Art makes society: an introductory visual essay

Abstract

In this visual essay that serves as an introduction to the set of articles presented in this issue, we illustrate four ways that art makes society. We adopt a stance informed by recent perspectives on material culture, moving away from thinking about art purely in aesthetic terms, instead asking how art objects have significance in particular cultural and social contexts. Arguing that art is participatory as well as visually affecting, we first suggest that art creates sites of activity for shared interaction. Second, we discuss the varied ways that people use art to create and assert representational models for social relations. Third, we consider the varied roles of art as cultural capital, marking out members of society through shared forms of knowledge or access to art. Finally, we document the ways that art serves as a medium of exclusion and as a means for resisting authority or challenging power relations. We highlight the layered meanings inherent in many artworks.

Keywords:

• art
• material culture
• performance
• social relations
• archaeology

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to John Clark and Pierre Agrinier for permission to use Figure 10, to Johanna Farr for the use of Figure 1, and to Robert Mark and Evelyn Billo of Rupestrian CyberServices for use of Figure 2. We thank The British Museum, The Metropolitan Museum of Art and The Victoria and Albert Museum for use of varied images as noted in the captions, and the two anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful comments. We thank George Lau and Veronica Sekules for their editorial oversight and helpful comments.