This thesis begins with an examination of collective art practices in Cuba in relation to the wider collectivised society. This acts as a counterbalance for engaging with the strategy of artists’ groups in the United Kingdom and the differences between political thinking in Cuba and the West. Practice-based research in the form of curatorial activity has constantly responded to the theoretical underpinnings of this thesis. The multi-platform project 'Assembling' (2013-2015) understands the exhibition to be collaborative from the moment of inception. Through the circulation of material in a process of gathering, electing and making visible objects and ideas, 'Assembling' has brought together artists previously unknown to each other from Cuba and the United Kingdom to find and cluster around a shared sense of social imaginary, a shared issue of concern. A 'Typology of Association' runs throughout the thesis to trace thought on grouping found in political theory, art history, exhibitionary practice and sociology to produce a nuanced interpretation of how it is that we envisage ourselves in relation to group identifiers. Concomitantly, the main text of the thesis asks, ‘Does the “social” exist in and of itself at all?’. Although this is a wide-reaching question, it is key for understanding artists’ groups as the social becomes a composed (Latour, 2005) space in which elements can be actively distributed (Rancière, 2000) to form temporal assemblages (Deleuze and Guattari, 1980) making the social 'a practice'. Rather than enquire for example, what is ‘community art’, this research removes an assumptive meaning and asks what is ‘community’ and how does art practice activate its composition? Shifting social space is understood in terms of consistency: solid, fluid (Berman, 1982; Bauman, 2010) and foam (Sloterdijk, 2007, 2011).

In the late 1980's and early 1990's a series of art censorship cases occurred in the United States. Seemingly out-of-keeping with American culture and policy, these episodes beg much explanation. Censors generally cite obscenity or blasphemy as reasons for the silencing of artists and their work. Beneath these publicly noted justifications exists an alternative explanation; as marginalized populations within American culture gained some degree of power over the last 40 years, the traditionally powerful fought back to maintain their own positions and privileges. I argue that art censorship is a symbolic battle in which the center identifies artists and their work as enemies of the culture, and social problems from which American society needs protection. The data for these assertions is based on case studies and content analysis of recent cases of art censorship. The fields of sociology and cultural studies provide the necessary theoretical framework.

This thesis is a sociological exploration of emergent social relations at art exhibition venues. It focuses on the experience of art which the dominant “decoding” metaphor fails to describe conceptually and empirically. To grasp the interactional and emergent character of interaction with art, I constructed a framework that defined audiences as sets of emerging social relations. Building on the concepts of experience (Merleau-Ponty), enchantment (Gell), multiplicity and enactment (Latour, Mol and others), I emphasise the situated and embodied nature of art experience. The study draws on a series of ethnographic observations at the exhibition sites of a number of Moscow art institutions. It is supplemented with unstructured interviews with visitors and art professionals at these venues (artists, curators, wardens etc.). Conceptually, I have suggested a dual social ontology that art establishes in the events of perception. Bringing uncertainty into visitors’ actions, art enables interactions in which visitors establish meanings, and leads to practices that make their art experience organized and less problematic. The thesis examines the ways art experience becomes stable through meaning-making events supported by socio-material relations. These relations enable participants to produce recognizable actions. The process of meaning-making at the exhibitions is seen not as a direct communication of pre-given aesthetic meanings (as the decoding perspective would assume), but rather is understood as consisting of multiple instances of micro-level discoveries which mediate an “enchanting” form of art experience. Enchantment engenders the social relations of expertise which visitors practically achieve in their interaction with material objects and through performances of meaningfully recognizable actions. T Though the study mainly focuses on the experience of interactive art installations, I argue that the conceptual considerations and empirical results are relevant to the experience of other forms of art. The thesis is intended to make a contribution to the so-called “new sociology of art”, not just by subjecting the dominant Bourdieu-inspired assumptions about “decoding” to critique, but also by pointing out the conceptual limits of much of the new sociology of art, and pointing towards new conceptual horizons for sociology’s ongoing encounter with matters artistic.

The question of the existence of the right art has been solved by many theorists and artists themselves. The first half of the twentieth century was affected by the coming world wars, Nazism and socialism. The establishment of avant-garde was associated with it and new movements tried to confront such society. Along with avant-garde artistic critics appeared, those who more or less influenced artists themselves. Theories of Friedrich Nietzsche, Theodor Adorno, Jean Francois Lyotard, Clement Greenberg and Leo Steinberg are different, but are also consistent with the fundamental thing. That is the desire for a change and accuracy of art. The first two authors think that the right art was already there, but it was destroyed. Others are looking into present and future. In the shadow of modern technologies they try to find something that will be unique and original. These thoughts come to the imagination of unrepresent-able things and abstraction. Abstract Expressionism is a movement, which was originally established in the thirties in the USA. Along with it, the art center moved from Paris to New York. Abstract Expressionists were divided into two groups. One of them, artists such as Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning, has been called action painters. The second group, in which Barnett Newman and...

La plupart des études portant sur le bijou au XIXe siècle privilégient l’aspect stylistique et formel. La question des usages est, quant à elle, le plus souvent éludée et les rares considérations d’ordre social ou sociétal, lorsqu’elles sont abordées, demeurent anecdotiques. Or, le bijou joue un rôle social déterminant, notamment dans l’expression de la fortune mais aussi dans le processus d’identification et d’appartenance à un groupe. À cet égard, les périodiques de mode constituent un support d’étude des plus précieux. Ils nous renseignent sur l’usage très codifié que les femmes appartenant à l’élite faisaient de leurs bijoux, et implicitement sur la place et le rôle qui étaient assignés à ces dernières dans la société du XIXe siècle. Le périodique de mode constitue par ailleurs une source très intéressante pour contextualiser la création du bijou, qui devient dès lors un miroir des événements. Le bijou apparaît comme le reflet d’influences diverses, à la fois du point de vue technique, du choix des matériaux employés, du style adopté, des formes ou encore par la symbolique des décors travaillés. Grâce aux descriptions de bijoux contenues dans les chroniques de mode ainsi qu’aux gravures qui les accompagnent, nous retracerons une histoire des formes en discriminant les grandes tendances récurrentes entre 1820 et 1870 avant d’aborder celles qui caractérisent une période en particulier. Nous exploiterons aussi les mentions publicitaires afin d’examiner les relations qu’entretiennent les différents acteurs participant à la fabrication et au commerce des bijoux avec les phénomènes de mode. / Most studies regarding 19th-century jewellery favour the study of its stylistic and formal aspects. As for its uses, they are most often eluded and the rare social and societal considerations, when they are tackled, remain anecdotal. Yet, jewellery plays a determining social role, especially in the expression of wealth but also in the process of identification and of belonging to a group. For this, fashion periodicals constitute a most precious support for study. They tell us about the very codified use women from the elite made of their jewellery, and implicitly of the place and role that was assigned to them in 19th century society. The fashion periodical is also a very interesting source to contextualise the jewel creation, which thus becomes a mirror of events. Jewellery appears as a reflection of various influences, all at once from the technical point of view, the choice of materials, the chosen style, the form or the symbolism of the worked designs. Through the descriptions of jewellery contained in fashion chronicles and engravings that accompany them, we shall retrace a history of forms by categorising the great trends recurring between 1820 and 1870 before dealing with those characterising one particular era. We shall also use advertisement notices in order to examine the relationships linking the different actors that participate in the making and marketing of jewellery with the fashion phenomena.