Michael Baxandall and the Sociological Interpretation of Art

Abstract

Art historian Michael Baxandall’s writings have played a key role in defining the major paradigms in the sociology of art: the production of culture perspective, Bourdieu’s critical sociology of art, Hennion and DeNora’s ‘new sociology of art’. Although making fruitful use of Baxandall’s focus on markets, material visual practices and the concept of the period eye, these appropriations have overlooked the centrality to Baxandall’s work of the concept of art as an institution. This institutional focus permits Baxandall to integrate social, cultural and visual analysis in a way which shows not only how visual art is socially constructed, but also how it plays an active role in the construction of social orders on a variety of levels of emergence, from the interaction order to larger social structures.

Scandal and the Work of Art: The Nude in an Aesthetically Inflected Sociology of the Arts

“…Whereas traditional art-historical accounts ignored socio-historical context, or considered it only as a "colorful backdrop" to formalist analysis of works, the new social history of art features artists' engagement with the social, political, and economic conditions of their time (see Clark, 1973). Of the art historians drawing on this approach, the work of Baxandall (1972) is perhaps the best known and most frequently cited among sociologists (Tanner 2010). …”

Välittäjät nykytaidemaailmassa: tuotantoputkesta toimijaverkkoon

“…Beckerin esimerkkiä noudattavaa taiteensosiologista tutkimusta on myöhemmin alettu kutsua 'production of culture' tai 'social production of art' -traditioksi (Tanner 2010, esimerkkinä Wolff 1981. Nämä taiteen tuotantorakenteen kuvaukset näyttävät, että taideteos syntyy jo valmiiseen, sitä edeltävään toimintakenttään ja syntyy pitkälti sen kentän vaikutuksesta.…”

Talking about Beauty: A Study of Everyday Aesthetics among Low‐Income Citizens of Milan

“…Several authors (Acord ; Born ; De la Fuente , ; DeNora , ; Mangione ; Tanner ), have noted that there has been a move in sociology from the study of art worlds to an interest for microsociological investigations of people's encounters with art objects, where the goal is “to identify the mechanism and range of social meanings through which people make sense of it (art)” (Mangione :30). Encouragement for this extension of the sociological scope came especially from scholars interested in exploring how aesthetic objects “play an important role as arbiters of social relations, meaning and action through how they are used by individuals and groups to order daily existence” (Acord and DeNora :235).…”

“…In describing some aspects of Baxandall's work, Tanner (:236) underlines that Baxandall () was interested in the type of interaction between paintings and viewers in Renaissance Italy and he remarked how religious art in particular penetrated areas of the believers' social life by generating and reinforcing their attachments. It can be argued that Maria's case is an example of this kind of “affordance” (Acord and DeNora ).…”