Theories about the relationship between Art

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Theories about the relationship between Art
Society(Socio-historic dimensions)

• References to Readings Today
• Becker, Howard. Art Worlds", and
• Bourdieu, Pierre. "Who Creates the 'Creator'?
  "The Circle of Belief
• Inglis, David. Thinking Art Sociologically
• Mitchell, W.J.T. Offending Images..
• Recommended
• Becker The power of inertia

Bill Viola Crossings (detail)
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Course Organization

• Handout 1 Syllabus and Preliminary Reading List
• Resources (on web)
• http//webdav.sfu.ca/web/cmns/courses/2011/488
• note
• Importance of attendance participation
• Proper use of citations to acknowledge sources

3
Finding out about artistic events issues

• Library Resources
• Music http//www.lib.sfu.ca/researchhelp/subject
  guides/fpa/music.htm
• Dance http//www.lib.sfu.ca/researchhelp/subjectgu
  ides/fpa/dance.htm
• Visual Arts http//www.lib.sfu.ca/researchhelp/su
  bjectguides/fpa/visarts.htm

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Other Sources

• Cultural Sections of papers like The Georgia
  Straight
• broader Sunday New York Times -- Arts and
  Leisure Section (in library)
• Other magazines and journals devoted to the arts
• Web sites, blogs etc showcasing art,
• ex. http//www.agitart.org/

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A few events in Vancouver this week art,
revolution and ownership
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Swarm 12 Public Open-house of Artist-Run
CentresSept 8 9

• http//swarm.paarc.ca/
• The Pacific Association of Artist-Run Centres
  will hold their annual festival, Swarm, to mark
  the kick-off of Vancouvers artist-run centre
  programming season. Two nights full of gallery
  hopping, public projects, and artist collectives
  will leave you feeling inspired. Swarm is always
  a fun party and a great way to connect with our
  alternative art scene.  

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Some Common-sense approaches to Art
(Artist)/Society Relations

• Art as
• historical record (events, practices, values)--
  notion of Zeitgeist (spirit of the time) or
  mentalities
• Measure of civilization (with predictable stages
  of development)
• Predictor or instigator of socio-political or
  cultural change (theories of the avant-garde)

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Some Common-sense approaches to Art/Society
Relations

• Art as historical record (events, practices,
  values)-- notion of Zeitgeist (spirit of the
  time) or mentalities

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Measure of civilization (with predictable stages
of development)

• Ex. representation of perspective in
  neo-classical painting. Jacques Louis David c.
  1889. The lictors bringing to Brutus the bodies
  of his sons

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Predictor or instigator of change (theories of
the avant-garde)
Pink Bloque (2001-2005) Dancing in Dissent
protesting racism sexism at street dances
http//www.pinkbloque.org/
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Disciplinary Differences Internal vs. External
Approaches

• internal (humanities) -- arts outside social
  processes
• Artistsolitary creator, exceptional genius
  (humanistic approach)
• Arts, aesthetics as universal
• external (social sciences interdisciplinary
  approaches) --art world(s) socially constructed
• importance of social context, processes
  structures for understanding the
  production/creation, mediation
  reception/consumption of the arts, recognition
  processes, their uses, functions, meanings

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Theories of Art and Society (Different
Intellectual Traditions Roots)

• Humanistic disciplines (history, literary
  studies)
• Formerly --great events, individuals, canons
• Some interdisciplinary (ex. Cultural studies)
• Iconographic formalist frameworks
• Visual and Performing Arts
• perspective of art-makers critics
• Anthropology
• functions of the arts symbolic representations,
  others
• ex. Religious, ritual
• Psychology
• cognition perception
• Philosophy
• Aesthetics, knowledge etc.
• Sociology Communications many approaches
  (focus of the course)

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Some Internal Debates What is Art? Who Are
Artists?

