashion. It applies the marketing methods of ordinary commerce to the art market. The power of "Contemporary Art" as NY also resides in its new function as a high-end and "secure" financial product, and as a very effective tool for communication and international influence. In 2002, to confirm the American and not only European artistic preponderance, the first international fair on the American continent was created: the Miami Fair, a branch of the Basel one, set up on a deposit of rich retirees or businessmen, and in contact with the fortunes of South America.
This latest generation of "Contemporary Art," formed by America, aims to be global, beneficial to humanity and virtuous. His financial triviality disappears behind a moralizing speech affirming his various missions: intellectual, bringing the public into question; social, dedicated to urban animation, to the mixing of populations; international, working to include countries previously away from the art market but with many fortunes.
If the center of art is in New York, the places of "Contemporary Art" multiply by specializing. To be an antechamber of New York and conquer the popular label of "international city," mimicry with America is essential. Every candidate city must have its "international" artistic event, its museum of contemporary art or its "international" art centre, its art school, its residences of artists from all over the world, but also its numerous and diverse minorities, its cutting-edge technologies, its avant-garde and hyperconnected urban planning. The adoption of the model is supposed to guarantee to any city in crisis or disharmony a spectacular development, the solution of all its social problems.
The model, the magic formula is evoked in all think tanks, international circles, academics and politicians. An exemplary success has been proven: on the threshold of the millennium, in 1997, thanks to the opening of its Contemporary Art Center in connection with New York, Bilbao, a city in disrepair, has regained global visibility and prosperity.
