Week 5 : Who Belongs in Art Worlds? Arts Occupations, Institutions, Networks (continued)

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Week 5 Who Belongs in Art Worlds?Arts
Occupations, Institutions, Networks (continued)
Mediation (Gatekeepers, Facilitators)
Source V. Alexander Sociology of the
Arts(2003), p. 63.

• Note Week 4 cancelled due to snowstorm.

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Plan for Class Today

• Lecture
• Review Artists as a Social Category, Types of
  Art Worlds
• production of culture theory of art worlds
• Mediation and recognition processes
• Presentations of First Short Case Studies
• IF TIME Videoclip from Off the Canvas. A
  documentary Profilng 9 Maverick New York Women
  Art Dealers

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Last Lecture Participants in art worlds --
Creators/artists
art
Mediators
Audiences/publics/consumers
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Relation to Communication Theories
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Unique artists, unique art works (individual) vs.
social construction of art/artists (Zolberg)

• Example Problem of Multiples
• negotiating artistic values in context of new
  technologies
• new ways of thinking about connections between
  the artwork and the aura of the artist
• Walter Benjamin-- work of art in the age of
  mechanical reproduction

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Changing views about values of art can lead to
changes in the status of the artist, artwork
the social institutions publics that support
them

• Beaune Altarpiece
• PBS jazz series by Ken Burns
• Examples of establishing cannons through
  testimony of experts (ex. critics, stars,
  fans) and changing shape of artforms

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Recall Ways of Studying Artists Arts
professionals

• Are Artists Born or made?
• Theories about artists motives for career choice
• 1.labor of love (art for arts sake) argument
  (Elliot Freidson)
• de-emphasizes income
• Arendts notions of labour (alienating but
  necessary) vs. work (creative vocation)
• 2.artists arts professionals as risk-lovers,
  gamblers
• satisfaction proportionate to degree of
  uncertainty of success
• 3. Dual reward system
• monetary non-monetary (psychic) gratification
• 4. Othercouldnt do anything else

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Review Different types of artists (Becker)

• Types
• Integrated professionals (ex. concert violinist)
• Mavericks
• Folk artists
• Naïve artists
• Classification according to how they fit in art
  worlds (degree of integration, consensus about
  the rules of the game, degree of
  standardization)

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Van Laar and Diepeveen on The function of
Artists in Society

• Another typology
• Five roles
• Skilled worker
• Intellectual
• Entrepreneur
• Social critic
• Social healer
• Other dimensions
• Ex. Wittkower Under the Sign of Saturn
• Transformation from craftsperson to brooding
  geniuss
• Later to status of intellectual in humanistic
  profession

F. De Goya. Saturn devouring his son, c. 1821
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Formal training Issues

• qualificationsnon-routine activities depend on
  skills not easily transmitted or certified by a
  training system
• impact of schooling on earnings smaller than
  other professional groups
• mentoring/apprenticeships
• job matching (leaning-by-doing process)
• occupational risk diversification

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Problems using income as a way of identifying
for artists arts professionals

• Irregular incomes, seasonal variations,
  self-emploment
• public sources (subsidies, commissions,
  sponsorship)
• privatization (sales of services or works)
• transfer income from other employment (multiple
  job holding)
• personal (family, friends)

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Recall Multiple roles--paintmakers who were
collectors and painters
c.

• Life Drawing Class, Bocour Paintmaking Studio
  NYC, c. 1942

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Careers in the arts and rationality of risk
management (Menger)

• rational behaviour model
• but artistic careers are risky
• high level of income inequality
• high chance of failure
• impermanence of artistic work, self-employment
• amibiguity of transition from training to work
  (skills)
• careers advance through recurrent nonrecurrent
  work (non-routine work)

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Criteria used in classifying art artists

• aura of the artist
• Characteristics of
• the art form and genre
• audience/public (notion of consecration)
• Publics or audiences highbrow/lowbrow tastes
• arts organizations, networks associated with
  different art worlds

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Mediation Support Structures Publics as
factors in recognition art-making

• Recall Howard Beckers Art Worlds
• Arts worlds include all the people involved in
  art-making
• Cooperative links through shared conventions
• Study how participants draw lines and what art
  worlds do
• Mobilize resources (material resources, training
  personnel, networks, organizations)
• Develop Distribution Systems

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Production of Culture Perspective (Peterson,
Anand)

• How culture shaped by systems in which it is
  created, distributed, evaluated, taught,
  preserved
• Culture not a mirror of society
• Focus on
• Expressive aspects of culture
• Processes of symbol production
• Analysis of organizations, occupations, networks,
  communities
• Comparisons
• In situated studies of specific cultural forms
  and changes in them

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Six Facet Model of Production

• Technology
• Law and regulation
• Industry structure or field
• Organizational structure of dominating
  organizatins
• Occupational careers
• Markets

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Uses of the Production Perspective

• Organizational Research
• theories of management
• institutional decision-making processes/logics
• Networks of production
• Resource partitioning patterns
• Studies of Informal Relations
• Links between Class and Culture (ex.
  univore/omnivore)
• Resistance appropriation
• Fabricating authenticity

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Critiques of Petersons Production of Culture
Perspective

• Ignores or de-emphasizes
• uniqueness of art to research constructed
  nature of collective representations, values
• roles of fans and consumers in shaping cultural
  products
• meanings of cultural production
• power relations

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Participants in Mediation Processes

• Gatekeepers vs. facilitators types vary with
  art form and genres
• Ex. Diana Crane on proponents of Avant-Garde Art
• Examples of types of mediators (between
  creators and publics) book publishers, record
  companies, film distribution networks, art
  gallery owners, booking agents, critics,
  reviewers for media, museum curators, sometimes
  even fans or fan clubs, etc

