1 - What is art? What is the sociology of art?

Summary

I want to talk about the arts in relation to the mystery that surrounds them, not as a problem to be cleared up but as the very condition in which they appear at all. In that sense, mystery is to be acknowledged, not resolved or dispelled.

Denis Donoghue, The Arts Without Mystery (1983): 11

What I have said about art worlds can be said about any kind of social world, when put more generally; ways of talking about art, generalized, are ways of talking about society and social process generally.

Howard S. Becker, Art Worlds (1982): 368

Sociology and art make an odd couple.

Pierre Bourdieu, Questions de Sociologie (1980): 207

Asking what art is may seem at first sight disingenuous, since its meaning is usually taken for granted. But modern Western societies have been witnessing such radical changes in the forms and content of art, and questions about what to include or exclude from the category of art arise so frequently, that they obtrude in any sociological analysis of art. Moreover, even when there seems to be consensus about art forms, new claims for inclusion are made that seem designed to shake the confidence of even seasoned observers.