Thesis (M.A.)--Western Washington University, 2010. / Includes bibliographical references. Also issued online.

Thesis (M.Arch.)--University of Hong Kong, 2001. / Includes special study report entitled : Special study of Theo van Doesburg. Includes bibliographical references. Also available in print.

published_or_final_version / abstract / Comparative Literature / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

M. Tech. / My research examines how artworks referring to cattle convey symbolic meaning about cultural identity in South Africa, thus contributing to the research niche area of the University of Johannesburg (Visually Embodying Identity in a Post Colonial Environment). I track shifts in traditional ethnic and cultural boundaries which shaped South Africa, by comparing selected examples of historic and contemporary art and artefacts which embody cultural values. This provides a reading of the dynamic process of changing identities in South Africa with emphasis on the process of creolisation being particularly identifiable in the work of chosen artists Peter Mthombeni and Joachim Schönfeldt. In my practical research I attempt to reflect different South African identities, from colonialist, essentialised identities to the newer identities of a post-apartheid, democratic, 21st century multicultural society. My practical research which focuses on dynamic shifts in identity results in an installation of a ‘herd’ of ceramic cattle heads in an outdoor public area, namely the entrance to the Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture at the University of Johannesburg.

Like many sociologists, I am perplexed by the fact that in meritocratic societies, individuals whose abilities or talent does not differ widely nevertheless enjoy considerably different levels of achievement and success. The present dissertation seeks to uncover some of the reasons behind such non-meritocratic inequality. There are two main approaches one can take to that problem. The first and more classical one consists in observing inequality that matters – inequality in earnings or career prospects for example – and to show that such inequality can be traced back to broad categorical attributes such as class, gender, or race and ethnicity. This is not the approach I follow here. Rather, I strategically select cases that make it possible to uncover the fine-grained processes and mechanisms generative of non-meritocratic inequality. Among these “pure” cases are art worlds – winner-take-all settings typically marked by high inequality, and where success is often vastly disconnected from merit or intrinsic quality. The first part of this dissertation focuses on one such art world as a laboratory for studying the social processes underlying the formation of economic value, and therefore the formation of inequality in economic success. CONSECRATION AS A SOCIAL PROCESS OF VALUATION My approach to success and inequality rests on the intuition that we can partially explain them by studying social processes of valuation, i.e. processes that shape the value of things or individuals without affecting their underlying differences in ability, merit, performance, or talent. In the first two chapters this dissertation, I outline and test a theory of one such process, namely consecration. The first chapter develops a structural definition of consecration that makes possible to study its occurrence, conditions, and consequences in a variety of social settings. The chief features of that definition are identified using a series of empirical instances of consecration. The chapter then shows how that definition can be operationalized with simple network concepts, and suggests a network-based strategy for capturing consecration empirically – in art worlds for example. The chapter finally draws testable implications from that definition, and explores its relationship with the notion of retrospective consecration. The second chapter uses that notion of consecration to solve an empirical puzzle in the sociology of valuation. Markets for unique and novel goods are often seen as privileged settings for the powerful influence of market intermediaries: when quality is uncertain, or when it lacks definition altogether, intermediaries can play a crucial role in signaling or specifying it, thereby ultimately shaping the prices consumers are willing to pay for products. Products, meanwhile, do not get much more unique or novel than in the market for contemporary art. Yet economic sociologists have repeatedly failed to observe any influence of art market intermediaries on the value of the artists they distribute. This puzzling finding, I argue, arises from a misconception of how intermediaries shape the value of artists. We usually think of intermediation as acting through two chief processes of valuation: credentialing, or the signaling of unobservable quality, and qualification, or the establishment of specific quality criteria. Yet I suggest that it also can influence value through consecration, or the structural signaling of the existence of quality differences in a population. Using the market for modern art in early twentieth-century Paris as an empirical backdrop, this chapter shows that intermediation as consecration, not credentialing or qualification, was indeed how art market intermediaries shaped the value of their artists in the heyday of French modern painting. SOCIAL PROCESSES OF VALUATION AND ELITE CONSOLIDATION IN GILDED AGE AMERICA The remaining chapter is a logical development of the previous two. It builds on the fine-grained insights they offer – on social processes of valuation, and on the mechanisms of non-meritocratic inequality more generally – to address larger-scale issues of social inequality and social reproduction. The chapter uses a new database of subscribers to the New York Philharmonic to understand how cultural participation cemented the status – or social value – of elites in Gilded Age America. The database has information on who subscribed to the Philharmonic between 1880 and 1910 – a period of huge upheaval, of threats to the dominance of traditional elites, and ultimately of elite consolidation in the United States, and in the city of New York in particular. In analyzing these data I seek to understand how culture worked as an elite resource in that era. The classic account of culture and elite consolidation posits that the formation of an upper class and its continued dominance rest on a mechanism of exclusion. In this view, cultural participation reinforces elites by setting them apart – a process akin to consecration as I delineate it in earlier chapters. My work on the Philharmonic challenges that classic view. For the distinctiveness associated with elite cultural endeavors to reinforce elite dominance, I argue, these endeavors have to happen against a backdrop of general agreement over their value. In Gilded Age New York, this agreement happened not through exclusion, but through the inclusion of a group of cultural experts into the cultural institutions championed by the social elite. The inclusion of that cultured group served to testify to the quality of the cultural endeavors of the social elite, and provided them with a stamp of cultural legitimacy. In other words, it valued the elite through a process of credentialing. The second analytical contribution of that final chapter has to do with class consolidation and the reproduction of upper class dominance more generally. While consolidation is often seen as happening through exclusion and closure, I argue that in a context of rapid social differentiation, marked by the emergence of new areas of expertise, maintaining dominance does not necessarily involve barring access to outside groups. It can also mean being flexible enough to include the experts in emerging spheres. To remain atop the social hierarchy, elites may benefit from incorporating external elements that testify to their own continued relevance. Such inclusion is not necessarily full integration – instead, I show that at the Philharmonic it involved a built-in mechanism of protection, namely segregation. Hence cultural experts were included to help reify and support upper class status and social power, but in a segregated fashion to protect the upper class from threats of destabilization. Finally, a word on title: the notion of purity is the recurring motif in this work. It conveys ideas of social exclusion and social closure, as deployed in the third chapter. When thought about in relational terms, purity may also refer to one’s absence of ties to others whom one does not wish to be associated with in the public eye. This relational take on purity has strong affinities with the idea of consecration developed in chapters one and two. As a heuristic tool for the sociological imagination, purity is the thread that connects all the dots in this dissertation.

