File spoon-archives/bourdieu.archive/bourdieu_2002/bourdieu.0204, message 11


Date: Tue, 30 Apr 2002 00:39:33 +0100
From: el don <eldon-AT-panix.com>
Subject: Re: RE: Re: Missed


At 12:35 -0400 29/4/02, KitKatF8-AT-aol.com wrote:
>wow.  It is nice to hear another undergraduate on the list.  I am
>currently writing my senior thesis on the Guggenheim Museum, and
>looking at the increasing influence on consumerism within the museum
>space and how this has changed the conceptions of what a museums
>"job" really is, and what art is.
>
>I have been utilizing "Production of culture" and "Love of art" mostly.
>
>We all have our "habitus" right

life's companion cannot help railing at the royal family. every time
something monarchical comes on the teev, it's acid-tonguesville here.

we've had a spate of this recently.
what with the queen mum dying and all.

but the relevance of this to the above note is in the recent
unearthing and refurbishment of the queen's weddy drag a purpose for
the golden (?) jubilee. H.M. having been on the throne for 50 odd
years now.

so life's companion is most unquiet at the news item in which several
ladies are engaged on the norman hartnell original re-sewing up the
delicate fabric properly and attaching the requisite jewels to bring
it back to 1953 splendour. we even get footage of the young princess
gliding down the aisle of westminster abbey on phil's arm in the
dress. it is said to have wowed them back then, them what was used to
the privations of the war years, the public, used to vouchers and
lack of this and that.

and so the problem of the expense comes up. what it better could have
been used for in those days (the cost of the dress even then, sends
the modern day head reeling), and the fact that the monarchy are
leeches on the public purse, living in luxury while the rest of the
public get by with their habitus....

but, this museum piece, the wedding dress, isn't it an art work too?
all art, performances alike, notoriously expensive to produce. what
about the life of the public ungraced by expensive clothes they could
never afford - but at least could get to see, admire, get dreamy
about....oh i know, it never bought johnny a meal, or a schoolbook,
but then, most art doesn't either. it has no real material function
save as commodity, decoration, to be better than the llewellan-bowens
and so forth. indeed let us live in a machine for living, as another
dead frenchman was fond of calling une maison propre.

so, let us get ourselves to museums hence in order to swell our
little habitus ridden heads with notions beyond our station, to see
and not to fondle the precious remnants of civilisations past, and
not so past in the case of moderne art. the guggenheim in nyc, a boat
in which to travel on a sea of culture, carrying the chattels of some
symbolic power or other hence, the distinctions of class or status
ours to admire. free on friday evenings with jazz. if you queue.
wonderful wonderful building. contradiction in concrete!
all hail FLW, whose designs for Architecture with a big 'A'
blast the machines of the frenchie JPJ out of the water!

but i rave.
i hope pierre would've been proud.

regards,
L.


-- 
-----------
alexanne don
phd research student
applied linguistics
department of english
university of birmingham,
birmingham. B15 2TT
U.K.
(44)-0121-459-5318
<eldon-AT-panix.com>
<eldon-AT-gol.com>
<donac-AT-hhs.bham.ac.uk>
http://www.grammatics.com/lexi_con/index.html
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