Sociology of Art

Sociology of art is an area of sociological analysis which includes within its compass a concern with exploring the visual arts and sometimes also music, theatre, cinema, and literature. From a symbolic interactionist perspective, sociology of art can be defined as examining the socio-cultural context in which collective practices pertinent to the production, distribution, and consumption of the art take place and interact. For several decades after the founding of sociology as a discipline, sociology of art was not really identified as a distinct field in the vast domain that emerged as sociology of culture, probably the widest subfield of sociology. Today both artists, entrepreneurs, critics and audiences seem to be engaged in highly reflexive games as to what counts as 'art’ and what does not. A key part of those games is felt by the players themselves to involve acknowledging the power of the artist to label anything he or she happens to present as intrinsically 'artistic'. Given this, we may say that we are today living in a cultural epoch where many of the concerns of the sociologist of art have themselves become stakes, the nature of which is self-consciously under-stood by the various types of players, in the games of the art world itself.

Another trend in the development of the sociology of art in the late 19th and early 20th centuries broke down the area of study into a number of disciplines that specifically analyzed the link between various types of art and social life. The sociology of literature has developed, which investigates the relationship between the writer and his work and public. It also studies changes of interpretation as a result of the changing taste of writers and critics, as well as the reflection in literature of the values, stereotypes, and prejudices of the readers.

This book offers an in-depth analysis of the complex and changing relationship between the arts and their markets. The book examines how artistic processes are shaped by their social settings and the impact that social and cultural contexts have on the way in which artistic products are greeted by audiences. The sociology of art takes as its starting point the effect of art on society and regards its basic sphere of interest to be the perception and use of art, through which the attitude of various social groups and classes toward art is expressed. Hence, the sociology of art deliberately deviates from the multifunctional nature of art (its aesthetic, cognitive, creative, and other functions). It is precisely here that the line is drawn between the sociology of art and aesthetics, art studies, and the psychology of creativity. This book provides students with an overall understanding of the current issues, theoretical approaches, and substantive contributions in the sociology of the arts.