Art Thinking
Art, meaning and brand leadership
By Vadim Grigoryan
Synopsis
Art Thinking takes readers on a journey into the interface between art, luxury and fashion brands and businesses. It explores the notion of brands as cultural agents and how art can act as a mediator between meaning and management. The book allows the readers to develop skills in constructing strategic art initiatives and in management of artist collaborations and provides insight into the artistic process of creativity.
Divided into four chapters and supplemented with case studies, the book is supported by Vadim Grigoryan’s many years of experience, popular webinars and courses taught at leading business schools, such as INSEAD and cultural institutions, such as Sorbonne.
Coming Spring 2025.
Art Thinking
Art, meaning and brand leadership
By Vadim Grigoryan
Synopsis
Art Thinking takes readers on a journey into the interface between art, luxury and fashion brands and businesses. It explores the notion of brands as cultural agents and how art can act as a mediator between meaning and management. The book allows the readers to develop skills in constructing strategic art initiatives and in management of artist collaborations and provides insight into the artistic process of creativity.
Divided into four chapters and supplemented with case studies, the book is supported by Vadim Grigoryan’s many years of experience, popular webinars and courses taught at leading business schools, such as INSEAD and cultural institutions, such as Sorbonne.
Coming Spring 2025.
“As an artist, you become an entrepreneur by definition… Maybe one can take some of the tools, methodologies, and see if one can apply them to something outside the art world.”
The Collaboration Horizon, an artwork by British interdisciplinary artist and author Marcus Lutyens (b.1964) musing on commerical interactions between artists and brands, depicting in graphic form the margins within which a brand and an artist may feel comfortable working together.
Book Details
Art Thinking is organised into four chapters.
Chapter 1 Cultural Agency As A Vehicle Of Brand Leadership covers the history of the relationship between art and brands; why the role of art and culture plays an increasingly significant role in our lives; why brands flirt with art; more profound reasons that brands should engage with art; the artist’s role as visionary and master of emotions; cultural capital as a prerequisite for social influence; art as a meaning search mechanism and a tool for time transcendence.
Chapter 2 investigates the most frequently employed mechanism of brand–art engagement: Artistic Collaboration. What are the benefits of collaborations for the artist and for the brand? Grigoryan offers his dos and don’ts of artistic collaborations along with a structured framework for evaluating the quality and success of any such venture.
Chapter 3 looks at the second fundamental way in which brands can engage with art and culture: Patronage. Grigoryan examines the fundamentals including institutional patronage, community arts funding, brand-created artist residencies, brand-sponsored art prizes, corporate art collections and brand-funded exhibition spaces, with special attention on tailor-made corporate or brand-art initiatives. Grigoryan offers seven detailed case studies of brands that have engaged with the world of art as part of their marketing strategies – Absolut, Audemars Piguet, Azulik, BMW, illy, Louis Vuitton, Ruinart and UBS – with varying degrees of success.
Chapter 4 is dedicated to the purest and yet potentially most powerful type of art engagement: Inspiration– or to be more exact, non-aesthetic inspiration. In other words, taking lessons learned through exposure to an artist’s thoughts, philosophies, principles and methods of working and applying them to a brand’s own approach to marketing. Grigoryan examines the lives and art practices of nine artists – including Marcel Duchamp, Joseph Beuys and Marina Abramovic – and illustrates how they can be mined for precious nuggets that will enhance the way any brand goes about its business.
“Artists have the capacity to see things differently. They […] offer a deeper and different understanding of what surrounds us. We have learned a lot and continue to learn and share with them”.
Audiences
Who benefits from Art Thinking?
Entrepreneurs. Heads of businesses. Non-for-profit organisations. High-quality aspirational brands. General or brand managers. Marketing directors. Creative directors. Marketing experts. Anyone who wants to enrich their understanding of art for business purposes, or who would like to build from scratch a strategic brand-art initiative, or who would like to improve the depth and efficiency of existing art engagement efforts.
Artworld practitioners. Art fair managers. Museum directors. Museum sponsorship managers. Gallerists. Art foundation managers. Anybody in the art world who would like to build bridges with the world of business, develop corporate programmes or search for additional sources of finance from brands, entrepreneurial businesses and corporations.
Anyone with an interest in the interaction of art and money, business and brands, who would like to jump on the quickest social elevator (which the world of contemporary art represents) and who would like to set their foot on the path of enriching their lives with beauty and meaning.
Michelangelo Pistoletto for illy Art Collection, 2002.
“Artists bring us back to our humanity, they make the unseen seen. […] Artists have a strong role in human society to remind us to feel and not be machines. Through art, we experience feelings again.”
Vadim Grigoryan. photographed by Hannah Goldsmith
About the Author
Vadim Grigoryan is a distinctive and idiosyncratic creative director, luxury and culture brand strategist, as well as a practising artist. Vadim currently consults brands and institutions, such as Azulik eco-resort in Tulum, Group Coty, Evian Resort, Mugler, Hugo Boss or Art Basel, on art direction and creative strategy.
Vadim has written several case studies published by INSEAD and regularly lectures at INSEAD, ESSEC and Sorbonne. He also runs Creavi, an artistic research initiative that blends together food and transcendence.
“I think that the Ricard Foundation, with its cutting-edge and generous programming, has contributed to a trendier, younger and more engaged image of Ricard brand and helped it penetrate more influential and demanding audiences”.
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