ART AND SOCIETY

Sociology, 2nd Semester Jan-May 2018

Course Instructor: Chandan Bose

Course Description

If the terms ‘art’ and ‘artist’ refer to specific objects and specific people, what is the
criterion by which other objects and other people are excluded from these categories?
This course introduces students to the ways in which art, instead of signifying objects, is
reflective of the relationship human beings share with their material world. The
understanding of what constitutes ‘art’, the ‘art object’, the ‘artist’ and the ‘purpose of
art’ has always been changing, and this course will introduce students to some of the
aspects of this history.

Evaluation

Class participation (10%): This course will follow a seminar format. These are not going
to be lesson-oriented, but rather discussion-oriented sessions. Students need to
thoroughly engage with (at least) the prescribed readings to reflect upon, contribute to
or/and critique their central theses.

Mid-semester examinations (20%): This is going to be a closed-book exam based on the

readings and class discussions that have transpired over the first seven weeks of the
course. Students will be required to answer two out of four essay-type questions. Essays
will be evaluated using the following criteria:

- Precision with which the essay addresses the question

- The ability of the essay to reflect upon the readings and class discussions
- The success with which the essay refers to historical or contemporary events and on-
goings to support its argument
- Structure of the essay, and writing style
- Legibility of hand-writing

Assignments (35%): Two written tests and two class presentations over the semester.
For presentations, students can choose any one essay from Anthropology of Art: A
Reader (which will be circulated) apart from the ones which are part of the course
readings. For the written test, students will be required to answer one out of three
questions, which will be based on the readings and class discussions covered that far.
Written tests will be evaluated according to the same criteria as the mid-term semester
exam.

Final Term Paper (50%): A term-paper of 5000 words, on any theme/problematic/issue

of one’s choice, needs to be handed at the end of the semester (date to be specified).
Students are required to discuss their topic and approach to their topic with the
instructor latest by 16th March. Term-papers will be evaluated according to the
following criteria:

- Precision with which the essay outlines its central objective/question and
approach/methodology
- Critical review of literature that has previously engaged (directly or tangentially) with
the theme or topic of the term-paper
- Addressing gaps in previous scholarship
- Clarity and precision of argument strengthened by references, rather than opinions
- Structure and writing style
- Correct referencing of textual and virtual sources

In case of late submissions, it is mandatory that students inform the instructor NO

LATER THAN ONE WEEK BEFORE THE DATE OF SUBMISSION, upon which ONLY A TWO-
DAY EXTENSION WILL BE GRANTED. For non-compliance with either/both clauses,
grades for term-papers of the concerned students will be compromised.

Theme One: Definitions and Methods

Sections 1: Definitions (Week One, Tuesday 2nd January)

This course will begin by introducing students to the concepts of ‘art’ and ‘aesthetics’.

 Williams, Raymond. 1985. "Aesthetics" and “Art”, in Keywords: A Vocabulary of

Culture and Society. Oxford University Press.

 Danto, Arthur. 2013. “Kant and the work of Art”, in What Art is. Yale University
Press. Page 116-134.

 Roochnick, David. 1998. “Introduction”, in Of Art and Wisdom: Plato’s

 understanding of Techne. Pennsylvania State University Press. Page 1-16.

Section 2: Social science and the study of art

This section will focus on how disciplines of anthropology and art history study art.

Anthropology (Week Two, Monday 8th January)

 Guest, Kenneth. 2013. “What Is Unique about How Anthropologists Study Art?”
in Kenneth Guest’s Cultural Anthropology: A Toolkit for a Glbal Age. W W Norton
and Company. Page 667-675.

 Morphy, Howard and Perkins, Morgan. 2004. “The Anthropology of Art: A

Reflection on its History and Contemporary Practice” in Howard Morphy and
Morgan Perkins (eds) Anthropology of Art: A Reader. John Wiley & Sons. Page 1-
32

Art History (Week Two, Tuesday 9th January)

 Donald Preziosi. 1998. “Art History: Making the Visible Legible”, in Donald
Prezios (ed) The Art of Art History: A Critical Anthology. Oxford University Press.
Page: 7-11.

Theme Two: Art across cultures

This theme the addresses the question of whether art is experienced and expressed the
same way across cultures.

Art and ethnocentrism (Week Three, Monday 15th January)

 Dissanayake, Ellen. 1980. “Art as a Human Behavior: Toward an Ethological View

of Art”, in The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 38, No. 4. Page: 397-
406.
  Geertz, Clifford. 1983. “Art as a cultural system”, in Clifford Geertz’s Local
knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology. Basic Books. Page 94-
120.

Art and ethnography (Week Three, Tuesday 16th January)

 Gell, Alfred. 1996. “Vogel’s Net: Traps as Artworks and Artworks as Traps”, in
Journal of Material Culture, Vol. 1, No. 1. Page 15-38.