• emphasis on
• Gifts, talent, innate characteristics, vision (of
  Artists)
• expression of eternal truths (artists, publics)
• Ex. Notion that Greek Aesthetic Values (like
  Ideals of Beauty Bodily Proportions) express
  universals
• Relations to natural world or real) through
  material or embodied practices
• Mimesis (representation)
• Imitatio (simulation, copy)

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Artists presentations of the relations of their
work to social issues institutions

• Three examples
• Cai Guo-Qiang interview Art21(Art in the 21st
  Century) PBS
• If time Olympic Ceremony Controversy
  (enhancement of Cai Guo-Qiangss Footprints of
  History firework performance
• http//blog.art21.org/2008/08/22/cai-guo-qiang-res
  ponds-to-olympics-fireworks-controversy/
• Olafur Eliasson
• http//www.youtube.com/watch?vjKl0tb3VmfQ
• Taryn Simon on her creative practices
• http//www.youtube.com/watch?vjKl0tb3VmfQ

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Internal Approaches --

• Systems of ranking art forms
• avant-garde vs. traditionalists etc.
• Subjects or content (ex. French Academy rankings
  by categories history of religious, landscape,
  portrait, still life, genre)
• Medium (ex. visual arts painting, sculpture,
  architecture, photography, performance art,
  conceptual art etc.)
• Styles, tastes and genres
• Socio-political or ideological criteria (art for
  arts sake, social realism, arts activism etc.)
• Canons essential components of dominant art
  system, influential artworks that participants
  must know understand
• More recently place of social historical
  processes in defining art what/who gets
  included in canons

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Internal Approaches --

• Genres, stylistic movements, forms of expression
• Canons essential components of dominant art
  system, influential artworks that participants
  must know understand
• More recently The New Art History cultural
  studies in the humanities (differs from social
  scientific interpretations
• place of social historical processes in
  defining art what/who gets included in canons

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What is art? Who decides?Ex. Marcel
Duchamp--Readymade Sculptures vs. conventional
techniques (challenging definitions of what is
art and who decides)
Fountain, original (left) and recreations of lost
1917 Original Who decides what is art? the
artist, experts, publics??
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Other Examples of Challenges to the Canon
Authority
(l.)Leonardo DaVincis so-called Mona Lisa c.
1503 (r.) Marcel Duchamps L.H.O.O.Q, 1920 for a
Paris Dada show.
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Non-western cultural traditions
(l.)Leonardo DaVincis so-called Mona Lisa c.
1503 (r.)Book cover from Cultural Studies for
Beginners by Sardar Van Loon.
20
Rethinking institutionalized exclusionary
practices Differencing the Canon

• Guerilla Girls poster

21
References to Artistic Canons as way of
establishing credibility authority within art
worlds
Jean August Dominique Ingres, Grande Odalisque
(1814), oil on canvas.
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Another Example
Manet Olympia 1863.
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Yasumasa MorimuraAppropriation art Twins
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External Approaches to Thinking about
Art/Society Relations

• art should be contextualized (situated in
  social, political historic contexts)
• search for patterns rather than exceptions
• What do successful artists have in common?
• What characteristics do fans share?
• How do artistic institutions or networks
  function?
• What do the arts have to do with economics,
  politics and culture?
• Can the arts redress injustices, help people
  recover from trauma, communicate values that
  change the world?

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External Approaches

• Often a wider range of art forms studied (not
  just high culture but also pop culture, folk
  culture, outsider art, etc..)
• Stronger focus on institutions processes of
• Production-creation
• (training, collaboration networks etc.)
• Mediation
• (gatekeepers, facilitators etc.)
• Reception, consumption
• (tastes, audiences, publics, markets)

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Importance of social processes for recognition of
the arts artists Visitors to the Louvre Museum
in front of Mona Lisa (old hanging)
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Artists, the arts and societyRecognition
processes

• Banksy museums as authorities
• http//www.youtube.com/watch?vlW-rt3jyZU8
• http//www.youtube.com/watch?vfZK7D6WqzR0

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Early Social Scientific Approaches to the study
of Art/Society Relations

• Art and Society
• Art History Criticism (Interpretation of
  artworks as symbolic forms with cultural
  meanings) Erwin Panofsky, Arnold Hauser, Pierre
  Francastel, John Berger, etc..
• Marxist Traditions T. Adorno, W. Benjamin,
  Heidigger (Francfort School), H. J. Jauss (School
  of Constance), Janet Wolff, Lucien Goldmann,
• Art in Society
• practices institutions such as patronage,
  connoisseurship, publics, fans (M. Baxandahl,
  T.J. Clark etc.)
• styles as social networks (M. Schapiro, C.
  Ginzburg)
• Art as Society

