Stepping up

In the late seventies an artist’s career path was fairly straightforward. You emerged, vanished into mid-career, had a retrospective and then (mostly) grew old, waiting around to be rediscovered. Recently we came across two new career path milestones in a piece on the Turner Prize in The New Yorker. One of the Turner judges Andrew Renton from Goldsmiths, explained that the Turner honours artists who would be called “late emergent” or “early mid-career”.

So here, after some consultation (and thanks for the idea J), and a quick look through Adam Linderman’s Collecting Contemporary and a few magazines, we have begun to compile the possible steps in an artist’s career. They are:

unknown
recent graduate
young contemporary
emerging
late emergent
early mid-career
established
mid-career
late career
senior artist
veteran
rediscovered
iconic

An overthenet table tennis ball signed by an artist of note to the best matching of a New Zealand artist to each category. Reader's additions in red.