 Myers, Fred. 1999. “Aesthetic Function and Practice: A local art history of Pintupi
paintings”, in Howard Morphy (ed) Art from the land: dialogues with the Kluge-
Ruhe Collection of Australian Aboriginal art. University of Virginia Press. Page
219-259.

Theme Three: Art and Religion

Section 1: Effectiveness of religious art

This section will discuss what allows art to become an effective language to express faith
and communal sentiments.

Emile Durkheim (Week Four, Monday 22nd January)

 Durkheim, Emile. 1995 edition. “The Principle Totemic beliefs: Totem as name
and emblem”, in Emile Durkheim’s The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. The
Free Press. Page 99-126.

Roland Barthes (Week Four, Tuesday 23rd January)

 Barthes, Roland. 1977. “Rhetoric of the Image”, in Roland Barthes’ Image, Music,
Text (trans. Stephen Heath). Hill and Wang. Page 32-51.

Section 2: Politics in religious art

This section will disclose specific ways in which religious art reflect the dynamics
between power and identity.
Religious art and power (Week Five, Monday 29th January)

 Kidle, Jeanne Halgren. 2008. “A Method for Thinking about Power Dynamics in
Christian Space”, in Jeanne Halgren Kidle’s Sacred Power, Sacred Space: An
introduction to Christian architecture and worship. Oxford University Press. Page
3-12.

 Gruber, Christiane. 2013. “Images of Prophet Muhammad In and Out of

Modernity: The Curious Case of a 2008 Mural in Tehran”, in Christiane Gruber
and Sune Haugbolle (eds) Visual Culture in the Modern Middle East: Rhetoric of
the Image. Indiana University Press. Page 3-31.

Religious art and technology (Week Five, Tuesday 30th January)

 Mathur, Saloni and Singh, Kavita. 2007. “Reincarnations of the Museum: The
Museum in an Age of Religious Revivalism," in Vishakha Desai (ed) Asian Art
History in the 21st Century. Yale University Press. Page 149-168.

Week Six: Class Assignments

Monday 5th February: Class presentations
Tuesday 6th February: Written class test

Theme Four: Art and Distinction

Section 1: Art and classification (Week Seven, Monday 12th February)

This section discusses how the consumption of ‘art’ and the ideology of taste reinforces
social inequalities

 Bourdieu, Pierre. 1984. “Introduction”, in Pierre Bourdieu’s Distinction: A Social

Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Translated by R. Nice. Harvard University
Press, Pages: 1-7.

 Bourdieu, Pierre. 1993. “The Historical Genesis of a Pure Aesthetic”, in Pierre

Bourdieu’s The Field of Cultural Production. Columbia University Press. Page 254-
266.
Section 2: Figure of the artist (Week Seven, Tuesday 13th February)

This section discusses the way in which a historical and anthropological study of art
reveals informs categories of race, class, nation, and gender.

 Duncan, Carol. 1989. “The MoMA's Hot Mamas”, in Art Journal Vol. 48, No. 2,
Page: 171-178.

 Nochlin, Linada. 1989. “Why Have there Been No Great Women Artists?”, in
Linda Nochlin’s Women, Art and Power and other Essays. Westview Press. Page
145-178.

 Yau, John. 1992. “Please Wait by the Coatroom”, Russell Ferguson, Martha
Grover, Trinh T Minh-ha and Cornel West (eds) in Out There: Marginalization in
Contemporary Culture. MIT Press. Page 133-141.

 Okediji, Moyo. 2007. “Museums, Modernity and Mythology: A Semioptic

Review”, in RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics, No. 52, Museums: Crossing
Boundaries (Autumn, 2007), pp. 73-84

Week Eight (19th and 20th February): No classes, mid-term semester examinations

Theme Five: Displaying non-Western art in the West

This section introduces students to the debates around the location of indigenous art
objects within modern/western spaces such as the museum and gallery.

Collecting non-western objects (Week Nine, Monday 26th February)

 Clifford, James. 1988. “Part Three: Collections”, in James Clifford’s Predicament

of Culture: Twentieth Century Ethnography, Literature and Art. Harvard
University Press. Page: 187-252.

Displaying non-western objects in western spaces (Week Nine, Tuesday 27th February)
  Blocker, Gene H. 1991. “Is Primitive Art Art?”, in The Journal of Aesthetic
Education, Vol. 25, No. 4, 25th Anniversary Issue, Page 87-97.

 Morphy, Howard. 2001. “Seeing Aboriginal Art in the Gallery”, in Humanities

Research Vol. 8, No. 1, Page 37-50. 


Theme Six: Exhibitions

This section will introduce students to discussion around the culture of display that has
been intrinsic to art objects, and the way in which it has historically shaped ‘knowledge’
and its ‘representation’.

