A process-relational sociology of art critics
Clement Greenberg's Modernist theory and practice
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 5016071 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Alex Law (0000-0002-5388-858X, Abertay University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2024 |
| Volume | 72 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 827-845 |
| Publication date | 2024-07-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The Sociological Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0038-0261 • E-ISSN: 1467-954X |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1177/00380261241258593 |
| OpenAlex | W4403216242 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 25 |
A central theme of this article is the developing tension between art specialists and non-specialists as a function of complex, differentiated figurations. Bourdieu's sociology of symbolic revolutions is allied to Elias's model of the relative autonomy of the artistic figurations within lengthening relations of interdependencies and shifting cognitive-emotional tension balances of feeling and reasoning and spontaneity and self-restraint. Within the sociology of art, the field positionings, power, interdependencies, language and habitus of art critics remain a relatively underdeveloped area of enquiry. Art critics function as 'professional explicators' in Bourdieu's terms or 'specialists in verbalisation' in Elias's to communicate standard-setting models of value and taste of specialists to non-specialists. Clement Greenberg emerged as a socially mobile oblate from a position of artworld outsider to hegemonic dominance as the leading notable of Modernist art criticism. The article examines the social conditions of possibility for Greenberg's standard-setting codes as they came to be established and sustained by particular figurations of people (a self-conscious avant-garde) at particular times (late 1930s-1970s) and places (New York
Epistemology · Process (computing) · Sociology · Computer Science · Cultural Industries and Urban Development · Philosophy · Public Spaces through Art · Social and Cultural Dynamics
Contemporary aesthetics
Bourdieu and Marx
Quest for excitement
Violence, Symbolic Violence and the Decivilizing Process
Clement Greenberg Between the Lines
Pierre Bourdieu and Cultural Theory
Practical Reason
The Rules of Art
What’s Up with Cultural Sociology? From Bourdieu and the Mainstream to ‘Productive Weirdness’
The three generations of the French sociology of art
Mapping multivocality
Modernism and modernity
The Critical Historians of Art
Institutions, Culture, and America's 'Cold War Years
Avant‐gardes and Partisans Reviewed
The New York intellectuals
Norbert Elias and Modern Sociology
Towards a Process-Oriented Methodology
The Transformation of the Avant-Garde
Pierre Bourdieu on social transformation, with particular reference to political and symbolic revolutions
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1 |
| Citation span | 2026 - 2026 (1) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |