Becker Values

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Confusions of Value

Discussing the French art market of the 50s and 60s, Raymonde Moulin observed, not quitein so many words, that well-developed art markets invariably and necessarily make it

difficult, perhaps impossible, for their members to distinguisheconomic from aesthetic

value. In a characteristic statement, she says:

Le spculateur fait deux paris, troitement solidaires lun de lautre court terme, lun sur lavaleur esthtique, lautre sur la valeur conomique des uvres quil achte, chacune desdeux valeurs devant garantir lautre. Gagner ce double pari, cest la fois saffirmer comme

sujet conomique et sujet culturel. (Moulin, 1967, p. 219.)

Although she gives us a detailed gallery of kinds of collectorsincluding le rudit, ledcouvreur, le snob, and le spculateurand an equally detailed list of motives for

collectingla singularit, lamour, le jeu, la culture, le sacr, and largentshe eventuallysummarizes the latter as leading to rational or irrational conduct, the two coinciding to agreat degree with economic or aesthetic motives. I dont intend to engage in an explication

du texte de Moulin, tempting as that is with a text so rich , but rather to use her remarks as

the provocation for further exploration of the phenomenon she draws our attention to.

Shared Economic Values

Shared economic values form the basis of the economic activity that underlies, in one formor another, all societies. Every society constructs ways of exchanging goods and services,

and most develop some sort of standard for determining what constitutes a fair exchange.

The most common solution to this prohblem, the one that pervades all modern societies(though it is never the only one, even in such societies) is to develop a money system. Bycreating a standard unit, in which all objects and services can be valued, we make possible

the complicated economic activities that underlie our daily lives: the purchases and sales,borrowings and lendings, and all the rest of it.

Art markets operate, in some large part, on the basis of such systems of economic value.

Insofar as they are actually markets, they are arenas in which objects are bought and sold on

the basis of value expressed in universal, neutral monetary units: dollars, francs, pounds,

yen. The exchanges take place in institutions organized for the purpose: in stores (calledgalleries) and, most usefully for Moulins work because their operations and prices arepublic, auctions (cf. Smith 1989). These institutions operate on the basis of rules mutually

agreed on, or at least accepted, and understood by all participants.

Shared Aesthetic Values

People create aesthetic value by collectively recognizing some works of art as having it. It is

the beauty that I recognize, and simultaneously know that you and other knowledgeablepeople recognize, that matters in an art world. One can imagine a purely private aestheticstandard. In fact, we need not imagine it. We all have such standards and such preferences.

We like things others dont like, and they like things we dont like. Our likes and dislikes of a

quasi-aesthetic kind may stem from personal experiences not commonly shared, so that weare fond, like Roland Barthes (1980) as he contemplated the image of his mother, of aphotograph of a beloved relative or friend because it reminds us of that person. Objects have

all sorts of private meanings that give them great emotional and, we might say, aesthetic

valuebut to us alone, not to others to whom they are simply peculiar tchotchkes. (see the

cles http://home.earthlink.net/~hsbecker/articles/values.html

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investigations of Csikszentmihalyi and Rochberg-Halton (1981) on the meanings of

household objects).

Shared aesthetic standards matter more than those which are private and idiosyncraticbecause, like other shared beliefs, like the economic rules just discussed, they create thebasis for collective action. If we agree on standards, we can agree more easily on what to do

in situations in which we have agreed to be governed by those standards.

We can act quickly, relying on others to react to our actions in ways we anticipate just

because they share those aesthetic judgments. If we all agree on what criteria mark a goodpainting, then we can admire each others judgment as exhibited in a collection, agree tohelp finance work of a certain kind, and engage in all the other forms of collective action thatmake up the routine doings of an art world. If we operate solely with privatized aesthetic

standards, we cant act in a coherent or coordinated way with others.

Aesthetic rules operate in institutions which define themselves as artistic, as organizationswhich engage in activities that encourage art or make art possible. In such organizations,

aesthetic judgments are paramount and override other considerations. Or, at least, thatsthe story their participants tell about themselves. Museums say that they choose what to

acquire and exhibit on the basis of aesthetic standards, choosing what is most beautiful or

most expressive. Or, as Moulin points out, what most exhibits the trend of art history, what

has been important to that history, what is important to it now, what will be important in thefuture: Leurs [les marchands des uvres consacrs] choix artistiques peuvent sappuyer

sur la slection dj opr par lhistoire. (Moulin, 1967, p. 100, see also pp. 430-1)

Blurred Values

To repeat, Moulins key finding is that, in a well-developed art market, none of the actorsinvolved can accurately and consistently distinguish aesthetic from financial value when

they judge works of art. I do not mean by this, nor did Moulin mean, that the two systems of

value are in conflict. Things are more confused than that.

