Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 What is art? What is the sociology of art?
- 2 Why sociologists have neglected the arts and why this is changing
- 3 Studying the art object sociologically
- 4 The art object as social process
- 5 Are artists born or made?
- 6 Structural support, audiences, and social uses of art
- 7 How the arts change and why
- 8 Where does the sociology of art stand, and where is it going?
- References
- Index
5 - Are artists born or made?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 January 2011
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 What is art? What is the sociology of art?
- 2 Why sociologists have neglected the arts and why this is changing
- 3 Studying the art object sociologically
- 4 The art object as social process
- 5 Are artists born or made?
- 6 Structural support, audiences, and social uses of art
- 7 How the arts change and why
- 8 Where does the sociology of art stand, and where is it going?
- References
- Index
Summary
Before the problem of the creative artist analysis must, alas, lay down its arms.
Sigmund Freud, “Dostoevsky and Parricide,” [1928] Vol. V Collected Papers (1950):222I'm not a believer in rules … I'm a believer in artists. I believe if Michelangelo worked in matchsticks, we'd all think matchsticks were wonderful.
Kirk VamedoeAll artistic work, like all human activity, involves the joint activity of a number, often a large number of people. Through their cooperation, the art work we eventually see or hear comes to be and continues to be.
Howard S. Becker, Art Worlds (1982):1Inherent in the controversies concerning the nature of art, whether in the art world per se or in the generally problematic cohabitation of sociology and art, is the agency by which it is created, centering on the person – or personnage – of the artist. Does it matter who creates the work? How the creator comes to be an artist? Whether the artist works alone or as part of a group? The answer to these questions may seem clearly positive, but as I have shown in Chapter 1, corresponding to the ambiguity surrounding discourses about art – whether it pertains to the realm of the sacred or the profane – a related ambiguity inheres in the artist.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Constructing a Sociology of the Arts , pp. 107 - 135Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1990