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Variety of external approaches

• Different degrees of importance of social
  construction of reality
• Debates about symbolic vs. material dimensions
• Varied assumptions about society how to study
  it
• Examples two different approaches Becker
  Bourdieu

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Pierre Bourdieu
1930-2002

• Marxist, critical theorist
• Emphasis on
• Social and political structures material
  conditions as limits to freedom of agency
• Power relations within the field of artistic
  production
• Creation of belief in the power of symbolic goods
  (art, artistic reputations etc.) and their
  conversion into economic and social capital
• Core notions Habitus, field of cultural
  production (history position in it),
  domination, distinction (taste class), praxis,
  doxa
• hierarchical model
• Relationships marked by class conflict and power
  struggles

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Howard Becker

• Symbolic interactionist
• http//home.earthlink.net/hsbecker/
• Early work on labeling theory and social actors
  (a different way of thinking of agency)
• Emphasis on
• Sense-making (interpretive)
• Human interaction identity-formation
• Consensus conventions
• Art-making as a collective activity
• Notion of different types of art worlds
• Strong sociological background but also a
  performing artist (jazz musician)

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Many people know that I used to play the piano
for a living, in taverns, for dances, weddings,
bar mitzvas, Safeway employees Christmas parties,
and so on. Here is a picture of the Bobby Laine
Trio, circa 1950 (Bobby Laine, tenor Dominic
Jaconetti, drums Howie Becker, piano),
performing at the 504 Club, which was located at
504 W. 63rd St. in Chicago from Howie Beckers
homepage
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Art Political Representations
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Debates regarding what art is considered to
represent

• Example related to History of Visual Arts
• rendering of reality (nature), mimesis
• as world view in a specific place time
• as product of solitary genius (Renaissance)
• made by system of production reception
• as social process (symbolic material)

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Critiques of Externalist/Internalist Stances

• extreme reductionism vs extreme formalism
  (Scylla Charybdis metaphor)
• reductionism
• art reduced to social process (ignores specific
  characteristics of aesthetic forces)
• Formalism
• focus on limited range of aesthetic qualities
  --ignores importance of social processes
  context

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Recent Controversy over what art represents (EU
public art project--Brussels)
L-The sculpture resembles a giant model kit with
snap-out pieces. (CBC) R-Romania is depicted
as a vampire theme park. (CBC) See also CBC
coverage (link) Jan 14 2009 British (Telegraph)
coverage and video Bulgaria as a toilet link
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Theories about changes in ideas about what art
represents over time (Jurt)

• rendering of reality (nature), mimesis,
  imitatio
• as world view in a specific place time
• as product of solitary genius (Renaissance)
• Artists vision (19th romanticism)
• made by system of production reception
• Socio-political processes (symbolic material)

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Externalist Views

• art should be contextualized (situate in social
  historic contexts)
• search for patterns (regularity) rather than
  exceptions
• What do successful artists have in common?
• What do fans share?
• How do institutions function?
• wider range of art forms studied (high culture,
  pop culture etc..)
• Stronger focus on institutions processes of
• Production-creation
• (training, collaboration networks etc.)
• Mediation
• (gatekeepers, facilitators etc.)
• Reception, consumption
• (tastes, audiences, publics, markets)

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Note to Users of these Outlines-

• not all material covered in class appears on
  these outlines-- important examples,
  demonstrations and discussions arent written
  down here.
• Classes are efficient ways communicating
  information and provide you will an opportunity
  for regular learning. These outlines are
  provided as a study aid not a replacement for
  classes.

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If time.
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Art Society example

• Videoclip Excerpt from Cai Guo-Qiang interview
  Art21(Art in the 21st Century) PBS
• Olympic Ceremony Controversy (enhancement of
  Guo-Qiangss Footprints of History firework
  performance
• http//blog.art21.org/2008/08/22/cai-guo-qiang-res
  ponds-to-olympics-fireworks-controversy/