La soglia e i custodi delle arti. The Pale and Gatekeepers of the Arts

Abstract

For this year’s issue Venezia Arti is set to examine the idea of threshold in the arts, primarily meaning the limit or boundary that separates art from what is not considered as such. The definition embraces every possible kind of frontier between the art world and that, which is alien to it, hence observing the arts from the perspective of Pierre Bourdieu’s field of forces, where interdependencies and positions among numerous actors legitimize artistic production. The focus thus shifts to the edge of the art world and to those who are identified as gatekeepers and possibly modify the barriers of a specific artistic discipline. Hereafter all subjects and groups who hold an institutional role (à la George Dickie) in the determination of different arts spheres – whether by implicit or explicit collective approval – should be included in the consideration. As a consequence, rather than focussing on a singular artist, centre of attention is the set of actors that mutually constitute the art worlds in a given time and place, uncovering the structural interrelations between people that originate art in Howard Becker’s view.