Sociology of the Arts. Victoria D. Alexander
mirror of aspects it does reflect. Similarly, you know from personal experience that you are not a “cultural dope.” You might get ideas from television or novels, but you do not uncritically adopt all of them just because you saw or read them. And great painting and great music is more likely to bore than uplift you if it is forced upon you by your parents or your school.
This chapter offers a brief critique of reflection and shaping approaches from the point of view of the “Cultural Diamond.” This model forms the basis for the sociological work covered in Part II of this book (Chapters 5–12). These chapters show the strength of the approach. We will address its weaknesses in Part III.
Wendy Griswold (1986) developed the idea of the cultural diamond. Put simply, the diamond is a square turned on one end like a kite. It has four corners, representing (1) artistic products, (2) creators of art, (3) consumers of art, and (4) the wider society. These four points are linked (with six lines) as in Figure 4.1. Griswold (2013) argues that to understand art and society, researchers must take account of all four corners and all six links in the diamond. Art is created by an artist or group of artists. It does not spring miraculously into form without human intervention. And art does not reach “society” at large. Instead, it reaches a particular public made up of individuals embedded in a social system. How consumers use art, what meanings it elicits in their minds, and how it eventually penetrates the general society is mediated by these individuals and is affected by their attitudes and values, their social location, and their social networks. “Society” (including wider norms, values, laws, institutions, and social structures) makes up the final node on the diamond. It affects artists, the distribution system, the consumers of culture, and through these, the shape of art.
Figure 4.1 Griswold’s Cultural Diamond.
Source: Adapted from Griswold (2013: p. 15).
The cultural diamond is a heuristic or a metaphor that sets out, in general terms, the idea that relationships exist among these points. It strongly suggests that all four points are important in understanding art sociologically. As Griswold states (2013: 16),
the cultural diamond is an accounting device intended to encourage a fuller understanding of any cultural object’s relationship to the social world…a complete understanding of a given cultural object would require understanding all four points and six links.
The cultural diamond is not a theory, however. It does not specify what the relationships among the points on the diamond only that some relationship exists.
A Better Diamond
The picture of the cultural diamond devised by Griswold has the elegance of simplicity. I modify the cultural diamond in my presentation of research on art worlds, however, to demonstrate some important links that the simple diamond obscures (see Figure 4.2). Art is communication. Art has to get from the people who create it to the people who consume it. That is, art is distributed by some person, organization, or network. As we shall see, the shape of the distribution system affects what kinds of art get distributed widely, narrowly or not at all. The simple diamond lumps the distribution of art objects together with artistic creation. Separating these two allows us to see that the layers intervening between artists and consumption can be many, as in popular music where feedback from the audience to the artist comes via the recording industry mainly in the form of market indicators, or few, as is the case for the consumers of pub music who are more directly in contact with the musicians who perform there. Distinguishing artists (or the production system) from distribution systems also allows us to see that artists can stand apart from the distribution system (as do most novelists), or can be deeply embedded within it (as are many television script writers).
In addition, many forms of art become divorced from the artist after they enter a distribution system. Art museums, for instance, circulate paintings, sculptures and other works. In some cases, their exhibitions can make or break the reputation of a living artist. But most of the time, the artists have long since died. Even living artists might not benefit directly from museum exhibitions if their canvasses belong to someone else.
Figure 4.2 Modified Cultural Diamond.
A final advantage of a diamond with an embedded distribution node is that it breaks the direct link, in the simple diamond, between art object and society. This link, unlike the others, is not a true link but a metaphorical one, and reminds us of the flaws of over‐simplified reflection and shaping arguments. In other words, the cultural diamond suggests that links between art and society can never be direct, as they are mediated by the creators of art on the one hand, and the receivers of it on the other. It critiques reflection and shaping approaches by pointing out, from the production side, that artistic conventions and production techniques, not to mention artists, influence the content of artworks, and the filtering effects of distribution systems determine which cultural products reach audiences. It critiques reflection and shaping approaches from the consumption side, by reminding us that cultural products are received by a variety of different audiences, not by “society,” and that people vary in what types of cultural products they consume and in what meanings they take from them. It demonstrates that sociologists are interested in studying the production and consumption of art. But the new diamond also preserves the society node, to indicate that sociologists continue to be interested in the relationships, albeit mediated ones, between art and society.
Part IIA
The Cultural Diamond
The Production of Culture
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