``...Hauser's stuff is, well, cheaper than Nyquil, I suppose -- sociological description, not aesthetic analysis...'' Dennis Redmond
``..I mean, despite it being a pretty good survey of art, Hauser's Social History of art (which Paglia touts in the below writing) is a paradigm of orthodox marxist reductionism applied to art history. It was very satisfying as a young student to read this book because it provided me with a simple and sweeping analysis of art history. Basically all you had to do was applaud and call "progressive" any art that was "realist" or striving for that (Giotto, Courbet Millet) and denounce as "bourgeios decadence" anything that did not follow that formula....'' Thomas Seay
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(Too bad I missed most of this thread---was it on PEN-L or somewhere else?)
While Hauser is one of my favorites, I have to admit both of the above comments have enough accuracy to damage, yet neither is quite enough to reveal what Hauser contributed. If either of you are interested, you should look at both `The Sociology of Art' and `The Philosophy of Art History' which were published (1958, 1982 posthumously) after the Social History (1951).
Both of these later works get far beyond a simplistic reductionism of style to progressive or decadent---which isn't really all that accurate a characterization of SHA. Hauser's project wasn't really aesthetic analysis, but rather how to integrate the study of art history with sociological and philosophical perspectives into a more general and Marxist conception of historiography.
I found Hauser to be a very good introduction into how to deal with a lot of different developments from the Frankfurt School through Jameson. But none of these writers including Dennis's favorite Adorno can stand by themselves. They all need each other in some way or another.
Also, the Paglia quote to the effect that Hauser was somehow to be read as either an opposition to or as a substitute for the Frankfurt School, is just ridiculous. They are not in opposition. They complements each other. With the exception of Jameson, it is probably roughly accurate that current British and American cultural studies writers have no where near the erudition or mastery of either Hauser or the Frankfurt School.
But the reason is that both the US and UK academic establishment spent at least the last half-century in a cold war ideological suppression of any humanities tradition outside their own. In the UK this appeared as an anti-Hegelian thread in art history lead by Gombrick.
Its two. Gotta go to bed. We could always get into substance instead of personalities at some, don't you think?
Chuck Grimes