Since the 1980s, wherein market research revealed to corporations the arts-lover (literate, worldly and - more importantly - possessor of copious amounts of disposable income) as a valuable target audience, the impetus for them to establish the prestigious arts award has been unrelenting. Corporate sponsorship or establishment of the arts award has in contemporary times, become an highly influential and pervasive form of art patronage. As with traditional art patronage, sponsorship of high-profile art events confers upon the corporation similar benefits. They as well acquire the patina of social consciousness and progressiveness, of culture and prestige by association, but more crucially, corporations are able to use these events as a valuable tool in image control. Establishing a high-profile and well-regarded art award however, is far from easy, and few corporations have been as instantaneously successful in persuing this objective as Hugo Boss.
Established in 1996 in a highly-canny partnership with the Guggenheim Museum, the Hugo Boss Prize has quickly become one of the most prestigious prizes in the arts world. Its high-stakes partnership with the Guggenheim - to the tune of US$5 mil - immediately conferred prestige and legitimacy to the award. According to the Prize's website (http://www.hugobossprize.com), "innovation and creativity are the sole criteria applied" - clearly values that a fashion house would deem desirable to be associated with.
The Prize's website is minimalist in design, with a recurring theme of featureless human silhouettes pacing/posing around aimlessly, evoking the general atmosphere of gallery denizens haunting the grounds. I spent several minutes attempting to locate more information on the artists featured before realizing that I had to click on the figures themselves. It was an odd move I thought, merging the artist with its audience, until I realised that to Hugo Boss, we were all merely participants in its grand scheme of marketing. Or to be more precise - we are all potential clothes-hangers.