Artwork as Practical Social Action: An Ethnomethodological Study and the New Sociology of Art (original) (raw)
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The sociology of art has experienced a significant revival during the last three decades. However, in the first instance, this renewed interest was dominated by the 'production of culture' perspective and was heavily focused on contextual factors such as the social organization of artistic markets and careers, and displays of 'cultural capital' through consumption of the arts. In this article, I outline a new mode of approaching art sociologically that begins with Alfred Gell's (1998) Art and Agency, but comes to full fruition in what I am calling the 'new sociology of art'. A major theoretical statement that captures many of the aspirations of the new approach is Jeffrey Alexander's essay: 'Iconic Consciousness: The Material Feeling of Meaning'. It is suggested that the new sociology of art has much in common with material culture studies, and that a more robust concept of the artwork's agency is needed now that art has well and truly taken on a social and cultural life well beyond those institutions traditionally understood as the 'art world'.
Sociology of Art: New Stakes in a Post-Critical Time
The international handbook of …, 2000
During a long period, sociology of art has been divided mainly between two major directions. Both show art as a social reality but they do so from quite different points of view: one is frontally critical and aims at revealing the social determination of art behind any pretended autonomy (be it the autonomy of the works, following the objectivist aesthetics, or the autonomy of the taste for them, following an aesthetics of subjectivity); the other is more pragmatic and, without pretending to make statements about the works or aesthetic experience, procedes through a minutious reconstitution of the "collective action" necessary to produce and consume art. Against a purely internal and hagiographic aesthetical commentary of art works, sociology has thus filled back an "art world" which formerly included only very few chefs-d'oeuvre and geniuses. Mainstream productions and copies, conventions and material constraints, professions and academies, organizations and markets, codes and rites of social consumption have been pushed to the front of the scene.
16 Sociology of Art: New Stakes in a Post-Critical Time
The international handbook of sociology, 2000
During a long period, sociology of art has been divided mainly between two major directions. Both show art as a social reality but they do so from quite different points of view: one is frontally critical and aims at revealing the social determination of art behind any pretended autonomy (be it the autonomy of the works, following the objectivist aesthetics, or the autonomy of the taste for them, following an aesthetics of subjectivity); the other is more pragmatic and, without pretending to make statements about the works or aesthetic experience, procedes through a minutious reconstitution of the "collective action" necessary to produce and consume art. Against a purely internal and hagiographic aesthetical commentary of art works, sociology has thus filled back an "art world" which formerly included only very few chefs-d'oeuvre and geniuses. Mainstream productions and copies, conventions and material constraints, professions and academies, organizations and markets, codes and rites of social consumption have been pushed to the front of the scene.
2017
is American sociologist who is interested in sociology of art and one of his theories is understanding and explaining art as 'collective action'. The sociologists like Becker analyze how the aesthetic judgements and values are constructed socially. They mainly focus on the production and creation processes, institutions and organizations.
" Creativity isn't the monopoly of artists. This is the crucial fact I've come to realize, and this broader concept of creativity is my concept of art. When I say everybody is an artist, I mean everybody can determine the content of life in his particular sphere, whether in painting, music, engineering, caring for the sick, the economy or whatever. " – Joseph Beuys, in an interview with Frans Hak, 1979, (Beck 2004, p.7) In 2012, we, Lott Alfreds and Charlotte Åberg, co-founded the artistic collective ArtAgent based in Stockholm, Sweden, focusing on participatory and situation-specific art. Through art practices in the public realm, we aim to develop an increased awareness of the potential and capacity of art to impact society and we have created artistic projects at various locations such as neighbourhoods, schools, social institutions, workplaces, public squares and art institutions, both in Sweden and internationally. The works include different international contexts such as social sculpture, (Beuys, Harlan 2004) participatory art, (Milevska 2006) and situation specific and new genre public art. (Lacy 1994) In addition to these concepts we have used a stream of questions and experiments undertaken by thinkers and art practitioners that have influenced the condition of local communities in a global change. Referring to Arjun Appadurais belief, we now live in globally imagined worlds and not simply in locally imagined communities. We also live in a world in which deterritorialisation, the breaking-down of existing territorial connections affect us on a daily basis as well as a parallel vision were we are moving towards a more comprehensive and internationally including approach. (Appadurai 2000) In this shift we see the enhanced possibility of sharing thoughts, feelings and imagination through art. One strength that we possess as artists is that we continuously work with the unspoken, with tacit knowledge that cannot be easily described with words and therefore needs other means in order to be expressed. (Harry Collins 2010). To allow for also imaginary worlds to take part for example in the often dull and repetitive actions at a workplace, we create a possibility of exchange based on thoughts. As artists we have a long experience to work collaboratively with communities by engaging them in artistic actions aiming towards social change. We wish to contribute to this section on methodological reshaping and spatial transgression in glocalised social work by introducing strategies that we have been using in our artistic practice with marginalized communities in Albania, Macedonia, Croatia and Sweden. In particular we wish to describe the interplay between practice and theory in our projects, to discuss theory by way of practice, and in so doing highlight how artistic practice embodies and modifies theory. This will be demonstrated by bringing to attention different situations and conditions for art projects in Sweden and in the Western Balkans. We will begin by introducing a theoretical framework to our methodology building on Joseph Beuys ideas of social sculpture (Sacks 2016) and Grant Kester's notions of the potentiality of conversations in art practices. (ed. Kucor, Leung 2004) We then present examples of our interpretation of what a " social sculpture " can be as the basis of our artistic and social practice. We have heterogeneous artistic backgrounds as visual artists working with sculpture, graphic art, textile design, video and photography. <FIGURE 10.1 HERE> The figure attempts to describe in a simple form the journey that both the artists and participants can take. The timescale can vary from days to months and the creative inputs and outcomes are hugely variable. What we have tried to make clear is that process and product are entangled and must be understood as a whole. While a final presentation or event must be artistically credible it is also informed by the process that created it. (Dix, Gregory 2010). Graphics: Lott Alfreds 2014
The 'new sociology of art': Putting art back into social science approaches to the arts
Cultural Sociology, 2007
This article maps recent developments in social science writing about the arts and argues for seeing this work in terms of the label the ‘new sociology of art’. It considers four major lines of re-assessment being carried out by sociologists studying the arts: firstly, a reconsideration of the relationship between sociological and other disciplinary approaches to art; secondly, the possibility of an art-sociology as against a sociology of art; thirdly, the application of insights from the sociology of art to non-art ‘stuff ’; and, fourthly, the sociology of the artwork conceived as a contingent social fact. The argument is made that these developments represent an advance on the tendency to limit sociological investigations of the arts to contextual or external factors.The ‘new sociology of art’ is praised for framing questions about the aesthetic properties of art and artworks in a way that is compatible with social constructionsim.