This study is about play. It is about some of the forms of play you may have engaged in as a kid and are now integrated in the art practices of three artists, Núria Güell, Jordi Canudas and Nicolás Dumit-Estévez. Their practices defy the traditional conceptions of both art and play as ends in themselves. This study is contextualized as phenomenological research that aims at understanding what role play can assume in socially engaged art practices, and in what ways it provides a dynamic filter or trajectory for carrying each work forward. It is centered on the experiences of three artists who have developed practices that are participatory, presented in public spaces, open to diverse audiences, and whose design seeks at questioning, transforming or experimenting with new forms of sociability. The study presents the artists’ narratives through interviews and intertwined with the researcher’s experience with the data and documentation, acting as a site for shared meaning making. The findings of the study suggest that essential to play is movement, and that play’s integration in socially engaged art practices opens up transitional or permeable spaces in which previously discrete identities become border crossings opening to the potential emergence of new ideas about self and society

This paper is an examination of the relationship of Australian landscape imagery to culture and identity. Visual and historical ideas in the Heidelberg School and more contemporary landscape work is assessed in relation to social history in the work of Ian Burn et al and the social history in the work of Anne Maree Willis. These two types of history are compared and conclusions are made about their similarities and differences in the articulation of identity and culture. It will be concluded that identity and culture are ideas and values which are recycled and relocated with the passage of time and that certain central themes reoccur in the construction of identity and culture / Master of Visual Arts (Hons)

This paper, in conjunction with a series of paintings and drawings, attempts to outline the theme of anonymity. The work contains images portraying the feeling of remaining anonymous within a city. The inquiry not so much records the necessity of remaining anonymous for the purpose of urban experience but examines whether the subject matter of the artwork could be communicated to a group of spectators. During an exhibition of the artworks, 20 subjects were surveyed for their opinions. Questions relating to subject matter and aspects of anonymity were posed to the spectators in a questionnaire and structured interview format. In a large majority of cases, spectators of the artworks isolated the multiple-choice answer that most described the subject matter of the artworks. This study gave a strong indication to the artist that the group of spectators could comprehend the subject matter of the paintings exhibited / Master of Arts (Hons) Visual Arts

This study sets out to develop a sociological approach to art and literature which views art as a socially situated knowledge and which at the same time preserves an independent and unique sphere of activity for art that enables it to offer life opportunities of a different nature from those of the established social order. To fulfill this task two complementary studies were carried out; a theoretical investigation and an empirical research. First, this critically examines existing theories in the sociology of knowledge and art and focuses on the problem of the 'social determination of art and literature.' This examination is based in the consideration of art as an element in the knowledge sphere and the sociology of art as a branch of the sociology of knowledge. A critique of the notion of the 'social determination of art' leads to a set of hypotheses which are tested in the field. The question of great art problematises the 'social determination' hypotheses. Secondly, an empirical study of Australian playwrights is carried out which examines the hypotheses derived from the theoretical investigation. The empirical methods of this study is a survey, using a mail questionnaire, supported by interviews with professionals in Australian drama. This is combined with a documentary study of the socio-economic conditions of Australia during the last 25 years, together with content analysis of plays written by Australian playwrights during the same period. The results of the empirical investigation support the proposed hypotheses showing that while social conditions effect contemporary artistic works, this effect is not uniform when comparing 'first rate' of 'great art' with other artistic creations. This questions the concept of the social determination of art explored in the thesis, and at the same time questions the extent and scope of such a determination. Finally, the conclusion of the thesis is that sociology is relevant in the analysis of artistic works so long as it is concerned with the social dimension of art. It is concluded that the aesthetic knowledge of the artist, which determines the quality of artistic works, is independent from social forces. Although art bears the mark of contemporary social conditions, it is not a product of these conditions. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

This research into Indonesian socialist-realism art, examines how art has shaped the political and social environments of the new order government. This text examines contemporary artists’ attitudes toward social commitment and social commentary during the period 1980-1995. Conflicting views of contemporary Indonesian artists were obtained from research undertaken in Indonesia in 1995. In this thesis, the problem is raised that Indonesian socialist-realism art is not only a style of art for contemporary Indonesian artists, but also as a union of artists’ attitudes towards Indonesian society. This argument is used to further understand modern Indonesian art from the ‘inner’ point of view / Master of Arts (Hons)