Sociologists say that value conflict occurs when the behavior recommended by one set of

values is simultaneously condemned by another set of values. In the classic textbookexample, the businessman goes to church on Sunday and learns the value of charity, and onMonday returns to work to practice the value of acquisition and forgets all about the charity.But that example is also one of how temporal or spatial segregation can solve a problem of

value conflict. If you can keep the two injunctions in separate situations, so that you never

have to obey both of them at once, the conflict is only hypothetical. The trouble starts whenthey operate in the same place at the same time with respect to the same actions.

Moulin meant something more complex than having to serve two masters, hoping not to get

caught with both of them in the room at the same time. She alerted us to at least two furtherconsequences of the chronic confusion of aesthetic and financial value in art worlds. The two

values may not conflict. In pursuing one you may simultaneously, and without difficulty,

pursue the other. Which seems like a fine thing. But it may be, further, that one set of valueshas a low reputation. People prefer not to be thought to be pursuing that particular goal and

would rather be thought to be pursuing the second. Although one would like to appear to be

pursuing just the one, that isnt possible. One might even, and in many worlds certainlywould, prefer to think about oneself that way, not just create the appearance. Because

people are jealous of their self-regard.

This is the case with the market in paintings. If a painting is thought aestheticallyworthwhile, it is because people who are in a position to knowconnoisseursthink it is

more beautiful, more expressive, more whatever it is that their aesthetic system prizes, than

most other works. Not only that, it is a unique expression. There will never be another justlike it. So it is rare in the nth degree: it is unique. And it is one of a relatively small number

of works that have this quality of unique expression, so it is rare, too, by belonging to a classof objects of which there are very few. Even if another is just as good, so that there are many

objects with this sort of unique quality and thus substitutability is possible, the class ofpossible substitutions is very small and, in practice, substitutions seldom occur. (Moulin

1978; 1992, 15-18)


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If something is rare or unique in this way and people want it, it is almost certain, in a marketeconomy, that the ownership will be settled by purchase and, if it is highly valued, by

competition among buyers, which will raise the price, the auction being the most visibleexample of this process.

Thus, aesthetic value (the process repeats itself at less rarefied levels, as Moulin explains in

her discussion of lesser markets (Moulin 1978; 1992, 34-43)) is mirrored in market value.If an object is beautiful, and standards of beauty are shared (as they must be if there is an

art world at all), then price will accurately reflect aesthetic worth. (Heinich, 1991, pp.149-167, adds considerably to the complexity of this relationship, in her discussion of theenormous prices paid for the works of Van Gogh in recent years.)

Turn this equation around. If an art work is very valuable, it must be because knowledgeableactors in the art world think it very beautiful (or whatever they value, letting beauty stand

for whatever is taken to be the aesthetic sine qua non). The object has to be beautiful. Theaesthetic value accurately reflects the financial. It is often observed that a valuable object

has a kind of aura that comes from it being worth so much. Looking at a painting that hasjust been sold for several million dollars inevitably produces, in people who accept the

values of the world in which the transaction occured, an awareness of a special something.

It is something, though not exactly, like looking at the money itself, as if several million

dollars in banknotes lay before you. Not exactly, because the object is not only thebanknotes, it is that rare something worth all those notes.

So actors in the art world in which these transactions occur are fundamentally andirremediably confused. They do not, and cannot, know whether the objects around whichtheir world is organized are beautiful or valuable. Why should they worry? If the two

coincide, so much the better. Unfortunately not, because the financial motive has a bad

reputation in the art world. No one wants to be thought to be acting from such motives.

And with good reason. If I am in a position to profit from my judgment, I may be tempted tomake the judgment that will profit me rather than the one toward which the standards weall subscribe to impel me.

