In "The
Historical Genesis of the Pure Aesthetic" Pierre Bourdieu offers to
examine the ontogenesis and phylogenies of the art world with its various
components such as aesthetic perceptions, main characters, taste, discourse,
institutions and consumers. According to Bourdieu the questions we should be
asking about art are no ontological (like "what makes something a work of
art?") but rather sociological and historical ("which social
conditions and historic processes cause an object to be regarded as a work of
art?").
Bourdieu
pays special attention to the modern perception of the artist as the autonomous
creator of separate worlds and the fetishistic relation developed towards him
as his products (exemplifies by the subject of the artist's signature).
According
to Bourdieu, the more evolved the art field is the more it is constituted by
power struggles around the ability to assign value to artists and works of art.
The artistic discourse is characterized by Bourdieu by the proliferation of
flexible and ambiguous terms which maintain control over the field for those
with the adequate Habitus that control the artist and the art work's ability to
enter and be accepted into the field of production and consumption. It is a
struggle over the "truth" of art that denies the historicity and
constitutive nature of this truth.
The
art world, according to Bourdieu, also struggles over what he calls "pure
reading" of artistic production. He argues that historical processes
construct the subject which "correctly" reads the work of art. This "pure
reading" is produced and reproduced through the workings of the art field.
In the
last two parts of "The Historical Genesis of the Pure Aesthetic"
Bourdieu discusses the role of history in the art world, a history that he
claims is denied by the field itself as part of its claim for the
"truth" of art. Art and philosophy of art have attempted to
"purify" art from its social and historical context, suggesting that
there is, always have been and always will be a "correct" way to understand
a work of art. Bourdieu hold that we should reexamine the artistic
"doxa" and see it for its constructed and historical nature. Bourdieu
suggests a "double historicization" of both the artistic tradition
and its implementation in order to examine and reveal the process through which
cultural schemes assign value to art.
see also: Bourdieu and the Art World
Suggested reading on Bourdiue:
