"ART WORLDS" (HOWARD BECKER).   Term Paper ID:26644 Click to get this paper

Essay Subject: Reviews work on the communal & social nature of creation & appreciation of different forms of art.... More...

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Paper Abstract: Reviews work on the communal & social nature of creation & appreciation of different forms of art. Paper Introduction: Art is not, as we have so often been told, in the eye of the beholder. Or rather it may be in the eyes of certain beholders acting in concert with each other. The premise of Howard Becker=s Art Worlds is simply this -- that art, like all other human activities, involves the joint activity of a number of people (Becker, 1982, p. 1). That humans work together to create a whole greater than each could produce individually should not come as a terribly remarkable surprise. The fact that we can accomplish more in groups than as isolated individuals is one of the most important (if not the most important) reason that humans gather together in societies to begin with. None of us would be surprised to learn that farming or textile production or the rail system is the result of a number of people working together, each providing a piece of the required labor and enabled to work joint Text of the Paper: The entire text of the paper is shown below. However, the text is somewhat scrambled. We want to give you as much information as we possibly can about our papers and essays, but we cannot give them away for free. In the text below you will find that while disordered, many of the phrases are essentially intact. From this text you will be able to get a solid sense of the writing style, the concepts addressed, and the sources used in the research paper. Why do people(at least in the contemporary West) think that art is different? The fact that we can accomplish more ingroups than as isolated individuals is one of the most important (if notthe most important) reason that humans gather together in societies tobegin with. 2)."Each kind of person who participates in the making of art works, then, hasa specific bundle of tasks to do; every form of art rests on an extensivedivision of labor (Becker, 1982, p. (1984). The myth suggests that in return society receives work of uniquecharacter and invaluable quality (Becker, 1982, pp. At an extreme, the romantic myth of the artist suggests thatpeople with such gifts cannot be subjected to the constraints imposed onother members of society; we must allow them to violate the rules ofdecorum, propriety, and common sense everyone must follow or risk beingpunished. Certainly, in many essential ways (as Becker so convincinglywrites), art is like other activities. Someone has (in some way)advertised the fact that music will be played at a certain time and place.And someone has shown up to listen to be an audience (Becker, 1982, p. Art is not, as we have so often been told, in the eye of the beholder. The premise of Howard Becker=s Art Worlds is simply this-- that art, like all other human activities, involves the joint activityof a number of people (Becker, 1982, p. Berkeley: University of CaliforniaPress. But in some ways it is not. (One can see how there are certainadvantages to the artist in this particular myth.) But while the composer (to take just one example) may well lockhimself up in a loft apartment, descending only once every few weeks to buygroceries, no artist actually ever works alone. The fact that we tendto see the artist and not the support personnel (just as we see the spiderand not her web) does not mean that the less visible elements of the systemare not there or are not important. Other people still must have imagined, designed andbuilt musical instruments. That humans work together tocreate a whole greater than each could produce individually should not comeas a terribly remarkable surprise. New York:Alfred Knopf. However, some people might be surprised that art is created in thesame way, that art is as much a product of history and society and cultureas are Beanie Babies or McDonald=s Happy Meals. One important implication of Becker=s work, and a point that is takenup in Paul Dimaggio=s article on cultural entrepreneurship in 19th-centuryBoston, is that art does not exist in any purely ontological sense. It isnot something that is simply out there on the ground waiting, likeseashells on the shore, to be picked up and admired by anyone who willautomatically recognize its artistic-ness. Inorder for someone to compose music, other people must have created anotational system. The first is that peoplecould come together with each new project and decide on the tools, terms,and practices they will share. It is not simply paint and canvas andmuseums that are produced through the labor of a number of differentindividuals, but the idea of what constitutes good art as well. Much of Becker=s work is aimed atexploding what might in loose terms be called the starving-attic-in-the-garret syndrome, the idea of a painter or sculpture or writer or composeralmost entirely isolated from human contact, going from one day to the nextwithout seeing a soul except perhaps a landlord demanding rent or a shop=sclerk delivering a bundle of food scraps. 