Mariya Izzy
1024107
CIA 2
MEL 132
Western Aesthetics
July 15, 2010
Map of the Essay “The Love of Art” by Pierre Bourdieu and Alain Darbel.
Paragraph 1:
In the language of religion, the question of cultural salvation is raised.
Religion of art – fundamentalists – modernists – question – cultural salvation –
language of grace. Pierre Francastel – tone-deaf people – see shapes, – intelligent
people – not seeing – disconcerting, – less cultivated – true vision. Sound –
mysticism of salvation? Heart – own order; – intellect – principle –
demonstration. Resources of salvation – few, – praise – simplicity – children –
ignorant: – wisdom – childhood. Simple people – no argument. Mystical
representation – aesthetic experience – gift – artistic vision, – ‘the eye’ – selected
few, – others – ‘poor in spirit’.
Paragraph 2:
Asceticism directs towards the beatific vision.
Contrast – fundamentalists – modernists – real. Fundamentalists – place,
instrument of worship – faithful – rendered – state – receive grace. Bareness –
lack of ornamentation – encourages asceticism – leads to beatific vision. Visitor
– welcomed – museum, – full of excitement – cross – threshold – silence.
Disposition – predispositions, – no rational teaching, – how – conditions – created
– to awaken – potentialities – dormant in people? Visitors – not separated –
differences – arbitrary distribution of gifts.
Paragraph 3:
It is not possible to divide a line between visitors of different class and origin.
Discriminating – complicated, – disinteresting. Certain museums – consider –
outmoded – inconvenient, – no efforts made – no experiments – impossible.
Paragraph 4:
The already enlightened must give way to the curious.
Erwin Panofsky: – Saint Bernard – what – gold – sanctuary – Suger – gorgeous
vestments – altar vessels – laid out – church – secular persons – out –
accommodate – great crowd – no disturbances – larger church – admit – curious –
display – relics – avoid – rioting.
Paragraph 5:
Art is blissful.
Some think – ritual asceticism – Cistercian starkness – not – only – to attain communion, – offer – easy paths – invoke patronage – one who purchases precious stones – rare vases – stained glass windows – enamels – fabrics, – anticipated – unselfish rapacity – modern museum director. Power of work of art – miraculous persuasion – convert/retain – souls of noble birth. Adherents – method of elevation – material works of art – enlightenment.
Paragraph 6:
Museums must exhibit powerful art leaving behind a strong impact on the observer.
Objects – plastic value – perceptible. Museum – drowsy visitor – thrilled. Tourism – historical and artistic curiosity. Instead – advantages – one loses way – educational processes – superficial knowledge transmitted – intellectual concepts. Lower classes – not reachable. Pictorial art – attraction – increased. Rene Huyghe – art – never before – greatly appreciated, – intensively analysed and explained. Museum – speaks – language of the times – known to all. Museum – way of life. Intelligently organized publicity – new following.
Paragraph 7:
Authorities must fulfil the demands of modern day people.
Authorities – respond – needs – demands – modern population – gripped – new spiritual hunger – new terrestrial nourishnment.
Paragraph 8:
Not only cultivated people, but every person has a sense of the taste of art.
Ancients – moderns – abandon – fortunes of cultural salvation – inexplicable vagaries of grace – arbitrary distribution of ‘gifts’. Cultivated people – logic of predestination – virtues devalued if acquired, – convince themselves – ‘education is innate’.
Paragraph 9: (Conclusion)
A work of art is to be felt and not learnt.
Trouble taken – express – few obvious truths. People will say – what point – where and when Van Gogh was born – ups and downs of his life? True art lovers – pleasure counts. Sociology – ignore – through reductive and disillusioning agnosticism. Sociologist –suspected – disputing – sincerity of aesthetic pleasure, – always describes – conditions of existence. Love of art – acknowledge its origins – prefers strange coincidences – predestined – collective conditions and conditionings.
Paragraph 10:
Objects as complicated as works of learned culture cannot create natural preferences by their own power.
Awareness – admiration of works of art – haunts – aesthetic pleasure. History of individual or collective taste – refute – objects as works of learned culture, – capable – create natural preferences – own power. Pedagogic authority – break – cultural needs’ circle – cultural practice – formed – regular and prolonged practice: – Children – borrow – family disposition to cultural practice – till they acquire their own – giving rise – arbitrary and initially arbitrarily imposed practice. Designating certain works of art or places – worthy to be visited – authorities – determine – works worthy of admiration and enjoyment. Produces culture – through inculcation – results – complete masking – arbitrary nature of the inculcation. Myth of innate taste – recurrent illusion of cultivated nature – part of education – imposition of an arbitrary – imposing a disregard of arbitrary nature of imposed meanings – their manner.
Paragraph 11:
Art or anything cannot derive pleasure in a person without the person having foreknowledge about it.
