The Social History of Art

Passages and content are drawn from Arnold Hauser (1968), The Social History of Art, with additional annotations by Dirks.

Art as a function of history

It is rooted in the moment of its creation.

Artistic values are time bound and historical.

"One thing is certain: every work of art shows clear traces of its own time, and contains the unique, unrepeatable, and unmistakable character of a historical constellation. It represents a stage in the development of style which is precisely definable, in technical accomplishments and in sensual-intellectual sensibility. It depicts people and relationships in situations which arise once and only once and addresses itself to individuals who judge the depictions from a specific historical standpoint and a particular social position." (p. 77)

Art has authorship.

Every work and every reinterpretation has its author. That author responds to cultural influences at his historical moment in creating an art work.

Works of art express ideology.

Ideology is the complex interwoven fabric of assumptions about the world shared among members of a social station or class situation.

• All thought is ideological.

  "The bias of art comes from its completely social nature. It is always talking for someone to someone, and reflects reality seen from a social station and in order that it can be seen from such a station." (p. 219)

• The ideology expressed in a statement has nothing to do with its truth value.
• A work of art expresses the ideology of its patron. The ideology of the artist is concealed or sublimated below the dominating ideology of the patron. The strident expression of ideology, typically for hire, is propaganda.

  "Art furthers the interests of the stratum which, so to speak, enjoys a monopoly on it, simply by the reflection of its ideology and the tacit recognition of its social standards of value and criteria of taste. The artist whose existence and progress depends upon the charity and benevolence of this stratum and is delivered up to it with all his hopes and prospects becomes unwillingly and unwittingly its mouthpiece in the pursuit of its goals and the support of the system which ensures its dominance." (p. 221)

Art requires participation.

The work remains incomplete until it is engaged by the recipient. Art is intended to provoke associations and connections to prior experiences of the recipient, so the actual work finally exists only as completed by the recipient.

"However insignificant the contribution may be which the reader, listener, or spectator makes objectively to the received work, the artist's creation is shifted into another sphere or onto another level when it is simultaneously or subsequently supplemented by the recipient." (p. 429)

• This action filters and interprets the ideology of the artwork through the ideology of the recipient.
• The added ingredient of time is also complex.

  "Although works of art do not by any means always improve in the course of history, their effect does become more complicated and they can achieve a depth, a profundity, and a richness of correlations which they did not possess from the beginning." (p. 443)

Historical Development

7th Century BC (600s BC)

First indication of intellectual property: first signed works of art, and first recognition of a lyric poet as creator of his own work.

4th Century BC (300s BC)

• Alexander actively began using artists for propaganda. Works were supported for the purpose of advancing the interests of his rule.
• Throughout classical and medieval periods the artist was not truly independent.

  "While the poet, even in times of his complete dependence and servility, still counted as the guest of his patron, there was no attempt to conceal the fact that the artist in the narrower sense works for pay." (p. 266)

Renaissance (1400s-1600s)

• Artist becomes aware of self and his subjectivity. Begins pursuing and intensifying subjectivity in his works. Originality becomes a significant value.
• Michelangelo (1400s) established the identity of artistic genius. The creative personality is raised above the value of the work itself.

  "Michelangelo was the first to express the decisive wish to carry out a work single-handedly, from beginning to end, and he was reluctant to work with students or helpers. He is thus in this sense the first modern artist whose social peculiarity contains nonconformism and alienation as constant determinants." (p. 158)

• Art develops associations with the Humanist movement, its developing individualism, and its raising of human values above religious or transcendental values.
• Art becomes directed mainly toward the cultured.

Enlightenment (1700s)

• The emphasis on the individual artist reduces the commitment to style as a commonly held perspective.
• Sentiment becomes an important medium for communication, and a prelude to Romanticism.

  "At first people were sentimental and exuberant, because the aristocracy was reserved and self-controlled, but soon inwardness and expressiveness become artistic criteria, the validity of which is recognized even by the aristocracy. There is a deliberate hunt for spiritual shocks and gradually a real emotional virtuosity is achieved, the whole soul is dissolved in pity and, in the end, the only aim pursued in art is the excitement of the passions and the rousing of the sympathies. Sentiment becomes the most reliable medium between artist and public and the most expressive means of interpreting reality; to hold back from the expression of feeling now means to forgo artistic influence altogether, and to be without feeling means to be dull." (p. 558)

• Art must find its audience. As the ideological distance increases between some artists and the recipients of the works, the difficulty in establishing agreement between artist and audience increases. Artists begin producing works for exclusive reception by other artists, for the first time.
• With Rousseau and Voltaire, the artist begins openly expressing independent thought.

  "For the very first time the creators of artistic or literary works expressed openly and without further ado, the ideology of the social group they belonged to, by outlook or birth, against the interests of the rulers, the class, or the circle who fed them." (p. 294)

• The middle class and bourgeoisie become important consumers of artistic works. An art market is created. The art trade changes the significance of a work from form, content, and history to its exchange value. Artists begin living on the direct profit from their works, rather than on forms of dole.
• The earliest effective copyright laws are created, providing protection for ownership of intellectual property.

Romantic (1790-1860)

• The product of the artist is considered to be a unique personal statement, and therefore not bound by universally valid authorities, conventions and traditions.
• The artist increasingly separates himself from much of the world, from which he is alienated.
• After 1848, a large population of Bohéme (fiercely independent artists living in poverty) develops. They find a community of fate with the proletariat and attempt to make a social struggle into a cultural struggle.
• Challenging and activist works give way to bourgeois taste.

  "The saturated, half-educated bourgeois wants no shocks or enlightenment from art, merely entertainment and a way of passing the time. . . . People who up to this time had hardly counted as consumers of art now form a considerable part of the reading public, playgoers, and people interested in painting; but they want nothing but their unassuming diversion and their undisturbed recreation. Inasmuch as they set the standards of the demand for art, they represent one of the deepest rifts in artistic taste." (p. 303)

• The beginnings of popular art as the means of reproduction and transportation improved. Overwhelms elite art and folk art. It belongs ideologically to the middle class, the petit and middle bourgeois, a class consciousness toward which the less advantaged classes aspire.
• Some aristocratic artists developed art for art's sake (l'art pour l'art) to counter dominance of the middle class. It emphasized technical perfection and formal exquisiteness. The movement denied the utility value of art, as the middle class demanded of it.

Modern era (1860 forward)

• See 20th century thought and artistic movements.
• 20th century movements in elite art have tended to increase the separation of the artists from society, with works taking on more strident social criticism at some moments, and retreating into academic formalism at others. Originality is valued practically above all other qualities.
• The art market creates a voracious appetite for art works, and its values tend to drive the primary production. The values of the bourgeoisie outlined above continue to prevail in most art forms, and in many cases the critical distinctions between elite and popular art become blurred.
• The development of high quality reproduction and mass distribution (film, publishing, recording, broadcasting) affirms a burgeoning popular art production while complicating it with broader distribution of elite works, especially of the past. Elite artists find a dilemma in attempts to separate from popular art by creating works that are less accessible.