The Personal Problem

I can, as an individual member of an art world, worry that this possibility will show itself inmy own actions. Suppose I am a critic. Among the tasks I set myself is to find, before others

do (thus demonstrating my superior connoiseurship), artists who have already or will soonproduce rare works of artistic genius. Suppose further that I am successful in this, and finda few such people other knowledgeable members of the world have overlooked. At the

moment, these artists, unknown and without reputation, cannot sell their work for much. No

one wants it. ButIsee that their work is beautiful and expressive, sitting precisely on whatwill eventually be the main line of the history of painting. I enjoy it for just those qualities. I

want these paintings for their intrinsic artistic value.

Furthermore, since these painters cannot sell their work, by buying paintings from them I

help them out financially. With what I have paid them they can pay the rent, buy food and

clothing, buy more supplies with which to make more paintings. Even further, if I (who am awell-known critic) buy their work, this will vouch for its value to other, more timid buyers.Seeing the work in my collection, they will be more willing to take a chance and buy from

those artists too.

Just at this point, if I am a conscientious member of this world, I begin to have moralqualms. If this happensif others buy work whose artistic value I have recognized ahead of

the mobthen the value of the paintings I bought for a few francs will go up. By expressing

my critical judgment in the act of buying, I have lined my own pocket. And there is no way I

can do the good things I would like to doown beautiful works, help struggling artistswithout running the risk of being thought to have done them, and the feeling that perhapsI actuallyhavedone them, for low financial motives.

The Organizational Problem


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Thats the personal problem. But every personal problem, as sociologists as various as C.Wright Mills and Everett C. Hughes have noted, has an organizational counterpart. If, Mills

says, I am depressed because I have no job, that personal problem is the individual versionof the whole societys problem of not being able to provide employment for all willing

workers. If, Hughes says, the society has created standards for a social status which lead to a

contradictionif we expect doctors to be male and white and then allow women or blacks tobecome doctorsthe women and blacks who have become doctors will experience this as apersonal dilemma, as will the patients with whom they come in contact. (Hughes 1984,

141-150)

The organizational problem that corresponds to the personal problem of being unable to tellif I am acting from good or bad motives when I acquire works of art is one of trust. If, as

members of the art world, we ordinarily assign the responsibility for judgments of aesthetic

worth to experts, we expect those experts to act in a disinterested way on behalf of thestandards we all share. We expect them to decide that this work is good and that one not so

good because the accumulated weight of their knowledge, experience, and sensibility leadthem to that judgment. We particularly want to know that they have not made those

judgments because it will be financially profitable for them personally or for the institutionsthey represent.

This is perhaps most glaringly a problem with respect to the problem of attribution (Moulin1992, 18-21). We often have trouble knowing with certainty who painted a particular work,

and the decision about that has consequences for the price of the work. A painting byRembrandt himself is much more valuable than one from the studio or school of Rembrandt(Alpers 1988). The great critic-connoiseurs of the 19th and early 20th centuries made their

reputations by pronouncing on such questions, relying in part on their scholarly studies of

details of an artists style and partly on a less describable sensibility, an indefinable ability toknow that this was a real Titian as opposed to that one which only looks like the realthing. But such connoiseurs often worked closely with dealers, especially dealers who were

selling to gullible American millionaires, and there is reason to think that the prospect of a

sale would sometimes affect a critical judgment about an attribution. Nor need we prove

that such things actually happened. It is enough to know that it couldhappen for theproblem to become an organizational one.

In the speculative market for contemporary art (as opposed to the blue chip market in

established Old and Modern Masters, to use Moulins important distinction) the problem of

attribution is not relevant. But the problem of aesthetic value is. Did this curator choose tohave this exhibit because it would enhance the value of his own holdings in the work of thatartist or group? Did the curator collaborate with a dealer in assembling this exhibit,

knowing that by thus enriching the dealer he would be arranging for the return of a similarfavor another day? Collaborations between musuem staff and gallery owners in theorganization of exhibits is common and is not in itself frowned on. But it raises these

questions, questions to which, because of the confluence of values Moulin described, no one

know the answers. The problem is so chronic and so perplexing that it has occasionally ledto quixotic acts of self-denial. Thus, the story of Dennis Adrian, a well known critic andadviser to a group of affluent Chicagoans with advanced artistic tastes. (Perhaps I will be

forgiven so provincial an example. It is one to which I had better access than many other

well-known events.)*

The Adrian Gift

Dennis Adrian early recognized the artistic gifts of a group of Chicago artists who came to beknown first as The Hairy Who and later, more respectably, as the Chicago Imagists.

