At the other end of the spectrum is art history itself. Here, too, a few artists watch their work get snatched up by collectors whose choices help guide other collectors. While abstraction is still popular, it's not compulsory. A banal version of Surrealism, with objects painted in an incongruous or floating context, is having a run, as is an attraction-repulsion mode, in which artists present the most beautifully painted images of somehow chilling scenes. A variety of individuals and organizations do.
Critics make endless rounds of galleries and artists' studios.
So do museum curators, who may be lured to a gallery by the promise of a limousine and lunch. Museum directors may be coaxed to a gallery or studio by a trustee's interest in an artist, whose work may or may not be in that trustee's collection. Through the jostling and friction of these influences, some kind of consensus emerges about which artists are hot. Some create art that is serene, others that is challenging, and still others that is thought-provoking. View an exhibition of Lisa Yuskavage's art, for example, and you'll have new disdain for any man who leers at a woman's posterior.