Punishment in the frame: Rethinking the history and sociology of art

Abstract

Images of punishment have featured prominently in Western art and this article explores what might be learnt from studying such pictures of suffering. It seeks to develop an approach to the visual that avoids both the essentialism of art history and the reductionism of sociology by offering a rethinking of the relationships between the two. It begins by setting out the current state of the sociology of art, before discussing ‘new’ art histories that are inspired by social analysis. It then concentrates on how images of punishment have featured in Western art. This substantive material provides a rich resource to understand the force of representation and offers an opportunity to develop an aesthetic sociology that avoids some of the problems identified in the article. The approach developed in the second part is one that seeks to elaborate an aesthetic sociology that combines a historical sensitivity to images with the analytical concerns of social science. It strives to extend the art historian Michael Baxandall’s writings toward more sociological interpretations of visual analysis.