10 Art and society: some contemporary practices of art
The reproduction of social lifevis-a`-vis“infinite satisfaction”
Presenting a subject matter as a focus for thought and emotional attitude,
distinctively fused to the imaginative exploration of material is an aspect
of many social practices. As Dewey aptly notes, artistic making was
originally not directed toward galleries, museums, pedestals, or free readers.
Rather it was
part of the significant life of an organized community...Domestic utensils,
furnishings of tent and house, rugs, mats, jars, pots, bows, spears were
wrought with such delighted care that today we hunt them out and give them
places of honor in our art museums. Yet in their own time and place, such
things were enhancements of the processes of everyday life. Instead of being
elevated to a niche apart, they belonged to a display of prowess, the
manifestation of group and clan membership, worship of gods, feasting and
fasting, fighting, hunting, and all the rhythmic crises that punctuate the
stream of living.^1What we now call works of art were used within religious and clan rituals, or
they were elements of buildings, or parts of communal festivals involving
athletics along with song and ritual. However much care was devoted to their
making and however much attention was devoted to form and distinctive
expression, the objects and texts that were produced were used within the
circuits of the reproduction of social life.
(^1) Dewey,Art as Experience, pp. 6–7. Here Dewey echoes Hegel’s treatment of art in chapter 7
ofPhenomenology of Spirit, where art is understood as initially bound up with religion,
ritual, the cultivation of social solidarity, and athletics. See Hegel,Phenomenology of Spirit,
trans. A. V. Miller (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977), chapter 7, section B,“Religion in the
Form of Art,”pp. 424–53.
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