Among the artists involved were Roger Brown, Jim Nutt, Ed Paschke, and others, nowwell-known , collected, and exhibited internationally. As a result of Adrians championing of

their work, and of the concurrent activities of the art critic of a major Chicago newspaper(Franz Schulze of the Chicago Sun-Times), a local gallery owner (Phyliss Kind), and the

collectors already mentioned (some of whom were active in the newly formed ChicagoMuseum of Contemporary Art), whom Adrian advised on their art acquisitions, the work of

this group came to be widely exhibited and collected, and consequently rose substantially in


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value.

Adrian was quite poor: I have had to form a collection with what are, not to put too fine a

point on it, rather less than average means (Adrian 1982, p. 7). He lived simply, had nosteady employment (trying to exist as a critic and teacher of art history ibid.), did not dealin pictures privately as so many such critics and advisers do. But Adrian had a large

collection of these now valuable paintings, bought at the beginnings of the artists careers forrelatively little. It could be thought, and in fact it began to be said in some circles inChicagos art community, that his championing of the Chicago Imagists was a very clever

way of providing for his old age. No one, of course, said this quite as bluntly as I have just

put it, although the critic of the rival newspaper in Chicago, Alan Artner (1982) of theChicago Tribune, came close to it in a malign review published when the collection was firstexhibited. And here one must read between the lines and try to unravel the innuendo and

metaphor; I will provide some marginal commentary to help with that work:

Artners review Beckers comments

When [Adrian] began collecting

them [the Chicago Imagists]morethan a decade ago, the term

[maverick] seemed appropriate;they were not yet marked by an

accepted style. But in short ordermany of the young strays were

rounded into herds and branded.

Then began the campaign aimedat turning homegrown stock intointernational champions.

This was written in 1982.

Artner uses a ranching

metaphor to describe aplot to increase the valueof the work of these local

artists.

Adrian not only befriended and

collected these so-called Imagists,

but wrote on their behalf. Scarcelya week went by without a mention

in his columns for the Chicago

Daily News [a third Chicago

newspaper]. A book by a colleague

[i.e., Schulze] had given them a

corporate name and outlined theirmilieu. Adrians effort was to

provide a distinguished lineage.

Here are some of the

deeds that made up the

conspiracy: publicity, theinvention of a name and a

school, and the creationof an artistic lineage that

legitimates the value

placed on their work.

Everything from folk art to worksof the Old Masters was invoked. It

was not unusual to find Phil

Hanson [an Imagist] compared toPaul Klee or Karl Wirsum [another

Imagist] to Paul Klee. The gamewas merit by association and itcharacterized several catalogueessays written for the Museum of

Contemporary Art.

The conspirators colludeto place the paintings in

the history of art by

reference to acceptedmodern masters in the

essays they prepare formuseum exhibits.


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But that was not enough. Just assome of the artists had beenrecommended to certain dealers,

specific works were brought to theattention of collectors. So great

was this advocacy that that now,nearly 15 years later, one can trace

the Adrian influence in collectionsfrom Hyde Park to East Lake

Shore Drive to Glencoe. Of course,he had help; the critic is only one

link in the nexus that leads to aschool of art. But few others on

the scene were in a position to givecounsel on works-in-progress,

urge that they be exhibited, issue

written superlatives andprovide

personal advice for purchase.

As adviser, Adrian caninfluence collectors whoseown actions are highly

influential.

He alludes here to wealthy

areas of the city in whichsome of the collectors

lived, allusions whicheveryone understood to

refer to quite specificpeople.

Adrian, then, is the artists friend.

If their work gave rise tohesitations or doubts, these were

never expressed publicly. Hemaintained a level of enthusiasm

that set his writing apart.

Since he never criticizes

thework of these artists,his judgments are

suspect.

Helpful as it assuredly was for theartists, there nevertheless was a

catch. An MCA [Museum ofContemporary Art] staff member,

who has tended the collection,estimates that one-quarter of its

artworks were presented to thecritic as gifts. They bore witness to

close association and were tokens

anyone with reciprocal feelingwould have prized. But a critic isnot just anyone. To borrow a

famous phrase, the positionrequires the punctilio of an honormost exact. It dictates an

allegiance to principles that

friendships, however welcome,cannot help but test. It prescribesthe apparent paradox of getting

close to the art while remaining

distant from the artist. Adrian has

preferred to work with proximityall around.

