An Updated Dictionary of the Art World

frieze’s Dan Fox and Jennifer Higgie update Raymond Williams’ Keywords, a record or dictionary “of an inquiry into a vocabulary … concerned with the practices and institutions described as ‘culture’ and ‘society.’”

Love it. Especially their definition of appropriation, “Very common. Often used as a euphemism for theft/immunity from the copyright laws that the rest of us have to follow.”  The one for ethics is a gem onto itself, “A word used with surprising frequency by a community as murky and unregulated as the art world.”

And this one hits right at the gut, philosophy, “Trained philosophers have spent entire lifetimes trying to understand the work of Immanuel Kant, and you’re quoting him in a press release about your new show?”