Cultural Counterpoints in Society and Art

Abstract

As a teaching sociologist, with a few close artist friends who like to talk and to eat, I have spent the sociological equivalent of the thousand-and-one nights talking about art, for example, a Lois Johnson print or a Phil Simkin installation, in terms of one or another of the classic sociological theorists' insights into the dilemmas of life in modern times. Occasionally, the connections have been uncannily direct: Simkin's Secrets piece was the installation equivalent of the Berlin sociologist Georg Simmel's turn-of-the-century analysis of secrecy in urban society.' But whether the connections were direct or indirect, the links between sociological theory and particular works of art were repeatedly plausible. In retrospect, this is not surprising: the European theorists I drew on most frequently-in our dining out salon-were, in addition to Simmel, Emile Durkheim and Max Weber. All were born in the nineteenth century and their careers extended into the twentieth century. All observed the birth of modernism in art and had intense and complex responses to the evolving social environments of their time. If there are connections between the content of art and characteristics of modern life, then connections between them should be reflected in the concerns of sociology as well. Thus encouraged, a more general review of this phenomenon is in order, based on four decades of art viewing and using sociological reference points. My general premise: there are, from the 1950s to the 1990s, several significant cultural counterpoints in social behavior and in innovative art, consisting of intersecting attitudes and choices of actions; they are contrasting and/or parallel, depending on the particular period. In the 1950s, in art, it was the intensity of work, expressive individualism, and the spectacular international successes of first-generation Abstract Expressionists that provoked sociological discussion. According to the sociologist David Riesman, in The Lonely Crowd, we were, in the 1950s, moving toward a new character type, the other-directed American who was socialized to attend closely to others in the immediate environment and to look to them for guidance and confirmation.2 Older types had been inner-directed or tradition-directed. The Abstract Expressionists were both intensely sociable in their own group and, at the same time, firmly committed to finding their own unique mode of painting within the modernist tradition. Thus, they represented a combination of Riesman's otherand inner-directed types. They were as committed to their shared search for great painting as other, more ordinary conformist groups were committed to their organizational lives. Of course they were, in their own views, alienated from society, as the sociologists Bernard Rosenberg and Norris Fliegel demonstrated in their 1960s interview study, The Vanguard Artist.3 From his vantage point at Fortune magazine, the sociologist William Whyte's description of the 1950s is the clearest cultural counterpoint to the Abstract Expressionists; this new American type was fully other-directed and devoted to the large business, government, or legal organization in which he worked. The tendency of the organization man to fit into his surroundings contrasts with the outsider stance of the Abstract Expressionist artist, yet both adapted to institutional pressures brought about by inclusion and success in the corporate environment and the art world, respectively.4 In the 1960s it was the shock of Pop, the excitement of Happenings, and the cool of Minimalism that provided the grist for sociological milling. Happenings directly challenged viewers' perceptions of social patterns and of conformity to conventions. Pop raised questions of meaning: Was it art? What was the message? Was it the celebration or parody of our massconsumer world? The functional role of art in society is at issue in these questions. In Parsonian functional analysis, artists are specialists in the creation of expressive symbols. Sociological theorist Talcott Parsons pointed out that art may trigger conflict in society because of our preference for affective neutrality in our sciencebased, rational culture.5 Both Happenings and Pop art evoked strong emotional responses in the 1960s. Artworks in these styles challenged social conventions and offered models for new ways to relate to our culture and to one another. At the same time, the anti-poverty, anti-war, civil-rights, and alternative-life-style movements provided us with real-life parallels to these art models for change. Herbert Marcuse's one-dimensional was a negative image of narrow conventionality, contrasting with the critical culture of these art and real-life alternatives.6