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Problems of the Sociology of Art: the Work of Pierre Francastel

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Peter Burke
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European Journal of Sociology / Archives Européennes de Sociologie , Volume 12 , Issue 1 , May 1971 , pp. 141 - 154
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Copyright © Archives Européenes de Sociology 1971

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References

page 141 note * Francastel's, best-known works include Peinture et societé (London, Audin, 1951)Google Scholar; Art et technique au XIXe et XXe siécles (Paris, Ed. Minuit, 1956)Google Scholar; La réalité figurative (Paris, Gonthier, 1965)Google Scholar; La figure et le lieu (Paris, Gallimard, 1967)Google Scholar. These works are henceforth abbreviated to… P&S; A&T; RF; F&L.

(1) Francastel's, article, ‘Main trends European art’, is translated in Traux, G. S. MÉe- and Crouzet, F., The nineteenth century world (New York 1963)Google Scholar, and a section from his essay on “the destruction of a plastic space” is translated in Sypher, W. (ed.), Art History (New York 1963)Google Scholar.

(2) Little has been written about Francastel, but an interesting article is Perottino, S., La notion de structure dans l'oeuvre de Francastel, La Penséee (1967), n° 135, pp. 153–164Google Scholar.

(3) P&S, p. 45; F&L, p. 28. Here and elsewhere the translations are my own.

(4) See especially the essay “Imagination plastique, vision théeâatrale et signification humaine”, repr. in RF, pp. 211 sq.

(5) On the grammar of art, F&L, p. 144. The analogy with Barthes and Lâevi-Strauss on the languages of clothes, food, and kinship is obvious. A discussion of the ‘disanalogies’ is Mothersill, M., Is art a language ? The Journal of Philosophy, LXII (1965), 559–572CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

(6) P&S, p. 7.

(7) Warburg, A., Sandro Botticellis Geburt der Venus und Frühling (1893), Italian, trans, in his La Rinascita del Paganesimo antico (Florence 1966), pp. 65Google Scholar sq. E. Panofsky, , Die Perspektive als symbolische Form, in Vorträge der Bibl. Warburg, 1924–1925, pp. 258–330Google ScholarCharbonnier, G., Entretiens avec Claude Léevi-Strauss (Paris 1961), esp. the 5th and 8th interviewsGoogle Scholar.

(8) Francastel makes his general position clear in the essay “Technique et esthéetique”, repr. in RF, pp. 58 sq. Detailed discussion of the XIXth and XXTh centuries throughout A&T. Classic expressions of the attitudes he attacks are Mumford, L., Technics and Civilisation (London 1934)Google Scholar, and Giedion, S., Mechanization takes command (New York 1948)Google Scholar. For positions similar to Francastel's, see Friedmann, G., Problèemes humains du machinisme industriel (Paris 1946)Google Scholar, and KoyrÉe, A., Les philosophes et la machine, Critique, IV (1948), 324–333, 610–629Google Scholar.

(9) P&S, p. 29.

(10) Compare Piaget, J., La repréesentation de l'espace chez l'enfant (Paris 1948)Google Scholar, trans, as The child's conception of space (London 1956)Google Scholar.

(11) P&S, pp. 65 sq.

(12) P&S, pp. 129 sq.

(13) P&S, p. 56, and Un mythe poéetique et social du Quattrocento, repr. in RF, p. 272 sq. Compare Mauss, M., Essai sur le don (Paris 1925)Google Scholar, trans, as The gift (London 1954)Google Scholar.

(14) These lectures were printed, after the war, as L'Histoire de l'art instrument de la germctnique (Paris 1945)Google Scholar. On Ruskin see Francastel'S, essay, La Venise cende Ruskin et les archéeologues, in Pellegrini, C. (ed.), Venezia nelle letterature moderne (Venice/Roma 1961)Google Scholar.

(15) On the Xllth century, Francastel, P., L'humanisme roman (Rodez 1942), esp. pp. 15, 86, 121. On the XIXth century, P&S, pp. 119 sqGoogle Scholar.

(16) On problems of method see the essay Art et sociologie, repr. in RF, pp. 29 sq.

(17) Francastel, P., Baroque et classique, Annales, XII (1957), 222–207Google Scholar.

(18) Francastel, P., Girardon (Paris 1928); L'humanisme roman, op. cit. pp. 143 sqGoogle Scholar.