Why exhibit (Week Ten, Monday 5th March)

 Bennett, Tony. 1988. “The Exhibitionary Complex”, in New Formations, No. 4,

Page: 73-102.

 Duncan, Carol. 1995. “The Art Museum as Ritual”, in Carol Duncan’s Civilising
Rituals: Inside Public Art Museums. Routledge. Page 7-21.

Indian in exhibitions: historical case studies (Week Ten, 6th March)

 Breckenridge, Carol A. 1989. “The Aesthetics and Politics of Colonial Collecting:

India at World Fairs”, in Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 31, No.
2, Page 195-216.

 Guha-Thakurta,Tapati. 2004. “The Museum in the Colony: Collecting, Conserving,

Classifying”, in Tapati Guha-Thakurta’s Monuments, Objects, Histories:
Institutions of Art in Colonial and Postcolonial India. Permanent Black. Page: 43-
82.

Theme Seven: Things, Materials and Materiality

This theme will introduce students to theories that consider objects and things as
actively contributing to social processes.

Things and Materiality (Week Eleven, Monday 12th March)

 Miller, Daniel. 2005. “Materiality: an introduction”, in Daniel Miller’s (ed.)

Materiality. Duke University Press, Pages 1-50.

Things and Agency (Week Eleven, Tuesday 13th March)

 Gell, Alfred. 1998. Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory. Oxford: Clarendon
Press, Pages. 1-27.

Theme Eight: Different regimes of value in art

Section 1: Art and the Nation in India

This section will look at the way in which art emerged as a powerful site to articulate a
nationalist history in India pre- and post-independence.

The wave of Indian nationalism (Week Twelve, Monday 19th March)

 Mitter, Partha. “The Ideology of Swadeshi art”, in Partha Mitter’s Art and
Nationalism in Colonial India 1850-1922 Occidental Orientations. Oxford
University Press. Page 234-266.

National and modern art (Week Twelve, Tuesday 20th March)

 Thakurta, Tapati Guha. 1995. "Visualizing the Nation: The Iconography of a

'National Art' in Modern India, in Journal of Art and Ideas 27-28. Page: 7-41.
Section 2. Tourist Art and the Question of Authenticity

This section will focus on the conditions that led to the emergence of another category
called ‘tourist art’, and the will look into how this category challenges notions of
authenticity and ‘high art’

Questions of Authenticity (Week Thirteen, Monday 26th March)

 Spooner, Brian. 1996. “Weavers and Dealers: The authenticity of an Oriental

carpet”, in Arjun Appadurai (ed.) The Social Life of Things: Commodities in
Cultural Perspective. Cambridge University Press. Page 195-231.

Tourist Art (Week Thirteen, Tuesday 27th March)

 Phillips, Ruth. 1994. “Why Not Tourist Art? Significant Silences in Native
American Museum Representations”, in Gyan Prakash (ed.) After Colonialism:
Imperial Histories and Postcolonial Displacements. Page 98-118.

 Shiner, Larry. 1994. “’Primitive Fakes’, ‘Tourist Art’, and the Ideology of
Authenticity”, in The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism Vol. 52, No. 2, Page:
225-234.

Week Fourteen: Class Assignments

Monday 2nd April: Class presentations
Tuesday 3rd April: Written class test

Theme Nine: Contemporary Art World

Section 1: Art Fairs and Biennales

Business and contemporary art (Week Fifteen, Monday 9th April)

This section attempts to address how the proliferation of contemporary art from
developing nations challenges the Euro-centric paradigm of the art world
  Coitti, Manuela. 2012. “Post-colonial renaissance: ‘Indianness’, contemporary art
and the market in the age of neoliberal capital”, in Third World Quarterly Vol. 33,
No. 4, pp: 633-651.

 A four-part documentary film

Ethnic politics and contemporary art (Week 15, Tuesday 10th April)

 Philipse, Lotte. 2010. “From art to ethnic politics”, in Lotte Philipsen’s Globalizing
Art World: the art world’s new internationalism. Aarhus University Press. Page
147-178.

 Film screening

Section 2: Curator and Curatorial practices (Week Sixteen, Monday 16th April)

This section will introduce students to the figure of the ‘curator’ and curatorial practices,
and the way they have revised the role of art museums and galleries.

 Neill, O’Paul. 2007. “The Curatorial Turn: From Practice to Discourse”, in Judith
Rugg and Michè le Sedgwick (eds) Issues in Curating Contemporary Art and
Performance. Intellect. Page 13-28.

 Smith, Terry. 2012. “What is Contemporary Curatorial Thought?”, in Terry

Smith’s Thinking Contemporary Curating. Independent Curators International.
Page 27-57.

 Morgan, Jessica. 2103. “What is a Curator?” in Jens Hoffman (ed.) Ten

Fundamental Questions of Curating. Mousse Publishing. Page 21-32.

Week 16, Tuesday 17th April Concluding discussions and remarks