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Characteristics of the Mediators Artistic Values

• Mediation as a way of conferring status
• The role of critics and other gatekeepers in
  recognition processes, examples
• Shrum emergence of Fringe Festivals as a
  performing arts genre when critics begin to
  review it
• Change in status of Graffiti and recognition by
  artists
• Institutional forms legitimation practices
• Status of Venues, status of artists
• Not-for-profit and for-profit models
  differences in socio-cultural status (DiMaggio)

Super Bowl XXXVIII, Halftime show, 2004
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L. Levine The emergence of Cultural Hierarchy
in America

• Starting question why cant you compare high
  culture popular culture?
• Why do people distinguish between highbrow and
  lowbrow audiences their understanding of the
  arts?
• Art forms not cosmic truths but result from
  peculiarities in the way culture operates

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Levines Case study of the reception of
Shakespeare

• To study problem of equating notion of culture to
  idea of hierarchy
• Believes primary categories of culture are
  determined by IDEOLOGIES not grounded in actual
  observation of cultural practices tastes
• Believes there was less hierarchical divisions in
  the past
• But set in mid 20th c.
• Do same hierarchical distinctions apply today?
  Or have we again entered an era in which
  high-brow low-brow distinctions are less
  meaningful?

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Mediators Cultural Hierarchy

• social meaning(s) of performance art
• control and social reproduction
• Social origins and established formulas or genres
• Hegemony cultural industries
• Cultural things as mirrors of underlying
  structures (functionalism, Marxism)
• New theories more dynamic
• Symbolic exchange, interaction
• -production of culture approach (Peterson,
  DiMaggio)

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Peterson on Country Music

• How do mediators (record producers) choose
  artists to promote?
• Authenticity, originality, distinctiveness
• Transformation of field of country music from
  1923-1953
• Process of institutionalization
• Identified audience

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Authenticity

• Paradox of creating authenticity artificially?
• Socially-agreed upon idea (social construction of
  reality through shared values practices)
• History of country music (a revolt that became a
  style)
• Artificial notion of the unchanged past
  hillbilly music (poor rural white Southerners)
• Early distain of this type of music because of
  its association with hillbilly culture
• Evolution of terminology (to country and western)

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Mediation in the Production of Culture Perspective

• How law, technology, careers, markets,
  organizational structure shape culture (in this
  case a form of cultural expression called
  country music)
• notion of social production of culture (shared
  values, practices etc.)
• Emergence of differentiated roles in the field of
  cultural production (manager, talent agent etc.)

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Next Day Publics as Participants in Artmaking
Theories of Reception
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Required Readings (Weeks 3-4)

• Zolberg, Vera. The Art Object as Social
  Process. Constructing a Sociology of the Arts.
  Cambridge University Press, 1990, pp. 79-102.
• Becker, H. "Integrated Professionals, Mavericks,
  Folk Artists and Naive Artists" Art Worlds.
  Berkley U. Calif. Press. 1992, pp. 226-272.
• Peterson, R. and A. Anand. The Production of
  Culture Perspective Annual Review of Sociology
  2004. 3031134 (especially pp. 311-318).

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Recommended (Weeks 3-4)

• Van Laar, T. and L. Diepeveen, "The Function of
  Artists in Society Starving Celebrities and
  Other Myths", Active Sights. Art as social
  interaction., London, Mayfield, 1997, pp.51-69.
• Menger, Pierre-Michel, Artists as Workers
  Theoretical and Methodological Challenges
  Poetics, Vol. 28 (4) pp. 241-254.
• Kasfir, Sidney. African Art and Authenticity,
  in Oguibe, Olu and Okwui Enwezor (editors),
  Reading the Contemporary. African Art from
  Theory to the Marketplace. Cambridge M.I.T.
  Press, 1999, pp. 88-113
• Levine, Judith. "Art as social service Theatre
  for the Forgotten", in Zolberg and Cherbo,
  Outsider Art, Cambridge U. Press 1997,
  pp.131-145.

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Required Readings (Week 5)

• Crane, Diana. Epilogue and Unobtrusive
  Methods for Researching and Art Form in The
  Transformation of the Avant-Garde, U. Chicago
  Press1987, pp. 137-148.
• Shrum, W. "Cultural Mediation and the Status
  Bargain" and "Note on the Study of Mediation and
  Reception" in Fringe and Fortune. The Role of
  Critics in High and Popular Art. Princeton
  Princeton U. Press, 1998, pp.221-222 and
  pp.25-41.
• Marontate, J. Museums and the constitution of
  collective memory, book chapter in The Blackwell
  Companion to the Sociology of Culture (ed. Mark
  Jacobs and Nancy Hanrahan), 2005, pp 286-302.

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Recommended (Week 5)

• Bennett, Andy. "Music, Media and Urban
  Mythscapes A Study of the 'Canterbury Sound',.
  Media, Culture Society, vol. 24(1) pp. 87-100,
  2002
• Lena, Jennifer.Meaning and membership samples
  in rap music, 19791995, Poetics. Journal of
  Empirical Research on Culture, the Media and the
  Arts. V. 32 (304), 2004. pp. 297-310.
• Alexander, Victoria. A Mediated View The
  Cultural Diamond, Sociology of the Arts.
  Exploring Fine and Popular Forms. Blackwell,
  2003, pp. 60-63.
• Ostrower, Francie. Trustees of Culture. Power,
  Wealth and Status on Elite Arts Boards. U.
  Chicago Press. 2002.
• Peterson, Richard A. Creating Country Music.
  Fabricating Authenticity. U. Chicago Press 1997.
• Zolberg, Vera and Joni Maya Cherbo (ed.) Outsider
  Art. Cambridge U. 1999.

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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.