Here are his reasons fornot being critical.

And here is the statementof the moral imperative:to be interested only in

aesthetic values, ignoringother motives forappreciating and praising

works. By being so close

to the artists and othersinvolved, Adrian has

rendered his motivessuspect.

His collection includes few pieces

by artists he doesnt know and

Finally, a prediction that

the untoward behavior


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none by artists he hasnt in some

way encouraged. (To have gainedthe support of so keen-eyed a

collector is encouragement in andof itself.) But one must never

forget that Adrian is also a

tastemaker, a role he has relished,occasionally to his detriment. So if

any artist here has escaped theattention of other Chicagocollectors, one may rest assured it

will not be for long.

will continue in the future.

Adrian , perhaps stung by such talk, then made a great quixotic gesture. Though he neededthe money, and could ill afford the gesture, he bequeathed his entire collection to Chicagos

Museum of Contemporary Art. The collection had by then become quite valuable. In makingthis bequest, he assured himself but also, more importantly, the art world, that his judgment

was indeed disinterested. Because he would not (unless he changed his will, always apossibility) profit from these works, his acquisition of them was solely an expression of his

recognition of artistic worth. This bequest was not enough to satisfy Artner, who commented(the above is quoted from Artners review of the first exhibit of the works given to the

Museum) that [t]he museumization of the Adrian collection is, for some, the ultimate

confirmation of his judgment.

That is one interpretation, that the conspirators put the finishing touches on their work by

having it all legitimized by an exhibition in a major museum. Another reading is that

Adrian, recognizing that both good and bad motives could be read into the sameactionshis collecting and promoting of the work of these artistschose to do the one thingthat would prove that he had not profited from his acquisitions and thus that he could not

have acted from financial motives, only from aesthetic ones. That was to give the works

away. (Pierre-Michel Menger, in a letter to me, suggests that even so grand a gesture has

overtones of self-aggrandizement: le collectioneur qui prfre garder ses toiles pltot queles vendre pour payer ses soins mdicaux fait peut-tre un pari symbolique sur la valeurfuture des oeuvres puisquil sortira personnellement grandi et rput dun choix artistique

esthtique payant.)

These events were so public that we cannot expect to find straightforward statements ofwhat people intended by what they did. We must interpret what they said in the light of ourknowledge of the workings of art worlds. This gives the interpretation Im about to make a

circular character: the events to be interpreted are part of the knowledge needed to createthe larger understanding of the art world that makes it possible to understand such singleevents as Adrians gift. This is, of course, methodologically unsound; it is, however,

necessary, because the alternative is hopeless naivet.

Adrian signalled his intentions not by anything he said about the major gift to the Museumof Contemporary Art, but by what he says in the catalogue about an earlier event. He had

begun his career as a collector, he says, with 20th century prints and drawings: MaxBeckmann, Louis Corinth, Otto Dix, Joan Mir, Pablo Picasso. He also developed an interest

in younger contemporary artists, especially those he had met in Chicago:

[T]he increasing prices (and values) of works by modern masters precipitated a kind ofunusual crisis for me. It happened that some serious and extremely expensive medicalproblems left me frighteningly short of money: the things on my walls started to swim in a

haze of dollar signs and quite a number of colleagues and friends said Why dont you justsell a few of these things and solve the problem? It was somehow impossible to explain to

them that to sell a lot of things would seem like a terrible defeat and loss. I had worked veryhard to get them and I wished them to remain works of art, not turn into assets. For this

reason, after parting with two things which alleviated the immediate critical pressure, Idecided to give my collection of 19th- and 20th-century prints and drawings to the Art

Institute of Chicago, to which I had made an earlier gift at the request of the curator of that


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department. It was a step I have never regretted; these 40 or so things remain works of

artnot assetsand they remain accessible to me and others interested in them. (Adrian1982, p. 6)

Adrian here puts the point I have been making impersonally. He does not speak of hismotives, only of the nature of the objects. By giving his collection to a museumthus, as

Moulin has noted, taking them out of the market more or less permanentlyAdrian assuredthat they would not be assets, that is to say, that they would not, couldnot, be understood asobjects of economic acquisition. (Not having a large income, Adrian did not have the

economic incentives created by American tax laws, which give substantial tax reductions to

donors of valuable objects to public museums.) By giving them away he has foregone thevalue critics might be accusing him of having created for his own benefit, by manipulatinghis position as a critic and adviser. Clearly, what was true of a small collection of minor

works by well-known artists is even more true of a major collection of what may yet be late

20th-century masters (or perhaps not, since there is no guarantee that Adrians judgmentwill continue to be honored in the future).

