Auto/Biography 0967-5507 13 1 200503 Sage Publications Sage UK: London, England Book Review: Not Wholly Successful in Dealing With the Aesthetic The sociology of art: a reader. Jeremy Tanner, editor, 2003. London: Routledge: ISBN 0415308836, pbk, 265 pp., £20.99 HilaryDickinsonUniversity of Greenwich 82 85

82 Book ReviewNot Wholly Successful in Dealing With the AestheticThe sociology of art: a reader. Jeremy Tanner, editor, 2003. London: Routledge: ISBN 0415308836, pbk, 265 pp., £20.99 SAGE Publications, Inc.2005DOI: 10.1177/09675507050130010503 Hilary Dickinson University of Greenwich This book starts with an introduction that outlines the emergence, in the early nineteenth century, of sociology and of art history as specialized fields of study. The common roots in western modernity of the two disciplines are examined, and then their divergence, and even mutual hos- tility, in the twentieth century. Then come sections, each with author's introduction, followed by three or four readings. Part 1 is on `Classical sociological theories and the sociology of art', Part 2 on `The social pro- duction of art', Part 3 on the `Sociology of the artist', Part 4 on `Museums and the construction of high culture' and Part 5 on `Sociology, aesthetic form and the specificity of art'. The classical theories section has the usual triumvirate, Marx, Durkheim, Weber, and adds to this an extract from Simmel. Simmel's piece argues that symmetry is an important element of beauty in art, and regularities in art are connected to regularity in a society – to regular 83 and rational relations between a large number of social elements and the subordination of the many to a unified centre (i.e., a monarch or autocrat). Asymmetry (which we infer means modernism, but it is not specified) in art is connected to the emergence of individualism. There's an element of truth in this, but it is so broad a perspective as not to be very illuminating. Marx is the only one of the classical theorists whose ideas (as seen at any rate in the extracts here) have more than historical interest. His insight about the role of ideology in art production and reception continues to have resonance for the present-day sociologist. In `For a sociology of art and artists' the Italian sociologists Bertasio and Marchetti (2004) reflect on Bourdieu's 1984 comment that `La soci- ologie et l'art ne font pas bon ménage' (sociology and art don't get along well together), and that the uncomfortable relationship may have some connection with the paucity of writing on the sociology of art. They cite Strassoldo, who noted in 1998 that only 0.5% of sociological writing could be categorized as sociology of art. The reasons Bourdieu gave for the uneasy relationship are that the art world does not like sociology's (alleged) reductionism of art to `only' social relations and historical forces. Conversely, sociologists have difficulty in dealing with the purely aesthetic and with the specificity of art. Marx (in a piece included in one of the extracts in Tanner's book) acknowledged the issue of the aesthetic when he mused on the fact that Greek art has retained its super high status and meaningfulness to present-day observers, even though the society that produced it is long gone, and its social and political relation- ships (in so far as we know what they were at all) were not as ours. But while noticing this interesting point, Marx did not develop it. Tanner begins his `Introduction' with Bourdieu's 1984 comment about art and sociology not sitting well together and sets himself to explore it, but he gets somewhat diverted from this important question in his exploration of the divergence (and recent rapprochement) of art history and the sociology of art. Bertasio and Marchetti (2004) claim that sociologists are fearful of `the analysis of art elements, methods and intellectual attitudes typical of the humanistic disciplines' because of their desire to study objective facts. This is an odd comment about sociology to make now, in view of the current interest in so-called subjective analysis, such as narrative and auto/biography, and the use of methods more often associated with history or literary criticism. Clearly, sociologists interested in these crossover methods have missed an opening in relation to the sociology of art. In passing it is interesting to note that cultural studies is a flourishing socio- logical field. Here much of the subject matter is about visual culture, culture that might well be called `art' except the term is normally reserved for the fine arts. The virtual exclusion of fine art from cultural studies 84 may be a strategy (probably unintended) to avoid a field of study where it is hard to avoid the need for judgements about the aesthetic. Confine yourself to advertisements and pop music and aesthetic questions may be conveniently shelved. Tanner's book seems to bear out Bertasio and Marchetti's claim that there is not very much sociology of art. One feels that Tanner had difficulty locating suitable readings. In section 2 on art production, only Becker's `Art as collective action' is specifically on the visual arts as the extracts from Raymond Williams and Bourdieu are on the arts generally. The Williams extract is from his Marxism and literature, and is (I think) from the introduction – anyway it is too much about Marxism and not enough about the arts. But had Tanner selected some analysis of literature from the work that would have been even less relevant since it would have parted wholly from the visual arts. Of the 18 readings in the collec- tion only half are primarily about the visual arts – of course there could be argument about the classification of the extracts, but one could not get a total focused on the visual arts to much more than half however one tried. There is some interesting material in Tanner's reader, notably Natalie Heinich on `The Van Gogh effect', Robert Witkin on Van Eyck's painting The Arnolfini marriage and Bourdieu's `Outline of a sociological theory of art perception'. Witkin shares a section with Mannheim on `The dynamics of spiritual realities' and Parsons on art as expressive symbol- ism, just in case students had got too interested in Van Eyck. Bourdieu is difficult for an introductory reader, but he is worth struggling with, while I do not think the same can be said of Mannheim and Parsons in the context of this reader. A reproduction of The Arnolfini marriage is the only illustration in the book, which seems odd in a work on the sociology of art. Perhaps pub- lisher meanness accounts for the lack of pictures. Penny pinching may also account for the absence of extracts from two works that have inter- esting observations on the sociology of art (even though not written by sociologists), John Berger's Ways of seeing (1972) and Parker and Pollock's Old mistresses: women, art and ideology (1981). Extracts from these works would be pointless without the illustrations. Parker and Pollock remind us that Tanner's book has nothing on feminist analysis, perhaps, in 2003, an even odder omission than illustrations. REFERENCES Berger, J. 1972: Ways of seeing. Harmondsworth : Penguin. Bertasio, D. and Marchetti, G. 2004: `For a sociology of art and artists' <http://uniurb.it/imes/essad/essad2.html>. 85 Parker, R. and Pollock, G. 1981: Old mistresses: women art and ideology. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Berger, J. 1972: Ways of seeing. Harmondsworth : Penguin. Bertasio, D. and Marchetti, G. 2004: `For a sociology of art and artists' <http://uniurb.it/imes/essad/essad2.html>. Parker, R. and Pollock, G. 1981: Old mistresses: women art and ideology. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.