Abstract
How do contemporary artists conceptualize artistic meaning? Where do they locate it within their work and how do they conceive of the aesthetic experience? And what is it that they see themselves as offering viewers with their art? These questions connect to the heart of the artistic endeavor, yet sociologists have been reluctant to ask them. In this chapter, I draw on in-depth interviews with 26 contemporary artists working in San Francisco, California, to explore how they conceptualize the meaning of art and their reflections on what aesthetic experiences offer. I find that artists delineate three distinct modalities of meaning, differing in how meaning is constructed, how it may be apprehended or received by viewers, and in what it offers.
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Notes
- 1.
Within this decoding model, Bourdieu allows for both conscious (i.e., intellectual acts of decoding) and unconscious applications generated through the habitus (Bourdieu, 1968, 1984), manifesting as a kind of practical mastery operating below the level of conscious awareness, (Bourdieu, 1984:86). His later work distances further from the earlier “intellectualist conception,” in emphasizing perception as a practice and the aesthetic sense as a practical sense (Bourdieu, 1996:314–15).
- 2.
See also Acord and DeNora (2008) for an example of how responses to contemporary art can be embodied on an emotional level.
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Mullen, A.L. (2022). Locating Meaning in Contemporary Art: How Artists Conceptualize the Aesthetic Experience. In: McCormick, L. (eds) The Cultural Sociology of Art and Music. Cultural Sociology. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-11420-5_6
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