That only such dramatic and drastic measures can provide the necessary assurance is a sign

of how deeply and irremdiably embedded in the operations of art worlds and markets theconfusion of values I am discussing is.

The General Problem

The phenomenon of conflicting but indistinguishable values, far from being a peculiarity of

the world of art, is quite common. My grandmother always told me that it was just as easy tofall in love with a rich girl as a poor girl. I never followed that advice but, if I had, I suppose Imight have experienced just this confusion over my motives-its a common enough theme

in 19th century fiction, even more so from the point of view of the rich spouses family, who

always, in those books, suspected their daughters suitors of being fortune hunters.

The existence of such situations, especially if they are as ubiquitous as I think, poses aserious problem for sociological theorists. Typically, theorists have dealt with thesesituations by talking about conflicting norms or values, cultural contradictions, and the like,

and noting how people in such situations of social strain respond.

The classic paradigm for such discussions was Robert Mertons theory of anomie Merton,1957), which took as the archetypal case people who learned to want certain cultural goals,

which could only be achieved by certain acceptable means, but were then systematically (or

systemically) deprived of those means. Under these circumstances, Merton said, people willengage in various forms of deviance, which he labeled innovation (roughly speaking, crime),ritualism (again roughly, the bureaucrat), and retreatism (the isolate).

Merton applied this scheme in its most sophisticated form in his analysis of science, wherehe saw the institutionally normative emphasis on originality as potentially incompatible

with an almost equally strong emphasis on humility and modesty, stemming from the

understanding that science was, after all, a communal endeavor in which one achievedresults by working in concert with others. Potentially incompatible means that, althoughnot truly contradictory, the two call for opposed kinds of behavior. In this case, although

modesty and originality could in principle go together, as scientific institutions are actuallyorganized, originality leads one to insist on priority, on having gotten a result first, while

modesty forbids one to mention it.

Merton comes near to recognizing what Moulin has made centralthat truly conflictingvalues can call for the same behaviorbut says little about it. This is, I think, because he is

fundamentally committed to the notion that incompatible values really are, after all,

incompatible and any attempt to satisfy both must lead to conflict. An extended quotationshows how he approaches and then backs away from the idea:

Mertons statement Beckers commentary


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[A]ny rewardmoney, fame, positionismorally ambiguous and potentiallysubversive of culturally esteemed motives.

Here he grasps the possibilityof ambiguity firmly,

For as rewards are meted outfame, forexamplethe motive of seeking the rewardcan displace the original motive, concern

with recognition can displace concern with

advancing knowledge.

Rather than accept theambiguity, he notes that onemotive may displace another,

but does not pursue the

possibility that they may beindistinguishable andirretrievably confused with

one another.

But this is only a possibility, not an

inevitability. When the institution of scienceworks effectivelyand like other social

institutions it does not always dosorecognition and esteem accrue to those

scientists who have best fulfilled their roles,

to those who have made importantcontributions to the common stock ofknowledge. Then are found those happy

circumstances in which moral obligation

and self-interest coincide. (Merton, 1973, p.399)

He sees the possibility of

amalgamation only in thespecial case when the mixture

produces a good result, notas a chronic condition which

can produce bad results as

well.

For Merton, though both kinds of motives can lead to the same behavior, they are always

distinguishable. Thus, science generates a need, in individual scientists, to have onesaccomplishment socially validated:

Merton Commentary

Sometimes, of course, this need [thedeep-rooted need for validation of workaccomplished] is stepped up until it

becomes a driving lust for acclaim (evenwhen unwarranted), megalomania

replaces the comfort of reassurance.

