Sociology of art

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Art sociology , also: sociology of the arts , is a special sociology that theoretically and empirically researches art and its social interrelationships. It deals first with the social content of works of art (according to form and content), the social function of the arts (e.g. painting , literature , music , theater , film ) and the social position of artists , then with the reception by the public and the socio-economic conditions of the production and distribution (through galleries , publishers , cinemas , etc.) of art . The sociology of art overlaps with other special sociologies such as the sociology of knowledge and cultural sociology and various cultural sciences such as art history , philosophical aesthetics and literary history .

The German Society for Sociology first included art in its program in 1930 on its 7th German Sociological Conference.

Historical sociology of art

In retrospect, art is what z. B. was involved in the hunter-gatherer societies in magical rites for the purpose of evoking hunting success ( cave painting towards the end of the most recent Ice Age: Lascaux , Altamira ) or in the Middle Ages it was understood as a religious service ( altarpiece and icon painting ). With the blossoming of aristocratic rule in the early modern period, kings and princes had a need for representation, which was created by court artists - poets (e.g. Torquato Tasso , Goethe ), musicians (e.g. Georg Friedrich Handel , Joseph Haydn ) and visual artists ( e.g. Diego Velasquez , Cranach) - was satisfied. For all their genius, these artists were commissioned artists and largely shared their canons of taste with their rulers. Analogous to the royal courts, wealthy cities, especially in northern Italy, also ordered urban artists ( Titian in Venice, Michelangelo in Florence, Johann Sebastian Bach in Leipzig). It depended on the "enlightenment" of his master and his own reputation to what extent the court artist was able to enforce his own way of life (e.g. outside the court) and his personal artistic ideas.

The long process of replacing courtly-aristocratic culture with bourgeois culture culminated politically in the French Revolution . "The references of artistic work shifted from the courts, the nobility and the old patriciate to the new classes of the property and educated bourgeoisie." The (visual) artists first succeeded in stepping out of feudal and patrician dependencies in the Netherlands in the 17th century , the "Golden Age" (Michael North). Because he was denied an adequate job as a court musician, Mozart was the first important composer to try to establish himself as a “free artist” at the end of the 18th century “by selling his skills as a musician and his works on the open market”. At the latest in the Romantic era, the modern artist came on the scene, who made autonomy and subjectivity the basis of his creative work (Wolfgang Ruppert) and was now connected to his audience through the anonymous art and literature market that emerged in the bourgeois era.

Since then, artists have had to defend their autonomy against the increasing commercialization of art (see cultural industry ) and against their use for the image cultivation of commercial enterprises (sponsoring). The " l'art pour l'art " movement that began in France at the end of the 19th century ( Charles Baudelaire , Stéphane Mallarmé , Paul Verlaine , Paul Valéry ) and the principle of an "art for art" celebrated in the circle of the poet Stefan Georges form the extreme pole of art's claim to autonomy. Pop Art can be seen as its opposite pole, the representatives of which deliberately dedicated themselves to the phenomena of everyday culture and became popular through the mass media. Quite a few artists (above all: Andy Warhol and Jeff Koons ) adapted their production to the needs of the market, which in turn is interpreted by some art critics as a kind of subversive affirmation of the capitalist consumer society.

Artist groups

The formation of groups by artists (e.g. Nazarenes , School of Barbizon , Worpswede , Die Brücke , George-Kreis , Group 47 ) is a modern phenomenon, an accompaniment and consequence of the extreme subject-centeredness of the modern artist. Only after the "professional release (...) from the technical fulfillment of norms to artistic self-determination" does the artist become a solitaire. Niklas Luhmann sees the (exclusive) group formation of like-minded people as a compensation for the lost outside support through tradition, patronage, market and even art academies.

Art system organizations

In the differentiated art system, a variety of organizations take on the functions necessary for the socialization of artists and the production, distribution and reception of works of art. Art academies, literary institutes, theater seminars, music and film schools qualify and professionalize the budding artists (socialization). Painting workshops (Middle Ages and early modern times), theaters , operas , orchestras and film studios serve the production of art. Galleries and publishers, libraries and bookstores are organizations of distribution. The reception of works of art, if it is not done individually, is dedicated to literary salons , art associations , cultural societies and literary houses .

