Mon dieu, Bourdieu!

In my presentation the other night, I mentioned that Martin Parr’s photography seems to be bound up in an awareness of looking. I linked this to voyeurism, and an aesthetic that implies a distancing or a sense of detachment in the viewer. I share Susan’s hunch that there’s something important relative to boredom here, though I still can’t put my finger on what it is. However, this morning I read the introduction to Pierre Bourdieu’s treatise on aestheticism (Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste), and it blew my mind! Maybe I can articulate some of the connections I was making here.

Bourdieu distinguishes between two ways of relating to artistic production. Firstly, there’s the ‘pure gaze’ of the educated elite. This is attributed to a social class who has been schooled in the kinds of reading, deciphering and decoding necessary to engage with art on the level of form. Whether they are aware of it or not, the privileged class is educated in these modes of communication from an early age, endowing them with Bourdieu calls “cultural competence.” This competence is what allows someone to identify an artwork as ‘Impressionistic’ or ‘Dadaist,’ or what have you, seemingly without having to consult any explicit system of knowledge. Alternately, it’s what allows someone to intuitively distinguish the mediums of photography and painting based on aesthetic criteria.

Yet, as Bourdieu points out, this kind of intuition is an illusion, since “aesthetic perception is necessarily historical” (1811). It is bound up in the individual’s relationship to culture. The pure gaze cannot be separated from knowledge of the form's history, and therefore an awareness of art as art. As Mike pointed out with his Nick Hornby quote, the intellectual’s cop-out explanation for a lot of art is something like “this is a film about film itself,” or “this is a painting about painting itself.” It seems wanky and silly, but for Bourdieu this kind of reading is in fact a social signifier: it implies that the elite viewer is more concerned by the ‘form, manner, and style’ of the artwork than by its function, something that would concern only a less educated audience. And that function can be something as simple as the act of meaning, of “signifying, saying something” (1811).

Central to this manner of perception is a cultivation of ‘disinterestedness’ or detachment. The further the artwork is removed from the demands of the everyday, from the demands of the body, for comfort, or for emotional fulfilment - essentially the needs that kitsch attempts to meet - the higher it is valued by the cultural elite. Bordieu writes: “the pure gaze implies a break with the ordinary attitude towards the world … and nothing is more distinctive, more distinguished, than the capacity to confer aesthetic status on objects that are banal or even ‘common,’ … or the ability to apply the principles of a ‘pure’ aesthetic to the most everyday choices of everyday life” (1812-13).

The tension lies between this first kind of perception, and that of the less privileged class. Bourdieu calls this second manner of perception the ‘popular aesthetic.’ In contrast to the pure aesthetic gaze, it can be characterized as something like a refusal of the refusal to engage with art on the level of content and enjoyment – it refuses distance. Rather, the popular aesthetic gratifies the senses, and affirms the “continuity between art and life” (1812).

So Martin Parr. When I was fumbling to explain the ambivalence of my reaction to his photography the other day, I think what I lacked were the terms to describe these two different ways of looking. Is it possible that our reactions to Parr are so complex because they occasion both ‘aesthetic’ and ‘popular’ modes of perception? We can read his work as a social commentary on the nature and value of art, on representation, but we can also identify with much of its content. This is because it speaks to the banal and ordinary concerns of our everyday lives: shopping, vacationing, riding the subway. It also satisfies the senses with its bright colours, interesting composition and even its humour.

One piece of evidence that points to this conclusion is that, despite the usefulness of Bourdieu’s terms, they are somewhat reductive in their opposition of high and low culture. In the Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, the introduction to Bourdieu notes this weakness, stating: “ in the more mixed forms of postmodernism, bodily pleasures are not outlawed and outright commercial ambitions on the part of artists do not lead to immediate condemnation by the elites” (1808). Is anyone’s opinion of Parr’s work affected by the knowledge that he does much of it commercially? Furthermore, I think our class has demonstrated that various factors, besides social class, come into play in our judgements of an art form. For instance, we've showed an unwillingness to dismiss certain forms of pop music based on their appeal to a mass audience.

But how does this relate to boredom? I still can’t say. Perhaps the key lies in disassociation and distance: the more detached we are from the object we’re observing, and the more we're made aware of its form rather than its content, the more bored we are...? But that seems over-simplistic. I’m not always more bored reading Joyce than Zadie Smith (though sometimes, sometimes…). What do you think?

Bourdieu, Pierre. “From Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste.” The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed. Vincent B. Leitch. New York: Norton, 2001. 1809-1814.