Here, Mertons approachtakes on a moral tone. Thegood motive, a socially

supported institutionalneed for validation of real

accomplishment can be

suppressed by an excess ofthe bad one, the driving lustfor acclaim and megalomania

.

But the extreme case need not bemistaken for the modal one. (Merton,

1973, p. 400)

But the case he describes asextreme may in some

situations indeed be modal,inevitable, or chronic.


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As elsewhere in his writings, Merton here explains bad behavior by good people bydescribing it as unusual. But what if what he finds extreme is not only modal but accepted.

More to our point, however, what if the two categories, distinguished motivationally, cannotbe told apart in practice, because the only way people can tell what they are doing is byseeing what they do, and they do the same thing whether their motives are an institutionally

engendered desire for validation or a pathological excess?

Merton. a profound and influential theorist, here represents a dominant trend in

contemporary academic sociology. Conventional theory requires us to be able to distinguishmotives from one another, to know when people are acting from one or the other, andrequires social actors themselves to be aware that they have conflicting motives and to know

just what they are, and when they are doing one thing or the other. Of course, it is not

usually put so crudely. But the underlying imagery of discussions of role conflict and the

like is just this: that each action has its socially attached reasons, so that everyone, actorsand analysts alike, can see when one or the other is operative. Moulins great contribution,

modestly hidden in an analysis of the art market, is to show that the same behavior can seemto arise from quite different and conflicting motives, and that that possibility can cause a

chronic and endemic confusion of values in social organizations.

Finally, Moulins results show that talk of values, in themselves or as explanations of

conduct, is highly suspect, unless that discussion is highly nuanced and qualified. People doon occasion refer to values as they act, but they can never be sure, and thus neither can we,

that they know what behavior can be attributed to what values. Not because they areconfused or stupid, but because the situations they act in do not give them the resources with

which to make such distinctions neatly and clearly. So values, as conventionally conceived,

do not help us to understand collective action. We may, at most, understand values as

shared understandings to which actors may from time to time appeal, to organize their ownbehavior or influence that of others. But we must understand also that this is only abeginning on the deeper explanations of collective life so wonderfully embodied in

Raymonde Moulins profound explorations of artistic life.

REFERENCES

Adrian, Dennis. 1982. A Brief Personal History, in Museum of Contemporary Art,Selections from the Dennnis Adrian Collection(Chicago: Museum of Contemporary Art).

Alpers, Svetlana. 1988.Rembrandts Enterprise: The Studio and the Market. Chicago:

University of Chicago Press.

Artner, Alan. 1982. MCA rounds up Dennis Adrians maverick herd. Chicago Tribune,

Arts and Books section, February 7.

Barthes, Roland. 1980.La chambre clair. Paris: Editions de Seuil.

Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly and Eugene Rochberg-Halton. 1981. The meaning of things :

domestic symbols and the self. New York : Cambridge University Press.

Heinich, Natalie. 1991.La gloire de Van Gogh: Essai danthropologie de ladmiration.

Paris: ditions de Minuit.

Hughes, Everett. C. 1984. The Sociological Eye. New Brunswick: Transaction Books.

Merton, Robert K. 1957.Social Theory and Social Structure. New York: The Free Press.

________. 1973. The Sociology of Science: theoretical and empirical investigations.

Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Moulin, Raymonde. 1967.Le march de la peinture en France. Paris: Les ditions de

Minuit.

________. 1978. La gense de la raret artistique.Ethnologie franaiseVIII (2-3),241-258.


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________. 1992.Lartiste, linstitution, et le march. Paris: Flammarion.

Smith, Charles W. 1989.Auctions: The Social Contruction of Value. The Free Press.

FOOTNOTES

(1) I am grateful to Gilda Buchbinder and to Lynn Warren, of the Chicago Museum of

Contemporary Art, for helping me with the documentation of this story.

(2) Pierre- Michel Menger points out that the problem can appear in reverse; those who

think of themselves as primarily economic actors may nevertheless accomplish aesthetic

ends as well.: Si vous avez achet des toiles qui ont beaucoup augment, et que vous lesrevendez pour en acheter dautres que vous prfrez ou que vous pouvez payer plusfacilement et qui correspondent votre got profond mais que vous ne pouviez pas satisfaire

auparavant faute dargent), comment dire si cest un comportement spculatif et sil est en

opposition aven lthique du dsintressement?


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