Howard S. Becker: Quotes about art

Howard S. Becker is American sociologist. Explore interesting quotes on art.
Howard S. Becker: 70   quotes 1   like

“(Art worlds) consist of all the people whose activities are necessary to the production of the characteristic works which that world, and perhaps others as well, define as art.”

Howard S. Becker

Source: Art Worlds (1982), p. 34.

People , World , Art

“Maybe the years I spent playing the piano in taverns in Chicago and elsewhere led me to believe that the people who did that mundane work were as important to an understanding of art as the better-known players who produced the recognized classics of jazz. Growing up … may have led me to think that the craftsman who help make art works areas important as the people who conceive them… Learning the "Chicago tradition" of sociology from Everett C. Hughes and Herbert Blumer surely led to a skepticism about conventional definitions of the objects of sociological study.”

Howard S. Becker

Source: Art Worlds (1982), p. ix.

People , Art , Understanding , Thinking

“The idea of an art world forms the backbone of my analysis. "Art world" is commonly used by writers on the arts in a loose and metaphoric way, mostly to refer to the most fashionable people associated with those newsworthy objects and events that command astronomical prices. I have used the term in a more technical way, to denote the the network of people whose cooperative activity, organized via their joint knowledge of conventional means of doing things, produce(s) the kind of art works that art world is noted for.”

Howard S. Becker

Source: Art Worlds (1982), p.x.

People , World , Art , Way

“[Professionals] define the problems of their art similarly and agree on criteria for an acceptable solution. They know the history of previous attempts to solve those problems, or some of it, and the new problems those attempts generated. They know the history of work like theirs, so that they, their support personnel, and their audiences can understand what they have attempted and how and to what degree it works.”

Howard S. Becker

Source: Art Worlds (1982), p. 230.

Art , History , Understanding , Support

“[ Folk art, consists of] work done by ordinary people in the course of their lives, work seldom thought of by those who make or use it as art at all.”

Howard S. Becker

Source: Art Worlds (1982), p. 245 as quoted in: John Ross Hall, Mary Jo Neitz, Marshall Battani (2003) Sociology On Culture. p. 196.

People , Art

“All artistic work, like all human activity, involves the joint activity of a number, often a large number of people. Through their cooperation, the art work we eventually see or hear comes to be and continues to be. The work always shows signs of that cooperation.”

Howard S. Becker

Source: Art Worlds (1982), p. 1.

People , Art

“John Cage said that music is the moral evaluation of sound. We might generalize his remark: when we speak of art, we make a moral evaluation of the relative worth of the various contributions to a work. It is no surprise that many of the participants differ with more conventional evaluations and rank their own contributions as more important than that of the artist as conventionally defined.”

Howard S. Becker

Art Worlds (1982)

Art , Music

“The dominant tradition in the sociology of art… defines art as something more special, in which creativity comes to the surface and the essential character if the society expresses itself, especially in the great work of the genius.”

Howard S. Becker

Source: Art Worlds (1982), p.xi.

Art