>Carrol Cox <cbcox at mail.ilstu.edu>:
>
>>>A theory of art would be an explanation of art in the whole complex of
>
>social relations within which it exists. <<
This seems wrong to me.
A theory of art would be an examination of the specific techniques of art itself, not a sociology of those who are involved in it.
The latter would no more be a theory of art than Marx's critique of the factory system is a tract on engineering.
Art, as Trotsky and Lukacs argued, has its own laws, that are not reducible to the vulgar proposition 'who pays the piper calls the tune'.
I remember a particularly painful attempt at an
>explanation of art in the whole complex of
>
>social relations within which it exists
in Terry Eagleton's Literature and Ideology. There Eagleton (going through an Althusserian phase) erected an otiose structure of 'modes of production', and subordinate 'literary modes of production'. As the argument developed these were abbreviated to 'MP' and 'LMP' making the text look like a work of neo-classical economics, or game theory. And all of this to make the point that Dickens works were published in serialisation, so they tended to have cliff-hanger endings.
Needless to say, nothing much was learnt about the works themselves, but a great deal about the roles of publishers, lending libraries, drawing rooms and the like. -- Jim heartfield