29). The artist sits, rather like aspider in a web, at the center of these activities. Or they can adopt a set of conventionsconcerning their practices and materials that they will carry over from oneproject to the next (Becker, 1982, pp. Becker posits twopossible ways of interacting and cooperating. Someone else has built a concert hall (or some other venue)and arranged insurance for it, and someone has printed and sold tickets.Someone else has designed and printed a program. Given that every art world is made up of a large number of specializedpersonnel (who may often have different priorities than the artist), how doall of these people act in concert with each other? 1). Harris, A. He almost succeeds in doing so, but his strictlysociological approach to the problem is ultimately limiting. Becker notes that both participants in the creation of art and membersof a society at large believe that an artist "requires special talents,gifts, or abilities, which few have" (Becker, 1982, p. Rather, both Dimaggio and Becker argue, art comes to be recognizedthrough a collective social process. Or rather it may be in the eyes of certain beholders acting in concertwith each other. We think is important to know who has that [artistic] gift and whodoes not because we accord people who have it special rights andprivileges. This idea of the artist as alone genius who can never be understood in his (or much more rarely her)own time and unable to create art if he must grapple with the kind ofordinary daily chores and trials that the rest of us must face up to is awell-established facet of our culture. This latter option isobviously both more limiting and more efficient and because of this latterquality (one assumes) it is the model usually chosen. Someone has paid the teachers and the musiciansthemselves. And this does not even begin to count thecooperation of other people specifically within the world of music. None of us would be surprised to learn that farming or textileproduction or the rail system is the result of a number of people workingtogether, each providing a piece of the required labor and enabled to workjointly by conventions and other kinds of agreements held in common. Art is likeeverything else, he tells us repeatedly, it=s just that people don=trealize this. 14). Most artists andsupporting personnel "rely on earlier agreements now become customary,agreements, agreements that have become part of the conventional way ofdoing things (Becker, 1982, p. Conventions allow decisions andactions to be made and done simply and quickly; this leaves more time tocreate art, if art that has become more narrowly defined. & Nochlin, L. Artcriticism -- taken in a broad sense to include both formal criticism thatappears in newspapers and magazines and the informal but essentialconsensus reached by members of the public -- constituting themselves asthe artistic audience, determine what counts as art. 28-9). And in these differences, in these details, the devil waits to beanswered. This is because art-makingis often looked at as a different kind of activity (at least in the West)from other activities, akin to scholarship or meditation rather than theproduction of other commodities. What arethe cultural and psychological elements of art that set is apart as anactivity? Other people before this composer have mostlikely written music, thereby creating conventions of composition. 14-5). References Becker, H. This is hard to seein a contemporary art world, which is why Dimaggio chooses to focus on theworld of 19th-century Boston, where the machination of the creation of highart institutions and the growing consensus over the distinction betweenwhat constituted high and low art are easier to determine and understand.Dimaggio=s article, joined with Becker=s book, show us the power ofconvention in producing and consuming art. Even this seeminglyisolated composer writes on paper that someone manufactured (using trees oranother source of pulp produced by someone else), using ink that someoneproduced (or a computer that someone made using software that someone elsedesigned), sitting in a chair and at a desk that someone built, in abuilding designed and constructed by others, eating food grown andtransported by other people, using electricity produced and transmitted andregulated by still others. Someonehas trained musicians. Becker=s work is meant to disabuse us of the idea that the artist issomehow a different kind of person than the rest of us and that art is adifferent kind of activity than the rest of the things that humans spendtheir days doing. (1982). Givingbirth is in some ways like other forms of hard exercise, but in other waysnot. 11). Art Worlds. But this certainly begs a question that Becker, for all hiscarefully astute scholarship, does not seem able to answer. Women artists: 155 -195 . How, in other words,do they arrive at the terms on which they cooperate? If this paper is not what you are looking for, you can search again: Search for: or Click here to request an essay written just for you.