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Context as resource for constructing artistic value: cases of non-recognition

This article sets out to document the plausibility of adopting a contextual conception of a work of art. Underlining the eminently social nature of the formation processes of artistic value, it illustrates how a work of art is also created by the local contexts in which it is produced and, above all, by those in which it is consumed. The first part of the article questions those romantic conceptions, according to which artistic value is normally attributed to a work of art exclusively on the basis of the author's talent, and tries to document the existence of a series of social factors that play a decisive role in establishing that a given object belongs to the "art system". Different conceptions of the work of art are classified according to the way in which they solve the problem of genesis. Three main perspectives are identified: authorial, reception and contextual theories. It is argued that neither the authorial nor the reception theory is able to explain, on a sociological level, the process of artistic production and reception.

In the second part, the different approaches to the genesis problem are connected with different interpretations of cases of non-recognition, those cases in which a "true" work of art is not recognized, for example, because it has been placed outside its own traditional reception context. It is argued that explanation of these cases of "non-recognition" is linked to the implied conception of artistic production. Three examples are considered: (a) the young Mozart; (b) Botticelli, who, held to be a mediocre painter up to the middle of the 19th century, becomes a talented artist thanks to the studies of Herbert Horne and Aby Warburg; and (c) Sting, who, in the Ladbroke Grove underground station in London, performed as a street musician.

Key Words: Audience • Mass culture • Reception theory • Sociology of art • Spectator • Text and context

Social Science Information, Vol. 37, No. 1, 45-78 (1998)
DOI: 10.1177/053901898037001003


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