This is Not Just a Painting

Author:   Bernard Lahire (l'ENS de Fontenay-Saint-Cloud) ,  Bernard Lahire
Publisher:   John Wiley and Sons Ltd
ISBN:  

9781509528691


Pages:   450
Publication Date:   15 March 2019
Format:   Hardback
Availability:   In stock   Availability explained
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This is Not Just a Painting


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Overview

In 2008, the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon acquired a painting called The Flight into Egypt which was attributed to the French artist Nicolas Poussin. Thought to have been painted in 1657, the painting had gone missing for more than three centuries. Several versions were rediscovered in the 1980s and one was passed from hand to hand, from a family who had no idea of its value to gallery owners and eventually to the museum. A painting that had been sold as a decorative object in 1986 for around 12,000 euros was acquired two decades later by the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon for 17 million euros. What does this remarkable story tell us about the nature of art and the way that it is valued? How is it that what seemed to be just an ordinary canvas could be transformed into a masterpiece, that a decorative object could become a national treasure? This is a story permeated by social magic  the social alchemy that transforms lead into gold, the ordinary into the extraordinary, the profane into the sacred. Focusing on this extraordinary case, Bernard Lahire lays bare the beliefs and social processes that underpin the creation of a masterpiece. Like a detective piecing together the clues in an unsolved mystery he carefully reconstructs the steps that led from the same material object being treated as a copy of insignificant value to being endowed with the status of a highly-prized painting commanding a record-breaking price. He thereby shows that a painting is never just a painting, and is always more than a piece of stretched canvass to which brush strokes of paint have been applied: this object, and the value we attach to it, is also the product of a complex array of social processes – with its distinctive institutions and experts – that lies behind it. And through the history of this painting, Lahire uncovers some of the fundamental structures of our social world. For the social magic that can transform a painting from a simple copy into a masterpiece is similar to the social magic that is present throughout our societies, in economics and politics as much as art and religion, a magic that results from the spell cast by power on those who tacitly recognize its authority. By following the trail of a single work of art, Lahire interrogates the foundations on which our perceptions of value and our belief in institutions rest and exposes the forms of domination which lie hidden behind our admiration of works of art.

Full Product Details

Author:   Bernard Lahire (l'ENS de Fontenay-Saint-Cloud) ,  Bernard Lahire
Publisher:   John Wiley and Sons Ltd
Imprint:   Polity Press
Dimensions:   Width: 16.30cm , Height: 5.10cm , Length: 23.10cm
Weight:   0.998kg
ISBN:  

9781509528691


ISBN 10:   1509528695
Pages:   450
Publication Date:   15 March 2019
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In stock   Availability explained
We have confirmation that this item is in stock with the supplier. It will be ordered in for you and dispatched immediately.

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Reviews

Few books can truly claim to be a tour de force. This is not Just a Painting by Bernard Lahire is truly one of those rare works. Beginning with the account of a purchase of a controversial work by Nicolas Poussin by the Musee des Beaux-Arts in Lyon, Lahire develops a creative and innovative approach to sociological theorizing, weaving together culture, politics, and social psychology as the basis for understanding how societies operate. The book is operatic in the breadth. Building on the intersection of magic, dominance, and the aesthetic, Lahire has presented a set of ideas that demands close attention and intense dialogue. Paintings are never just paintings; they are tools through which society conceptualizes itself. Gary Alan Fine, James E. Johnson Professor of Sociology, Northwestern University; author Talking Art: The Practice of Culture and the Culture of Practice in MFA Education. Lahire's wide-ranging and profoundly scholarly book digs deeply into the meanings sociology can find in and attribute to works of art. He puts his knowledge of art history and aesthetic theory to good use in the exploration and deepening of sociological investigations, nowhere better than in his discussion of the work of Poussin. Howard Becker, author of Art Worlds Gloriously eccentric... thought-provoking and original Catholic Herald superb...exhaustive...finely detailed... LA Review of Books


"""Few books can truly claim to be a tour de force. This is not Just a Painting by Bernard Lahire is truly one of those rare works. Beginning with the account of a purchase of a controversial work by Nicolas Poussin by the Musee des Beaux-Arts in Lyon, Lahire develops a creative and innovative approach to sociological theorizing, weaving together culture, politics, and social psychology as the basis for understanding how societies operate. The book is operatic in the breadth. Building on the intersection of magic, dominance, and the aesthetic, Lahire has presented a set of ideas that demands close attention and intense dialogue. Paintings are never just paintings; they are tools through which society conceptualizes itself."" Gary Alan Fine, James E. Johnson Professor of Sociology, Northwestern University; author Talking Art: The Practice of Culture and the Culture of Practice in MFA Education. ""Lahire’s wide-ranging and profoundly scholarly book digs deeply into the meanings sociology can find in and attribute to works of art. He puts his knowledge of art history and aesthetic theory to good use in the exploration and deepening of sociological investigations, nowhere better than in his discussion of the work of Poussin."" Howard Becker, author of Art Worlds “Gloriously eccentric… thought-provoking and original”  Catholic Herald ""superb...exhaustive...finely detailed...""  LA Review of Books"


Few books can truly claim to be a tour de force. This is not Just a Painting by Bernard Lahire is truly one of those rare works. Beginning with the account of a purchase of a controversial work by Nicolas Poussin by the Musee des Beaux-Arts in Lyon, Lahire develops a creative and innovative approach to sociological theorizing, weaving together culture, politics, and social psychology as the basis for understanding how societies operate. The book is operatic in the breadth. Building on the intersection of magic, dominance, and the aesthetic, Lahire has presented a set of ideas that demands close attention and intense dialogue. Paintings are never just paintings; they are tools through which society conceptualizes itself. Gary Alan Fine, James E. Johnson Professor of Sociology, Northwestern University; author Talking Art: The Practice of Culture and the Culture of Practice in MFA Education. Lahire's wide-ranging and profoundly scholarly book digs deeply into the meanings sociology can find in and attribute to works of art. He puts his knowledge of art history and aesthetic theory to good use in the exploration and deepening of sociological investigations, nowhere better than in his discussion of the work of Poussin. Howard Becker, author of Art Worlds


Few books can truly claim to be a tour de force. This is not Just a Painting by Bernard Lahire is truly one of those rare works. Beginning with the account of a purchase of a controversial work by Nicolas Poussin by the Musee des Beaux-Arts in Lyon, Lahire develops a creative and innovative approach to sociological theorizing, weaving together culture, politics, and social psychology as the basis for understanding how societies operate. The book is operatic in the breadth. Building on the intersection of magic, dominance, and the aesthetic, Lahire has presented a set of ideas that demands close attention and intense dialogue. Paintings are never just paintings; they are tools through which society conceptualizes itself. Gary Alan Fine, James E. Johnson Professor of Sociology, Northwestern University; author Talking Art: The Practice of Culture and the Culture of Practice in MFA Education. Lahire's wide-ranging and profoundly scholarly book digs deeply into the meanings sociology can find in and attribute to works of art. He puts his knowledge of art history and aesthetic theory to good use in the exploration and deepening of sociological investigations, nowhere better than in his discussion of the work of Poussin. Howard Becker, author of Art Worlds Gloriously eccentric... thought-provoking and original Catholic Herald


Author Information

Bernard Lahire is Professor of Sociology at the École Normale Superieure de Lyon. He has published over twenty books, including The Plural Actor (Polity 2010).

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