Kavolis (ii)

Vytautas Kavolis
Artistic Expression—A Sociological Analysis
(1968)

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[165]

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ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM
AND PURITANISM

Abstract expressionism, the imageless, energetic style of painting represented by Jackson Pollock and Franz Kline, is one of the few modern styles completely without analogues in any of the civilizations of the past. It has emerged in the only industrialized civilization in history. The partial correlation between abstract expressionism and an advanced stage of industrialization suggests that an economic determinant may have been important in the emergence of this style of painting. Our purpose will be to show that industrialism is inadequate, even on the level of sociological analysis, as an explanation of the abstract expressionist style.

Kavolis (i)

Vytautas Kavolis
Artistic Expression—A Sociological Analysis
(1968)

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[4] The most obvious, although excessively general, explanation of the societal universality of art is the assumption that affective orientation to the situation of action is one of the basic requisites for the successful functioning of the human society, and that art is a strategic means of fulfilling this need.

In the past, sociologists have been encumbered in their approach to art by inadequacies in their theory of the social functions of art.

Or have they been

encumbered

by

their approach ,

whereby everything must

function

in a rather narrow sense?