Sociologist – not refute Kant’s phrase: – ‘the beautiful is that which pleases without concept’, – but defines – social conditions – making this experience possible – determine its limit.
Sociologist establishes – things which please – their concept is understood. Aesthetic pleasure in its learned form – presupposes learning by habit and exercise – in reality is a cultivated pleasure.
Paragraph 12:
Realization of culture is paradoxically defined as naturalization.
Kant called ‘barbarous taste’ – at variance – Kantian description of cultivates taste – in reality – demonstrates – hidden truth of cultivated taste. Hegel set against – ‘realized ethics’, – pure aesthetic – opposed – aesthetic – in cultivated taste – no less than a ‘second nature’, – sublimates primary nature. Judgement of taste – subjective experience – free – won over common culture. Paradox – realization of culture – naturalization. Masters of judgement of taste – experience – aesthetic grace – free from constraints of culture, – little sign of apprenticeship, – social conditions and conditionings – making it possible – seems as an obvious fact, – also an outrage.
Paragraph 13:
To raise a culture, its socio-historical conditions, good or bad, must not be realized.
Culture – to be enhanced – social and historical conditions – making possible complete possession and dispossession of culture – remain unnoticed.
Paragraph 14:
A cultivated nature, which is graceful and talented, acquires a central place in bourgeois society.
Cultivated nature – learned – deserved – condition for existence of charismatic ideology – allows – top place – bourgeois society. Heir of bourgeois – unable to invoke rights of birth and nature – or aesthetic virtues allowing first generation – justify their merit, – call cultivated nature ‘class’, – Freudian slip – not on education or distinction – but namely heritage. Link between culture and education – forgotten or denied. Cultural gift – produces blindness – functions of the institution – ensuring profitability of cultural inheritance. School – positively irreproachable verdicts – transforms inequalities of culture, success – or talent in other words – are also inequalities of merit.
Paragraph 15:
Society divided into barbarians and civilized people but the latter has monopoly of the instruments of appropriation of cultural goods.
Distinguishing other classes – fields of economy or culture, – increasing strictly economic differences – created by pure possession of material goods – and of symbolic goods such as works of art, – search for symbolic distinctions – use the linguists’ word ‘distinction’ – mark of difference – as Littre said – separated from vulgar – ‘by a character of elegance, nobility and good form’, – privileged classes – replace difference between two cultures, – with basic difference between two natures – naturally and unnaturally cultivated nature. Cultured people – believe in barbarism – hide social conditions – making culture as second nature, – and legitimacy of a particular definition of culture. Society divided – cultured people – derive justification – their monopoly – appropriation of cultural goods.
Paragraph 16:
Artists and their world of art separated from the world of everyday life.
Love of art – clear mark of the chosen – those touched and untouched by it – museums in their tiniest details – betray their true function – reinforce for some the feeling of belonging and some the feeling of exclusion. Ancient palaces or large historic residences – bourgeois society deposits relics – not their own past, – concluding – world of art – opposed to everyday life – just as sacred to profane: – untouchability of objects, silence, huge galleries – reminders – transition from profane to sacred world – Durkheim says – ‘ a veritable metamorphosis’, – radical transformation of mind – relation between two worlds – delicate operation – great precautions – complicated initiation, – impossible. Work of art – requires dispositions or predispositions – bestows sanction – chosen. – Work of art – awaken the grace of aesthetic inspiration, – produce conditions of its own diffusion – sanction – attribution of all abilities – fates of grace – arbitrary of ‘talent’, – in reality they are a product of unequal education – regard inherited aptitudes as virtues inherent – natural and commendable.
Paragraph 17:
Museums are open to all and yet reserved for some others who claim to possess a love for art.
Museum – public heritage – monuments of past splendor – instruments glorifying great people of the times: – false generosity, – free entry is optional entry – reserved – people having the ability to appropriate works of art – make use of this freedom – find themselves legitimated in their privilege, – Max Weber – their monopoly of cultural goods and salvation.
Comments:
Museums and places of art exhibitions are visited only by those people who claim to acquire a special taste for art. They consider this art to be innate. But it is not so. This taste for art and its subsequent derivation of pleasure in people is an acquired taste. It cannot by itself create natural preferences by their own power. Children borrow the disposition of their families at first and then acquire their own disposition to practice. Societies divide its people into classes and such individuals claiming to have an innate sense of art are placed at the top level in the bourgeois society. They assume to have an ‘eye’ for art and distinguish those who cannot understand it as being ‘poor in spirit’.
Work Cited:
Bourdieu, Pierre, and Alain Darbel. “The Love of Art.” Art in Modern Culture: An Anthology of
Critical Texts. Eds. Francis Franscina, and Jonathan Harris. London/New York: Phaidon,
1992. Print.
“The Love of Art: European Art Museums and Their Public Book Description.” Infibeam.com.
2010. Web. 14 July 2010.
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