Inside Culture – Art and Class in the American Home - Hardcover

Halle, David

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0226313670 ISBN 13: 9780226313672

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 1993

Synopsis

David Halle's idea was to connect culture to everyday life by showing how people actually use the artifacts of culture paintings, photographs, sculpture - in the most intimate of all settings: the home. Halle takes the reader on a tour of 160 homes in and around New York City. From affluent townhouses on Manhattan's Upper East Side and rowhouses in blue-collar Brooklyn to the suburbs of Long Island, Halle walked through living rooms and dens, inventoried the works on display, and talked to homeowners about the art around them. The result is a portrait of the uses of art and a look at the meanings of art for its primary audience - those who buy it and live with it. Are there differences in artistic preferences between social classes or races or between urban and suburban homes? Similarities? How do choices in art works - and the way we display them - speak to our dreams, desires, pleasures, and fears? And what do they say about the real cultural boundaries between elite and popular, high and low? Halle examines landscapes, both priceless heirlooms and mass-produced sunsets; abstract paintings and prints; "primitive" sculpture; and the vibrantly coloured portraits of religious art. He also discusses the gatherings of family photographs that fill every home. Why have saints vanished from religious art? How do liberal whites and middle-class blacks find different meanings in the African art they both proudly display? What accounts for the disappearance of the painted family portrait? Why are landscapes universally popular? What accounts for the popularity of abstract art in affluent homes, but nowhere else? These are just some of the fascinating questions Halle confronts. Refusing easy generalisations about culture and class, Halle shows that art has a different set of meanings outside museums and galleries; for its consumers, the experience of art isn't always what artists and critics say it is. With floor plans, drawings, and photographs, this book should be enjoyed on many levels. It describes the way a broad cross-section of people live with art. It records an astonishing variety of artistic experience. And it changes the ongoing conversation about what culture contains, what it controls, and what the products called "art" mean.

About this title

From the Back Cover

David Halle's idea was simple but radical: to connect culture to everyday life by showing how people actually use the artifacts of culture - paintings, photographs, sculpture - in the most intimate of all settings: the home. In the first book of its kind, Halle gives a fascinating account of the uses and meaning of art for those who buy it and live with it. His study ranges from the affluent town houses on Manhattan's Upper East Side and row houses in blue-collar Brooklyn to middle- and upper-middle class suburbs on Long Island, resulting in an unprecedented portrait of the meanings of art for its primary audience. Are there differences in artistic preferences between social classes or races or between urban and suburban homes? Similarities? How do choices in art works - and the way we display them - speak to our dreams, desires, pleasures, and fears? And what do they say about the real cultural boundaries between elite and popular, high and low? Halle examines landscapes, both priceless heirlooms and mass-produced sunsets; abstract paintings and prints; "primitive" sculpture; and the vibrantly colored portraits of religious art. He also discusses the gatherings of family photographs that fill every home. Inside Culture also explores the architecture and design of the houses, from the eclipse of the formal dining room to the landscape of urban backyards. Refusing easy generalizations about culture and class, Halle shows that art has a different set of meanings outside the rarefied air of museums and galleries. He challenges received opinion about the role of the audience in the history and reception of twentieth-century art to show that the experience of art isn't always what artistsand critics say it is. With floor plans, drawings, and dozens of photographs, this lively book can be enjoyed on many levels. It describes for the first time the way a broad cross section of people live with art. It records for the first time the astonishing variety of artistic experience. And it permanently changes our ongoing conversation about what culture contains, what it controls, and what the products called "art" really mean.

About the Author

David Halle is professor of sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles, and director of the summer travel program, UCLA in New York: Cities and Cultures. He is also an adjunct professor at the City University of New York's Graduate Center and School of Professional Studies and the author of America's Working Man and Inside Culture, also published by the University of Chicago Press.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 0226313670
• ISBN 13: 9780226313672
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 278