Table Of ContentThe Sociology of Art
A Reader
The Sociology of Art: A Reader provides students with an introduction to the funda-
mental theories and debates in the sociology of art, using extracts from the core
foundational and most influential contemporary writers in the field.
The book is divided into five parts exploring key themes in the sociology and social
history of art:
• classical sociological theory and the sociology of art
• the social production of art
• the sociology of the artist
• museums and the social construction of high culture
• sociology, aesthetic form and the specificity of art.
With the addition of an introductory essay that not only contextualises the readings
within the traditions of sociology and art history, but which also draws fascinating
parallels between the origins and development of these two disciplines, this book opens
up a productive interdisciplinary dialogue between sociology and art history as well as
providing a comprehensive overview of the subject.
This book is essential reading both for students of the sociology of art and for
students of art history.
Jeremy Tanner is Lecturer in Greek and Roman Art and Archaeology and co-
ordinator of the graduate programme in Comparative Art and Archaeology at
University College London.
The Sociology of Art
A Reader
Edited by
Jeremy Tanner
First published 2003
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2004.
© 2003 Jeremy Tanner for selection and editorial matter; the contributors and
publishers for their chapters (as specified in the Acknowledgements)
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented,
including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
The sociology of art: a reader/edited by Jeremy Tanner.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Art and society. 2. Art—Social aspects. I. Tanner, Jeremy, 1963–
N72.S6S62 2003
306.4′7—dc21 2003001918
ISBN 0-203-63364-4 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-203-63698-8 (Adobe eReader Format)
ISBN 0–415–30884–4 (hbk)
ISBN 0–415–30883–6 (pbk)
Contents
Preface viii
Acknowledgements x
INTRODUCTION: SOCIOLOGY AND ART HISTORY 1
PART ONE
Classical sociological theory and the sociology of art 27
1 Karl Marx
Marxism and art history 39
a social being and social consciousness (1859) 39
b art and ideology (1845/6) 40
c historical development and cultural traditions
(1857/8; 1852) 43
2 Max Weber
Art and cultural rationalization 46
a magical religion, salvation religion and the
evolution of art (1915) 46
b the tensions between art and ethical religion
(1922) 48
c art and rationalization in the western world
(1904) 51
3 Georg Simmel
symmetry and social organization (1896) 55
vi contents
4 Emile Durkheim
Social structure, material culture and
symbolic communication 59
a symbolic meaning and objectification (1912) 59
b symbolic objects, communicative interaction and
social creativity (1912) 63
PART TWO
The social production of art 69
5 Raymond Williams
Marxism and the social production of art 77
a productive forces (1977) 77
b from reflection to mediation (1977) 81
6 Howard S. Becker
art as collective action (1974) 85
7 Pierre Bourdieu
but who created the ‘creators’? (1993) 96
PART THREE
The sociology of the artist 105
8 Arnold Hauser
the social status of the renaissance artist (1951) 113
9 Natalie Heinich
the van gogh effect (1996) 122
10 Norbert Elias
craftsmen’s art and artists’ art (1993) 132
11 David Brain
material agency and the art of artifacts (1994) 137
PART FOUR
Museums and the social construction of high culture 147
12 Jürgen Habermas
art criticism and the institutions of the public
sphere (1962) 157
13 Pierre Bourdieu
outline of a sociological theory of art perception
(1968) 164
contents vii
14 Paul DiMaggio
cultural entrepreneurship in nineteenth-century
boston: the creation of an organizational base for
high culture in america (1982) 178
15 Vera L. Zolberg
conflicting visions in american art museums (1981) 194
PART FIVE
Sociology, aesthetic form and the specificity of art 207
16 Karl Mannheim
the dynamics of spiritual realities (1982[1922]) 215
17 Robert Witkin
van eyck through the looking glass (1995) 221
18 Talcott Parsons
Art as expressive symbolism: action theory
and the sociology of art 233
a expressive symbolism and social interaction (1951) 233
b the cultural elaboration of expressive meanings
and the evolution of art (1961) 238
References 245
Index 260
Preface
THIS READER IS DESIGNED to provide students with an introduction to the
fundamental theoretical orientations which have characterised the sociology of
art from its nineteenth-century origins, in Marxism, to contemporary contributions.
Readings have been selected which are both representative of the major debates in the
sociology of art and lend themselves most strongly to informing contemporary
theoretical debates between art history and the sociology of art.
The introduction explores the development of both art history and sociology as
new discourses which developed during the course of the nineteenth century in
response to the development of modern social structures and cultural institutions.
Consequently, many of the classics of sociological and art-historical thought – for
example Weber and Wölfflin – have commonalities both in their intellectual back-
ground and in the kinds of intellectual problems in which they are interested: the
relationship between collective structures and individual freedom, cultural evolution
and the systematic character of processes of cultural change. In other cases, essays
which are now recognised as classics in their own fields – Panofsky’s essay on the
methodology of iconographic and iconological interpretation and Karl Mannheim’s
introduction to the interpretation of Weltanschauungen (worldviews) – were originally
written in response to each other, and are much better understood in relationship to
each other than in the disciplinary isolation in which they are normally read today. My
introduction goes on to explore some of the reasons why art history and sociology
developed in separate directions during the course of the twentieth century, and some
of the more recent attempts to cross the disciplinary divide, most notably in the
sociology of art of Pierre Bourdieu and Michael Baxandall’s critical art history.
The core of the Reader consists in five parts each exploring a key area in the
sociology of art: the classic theoretical perspectives of Marx, Weber, Simmel and
Durkheim; the social production of art; the sociology of the artist; sociological
preface ix
perspectives on high culture and museums; sociological approaches to style and aes-
thetic form. Each of the parts begins with a short introductory commentary. These
commentaries discuss the main issues and approaches characteristic of the sociology
of art in each of these areas, and in particular seek to characterise the distinctiveness
of sociological from mainstream art-historical approaches, as well as pointing out
areas where each discipline could benefit from deeper insight into and collaboration
with the other. The intellectual background and key concepts of each of the selected
readings are also introduced and explained in these introductory commentaries.
Any selection of readings in a particular academic discipline, whatever claims it
may make to being representative of its field – and I hope this Reader is representative
– is also programmatic. This volume is no different. It has two primary goals. First,
intellectual excitement: it includes work by some of the finest sociological thinkers
from the nineteenth century until today – Marx, Weber, Durkheim, Simmel, Mannheim,
Parsons, Elias, Habermas, Bourdieu – all addressing problems which are crucial to our
understanding of art: the social functions of high culture, the nature of artistic creativ-
ity, the relationship between social structure and aesthetic form. Second, interdisci-
plinarity: the best art history is, implicitly at least, sociologically informed, and the best
sociology of art places questions of artistic agency and aesthetic form at the core of
its research. Consequently, a primary aim of this Reader is to make it easier for art
history students to see the potential reward of exploring sociological perspectives on
art in a more systematic way, and for sociologists to regain access to a critical trad-
ition in art-historical and art-sociological thought which can allow them to address
contemporary problems in the sometimes more nuanced, aesthetically informed man-
ner characteristic of certain earlier strands of sociological thought.
Full bibliographical details have been given with each reading, for students
wishing to return to the original source. Many of the original texts have been cut,
and original notes and references omitted, where it was thought inessential to the
main argument of the reading. Conventions of spelling and capitalisation, as also the
use of language which might now seem unacceptably gender-biased, have been left
unchanged.
