Chapter 14 - Normative Integration of the Avant-Garde? Traditionalism in the Art Worlds of Vienna, Hamburg, and Paris

Abstract

This chapter presents a study that explores the habits, preferences, and value orientations of the people who belong to the art world. In the study, the assumptions regarding the assimilation of the artistic and intellectual milieu of avant-garde art to the values of the “middle class” or to the “predominant values” were reformulated and applied to the three European art worlds. The study is based on random samples of visitors at important exhibitions with international contemporary art in three cities in 1993 (Vienna), 1993–94 (Hamburg), and 1995 (Paris). The comparability among exhibitions is always a problem; this problem was solved by concentrating on the same kind of art and on institutions that stand in a relation of homology. Whereas the assumption of dissolution of the boundaries between art and society is clearly refuted by the analyses of the General Social Survey data in the American case, mixed evidence are found concerning the internal differentiation of the European art worlds. The findings show that Vienna is still characterized in its center by the individualistic and antibourgeois tendencies. On the other hand, social position does not differentiate the Paris art world in this respect.