Important representatives of the sociology of art

Among the sociologists who dealt with art, Georg Simmel , Georg Lukács , Arnold Hauser , Max Weber , Theodor W. Adorno , Arnold Gehlen , Alphons Silbermann , Niklas Luhmann and Pierre Bourdieu made innovative contributions. The art historians Michael Baxandall and Martin Warnke provided sociologically informative analyzes.

See also

literature

  • Theodor W. Adorno : Theses on the sociology of art. In: Ders .: Collected Writings , Volume 10.1, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp 1977, pp. 367–374
  • Victoria D. Alexander: Sociology of the Arts: Exploring Fine and Popular Forms . Blackwell, Oxford 2003, ISBN 0-631-23039-4
  • Barbara Aulinger: Art History and Sociology. An introduction. Reimer Verlag, Berlin 1992, ISBN 3-496-01094-0
  • Howard S. Becker : Art Worlds , Berkeley: University of California Press 2008 (25th Anniversary Edition)
  • Pierre Bourdieu : The rules of art , Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, ​​1999
  • Horst Bredekamp : Art as a Medium of Social Conflict: Image Fights from Late Antiquity to the Hussite Revolution , Frankfurt am Main 1975
  • Peter Bürger (Ed.): Seminar: Literary and Art Sociology , Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, ​​1978, ISBN 3-518-07845-3
  • Dagmar Danko: Art Sociology . transcript Verlag, Bielefeld 2012, ISBN 978-3-8376-1487-9
  • Jürgen Gerhards (Ed.): Sociology of Art. Producers, intermediaries and recipients , Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag 1997
  • Arnold Hauser : Social history of art and literature , CH Beck 1953
  • Arnold Hauser: Sociology of Art , Munich: CH Beck 1974
  • Niklas Luhmann : The art of society , Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp 1995
  • Walther Müller-Jentsch : Art in Society . Wiesbaden: VS Verlag 2011
  • Michael North: The Golden Age. Art and Commerce in Dutch Painting of the 17th Century , 2nd Edition, Cologne: Böhlau 2001
  • Konrad Pfaff : Art for the Future. A sociological investigation of the productive and emancipatory power of art , Cologne: DuMont Schauberg 1972, ISBN 3-7701-0638-5
  • Wolfgang Ruppert: The modern artist. On the social and cultural history of creative individuality in cultural modernity in the 19th and early 20th centuries , Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp 1998
  • Alphons Silbermann (ed.): Theoretical approaches in the sociology of art . Enke, Stuttgart 1976
  • Alphons Silbermann (Ed.): Classics of Art Sociology , Munich: CH Beck 1984
  • Sociologia Internationalis. European Journal for Cultural Research Volume 50, 2012 (Issue 1/2), Special Issue: Art Sociology , Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2012, ISSN  0038-0164
  • Christian Steuerwald (Hrsg.): Classics of the sociology of the arts. Prominent and significant approaches. Springer VS, Wiesbaden 2017, ISBN 978-3-658-01454-4
  • Hans Peter Thurn : Sociology of Art , Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1973
  • Martin Warnke : The court artist. On the prehistory of the modern artist , 2nd edition, Cologne: DuMont 1996
  • Rainer Wick / Astrid Wick-Kmoch (ed.): Art sociology. Fine arts and society . DuMont, Cologne 1979
  • Hans Zitko (Ed.): Art and Society, Contributions to a Complex Relationship . Kehrer, Heidelberg 2000

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Barbara Aulinger: Art history and sociology. An introduction. Reimer Verlag, Berlin 1992, p. 38.
  2. ^ Walther Müller-Jentsch: Artists and groups of artists. Sociological views of a precarious profession. In: Berliner Journal für Soziologie , vol. 15/2005, no. 2, p. 168
  3. ↑ Norbert Elias: Mozart on the sociology of a genius. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp 1991, p. 40.
  4. ↑ Hans Peter Thurn: Image power and social claim. Studies in the sociology of art. Opladen 1997, p. 83.
  5. ^ Niklas Luhmann: The art of society. Frankfurt am Main 1995, p. 270 f.
  6. ↑ See the chapter on the art system and its organizations. In: Walther Müller-Jentsch: Art in society . 2nd Edition. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag 2012, pp. 29-83.