It appears that the Orlando Museum of Art was duped. In 2022, they hosted an exhibition of the work of the late artist Jean-Michel Basquiat. Basquiat, who died in 1988, was a New York graffiti artist and Neo-expressionist painter. To say his work was world-renowned and carried a hefty price tag would be an understatement. In 2017, his piece Untitled sold at auction for $110.5 million, making it the most expensive piece ever sold by an American artist. The 2022 exhibit titled Heroes and Monsters was supposed to include unseen examples of Basquiat’s work. Unfortunately, the paintings were fake. The FBI Art Crime Team seized 25 art pieces, and the museum director was fired. The kerfuffle left the museum’s reputation in such a tattered state that a year later, they decided to sue the exhibit’s sponsors in hopes of recovering not only money spent on the event but also the shards of their legacy. The fallout from this story opens the door for us to consider art from a sociological perspective. What is art?
From a sociological perspective, art is closely tied to culture, a society’s socially learned and shared ideas, behaviors, and material components. What is art in one culture is not necessarily seen as art in another culture. The indigenous people of Papua New Guinea may not consider Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa art, even though millions of other people visit it each year.
For our purposes, there are two categories under the rubric of culture. First, there is material culture, the physical artifacts that represent components of society. Material culture consists of those things made by humans you can physically touch. This can include a painting, a quilt, a necklace, or a piece of pottery. If a person made it and you can physically touch it, it is material culture.
On the other hand, nonmaterial culture consists of ideas and symbols representing components of society. Language and customs fall into this category. The overarching feature of nonmaterial culture is that humans created it, but you cannot physically touch it. That poetry competition you attended last week and the Sufi Whirling Dervishes’ hypnotic spin are nonmaterial culture forms. Interestingly, nonmaterial culture often has its material counterpart. You can’t touch spoken poetry, but you can touch the paper it is written on. While you can’t touch the belief and mysticism of the Whirling Dervish, you can (but shouldn’t!) touch their tall felt hat known as a “sikke.”
The art of Basquiat discussed above is associated with the dominant and elite members of society, also known as high culture. High culture comprises the goods, products, and services patronized by the upper-class members of society. Aspects of high culture are typically out of reach for the average citizen in society. By comparison, average citizens can usually afford popular culture, cultural characteristics the masses adopted, imitated, and idolized. This includes goods, products, and services patronized by society’s middle and lower classes. Instead of Basquiat’s original work of art, those who can only afford popular culture might buy a print or poster of his work. Interestingly, people who patronize high culture also engage in popular culture. For example, even though they can afford to attend the opera, they also go to the movies. Rarely is the reverse true because people who can only afford popular culture do not have the means to afford high culture.
Art is categorized into specific genres, whose followers make up subcultures, a distinct set of cultural characteristics shared by a minority of people in society. Examples of subcultures in the art world include Cubism, Impressionism, and the aforementioned Neo-expressionism, just to name a few. Followers of the various subcultures are often interested in the symbolic nature of art. For them, symbols are ideas or objects that have a shared meaning to groups of people. Symbols of beauty, spirituality, power, and death are prevalent in works of art.
On occasion, members of society may classify certain forms of art as taboo because they violate formal norms that cause revulsion and the most severe social sanctions. Examples include the display of the United States flag on the floor or images of religious figures that are prohibited from depiction, like Islam’s Prophet Mohammed. In these instances, values, collective ideas about what is desirable and undesirable in society, are what determine what is taboo and how people respond.
From a sociological perspective, art is based on cultural identities, social relationships, beliefs, and values. These vary by society and are also unique to the individual members of society. Art is relative to time, place, and culture. So, in the end, what is art?
Thompson is a co-owner of UITAC Publishing. UITAC’s mission is to provide high-quality, affordable, and socially responsible online course materials.
Images used in this blog:
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Kostiantyn Voitenko on ShutterStock. This image has not been altered.
- “MACBA Basquiat’s Self-Portrait” by Jorge Franganillo is licensed under CC BY 2.0. This image has not been altered.
- “Whirling Dervishes” by Vladimer Shioshvili is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0. This image has not been altered.
- “Lamborghini Sián” by Rutger van der Maar is licensed under CC BY 2.0. This image has not been altered.