(19) See the essays La Contre-Réelorme et les arts, repr. in RF, esp. pp. 384 sq., and Un mythe poéetique et social du Quattrcento, repr. in RF, pp. 272 sq.; and A. Varagnac, , Civilisation traditionnelle et genres de vie (Paris 1948)Google Scholar.

(20) This case is argued in the essay, Art et histoire, repr. in RF, pp. 73 sq.

(21) The Chevreul example is discussed in A&T, pp. 137–138.

(22) See the essay, Imagination et réealitée dans l'architecture civile du Quattrocento, repr. in RF, pp. 290 sq.

(23) Francastel discovered Lukáacs late, and, when he had actually read him, was more generous; see RF, p. 82. He attacked Barthes (RF, pp. 75 sq) though Barthes' emphasis on structure and on myth is much like Francastel's. See Barthes, R., Mythologies (Paris 1957)Google Scholar, and ÉElements de séemiologie (Paris 1964)Google Scholar, trans, as Elements of Semiology (London 1967)Google Scholar.

(24) For Febvre's, conception of art history see his Combats pour l'histoire2 (Paris 1965), pp. 295 sqGoogle Scholar.

(25) A&T, pp. 123 sq. Febvre discussed the history of perception, long before McLuhan, , in La religion de Rabelais (Paris 1942), PP. 461Google Scholar sq. His views are themselves discussed in Barbu, Z., Problems of historical psychology (London 1960), pp. 21 sqGoogle Scholar.

(26) The tree of life appears in P&S, p. 77.

(27) A&T, p. 255 denounces Antal and Hauser.

(28) P. Francastel, Problèemes de la sociologie de 1'art, in Gurvitch, G., Traitée de sociologie (Paris 1960)Google Scholar.

(29) M. Griff, The commercial artist, in Stein, M. R., Vidich, A. J., and White, D. M., Identity and Anxiety (Glencoe 1960)Google Scholar; Griff, M., Conflicts of the Artist in Mass Society, Diogenes, XLVI (1964), 54–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rosenberg, B. and Fliegel, N., The Vanguard Artist (Chicago 1965)Google Scholar; White, H. C. and White, C. A., Canvases and careers (New York 1965)Google Scholar, F. Hartt, Art and Freedom in Quattrocento Florence, in Sandler, L. F., Essays in memory of Karl Lehmann (New York 1964)Google Scholar; Haskell, F., Patrons and Painters (London 1963)Google Scholar; Gombrich, E. H., The Early Medici as Patrons of Art, repr, in his Norm and Form (London 1966)Google Scholar; Meiss, M., Painting in Florence and Siena after the Black Death (Princeton 1951)Google Scholar; Pelles, G., Art Artists and Society (Englewood Cliffs 1963)Google Scholar; and, among his other articles, M. SCHAPIRO, The Sculpture of Souillac, in Koehler, W. R. W., Medieval Studies in Memory of A. Kingley Porter (Cambridge, Mass., 1939)Google Scholar.

(30) Fischer, E., Von der Notviendigkeit der Kunst (Dresden 1959), English trans.: Harmondsworth 1963, esp. pp. 118, 147Google Scholar.

(31) Antal, F., Florentine Painting and its Social Background (London 1947), esp. pp. 310 sqGoogle Scholar.

(32) Kavolis, V., Artistic Expression. A sociological analysis (Ithaca 1968)Google Scholar.

(33) Wölfflin, H., Kunstgeschichtliche Grundbegriffe (1915), English trans.: Principles of Art History (New York 1950)Google Scholar; E. D'Ors, Du baroque (Paris 1935)Google Scholar.

(34) P. Bohannan, Artist and Critic in Ditermian African Society, in Smith, M. W., The Artist in Tribal Society (London 1961)Google Scholar; the whole symposium is extremely relevant to this problem. Guiart, J., The Arts of the South Pacific (Paris/London 1963)Google Scholar.

(35) Duvignaud, J., Sociologie de l'art (Paris 1967Google Scholar. Gurvitch, G., Déeterminismes sociaux et libertée humaine (Paris 1955), part iiiGoogle Scholar.

(36) Evidence of the split: Duvignaud and Kavolis focus on the macrosocial, Encyclowhile Gombrich and Haskell discuss the microsocial. But a typology of patronage systems is put forward by Edwards, J. M. B. in Sills, D. L. (ed.), International Encyclowhile paedia of the Social Sciences, vol. III p. 452Google Scholar.

page 154 note * I should like to thank Professor Thomas Bottomore and the members of his graduate sociology seminar at the University of Sussex for helpful criticisms of an earlier draft of this paper.