{"product_id":"this-is-not-just-a-painting-9781509528691","title":"This is Not Just a Painting","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn 2008, the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon acquired a painting called The Flight into Egypt which was attributed to the French artist Nicolas Poussin. Thought to have been painted in 1657, the painting had gone missing for more than three centuries. Several versions were rediscovered in the 1980s and one was passed from hand to hand, from a family who had no idea of its value to gallery owners and eventually to the museum. A painting that had been sold as a decorative object in 1986 for around 12,000 euros was acquired two decades later by the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon for 17 million euros.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e What does this remarkable story tell us about the nature of art and the way that it is valued? How is it that what seemed to be just an ordinary canvas could be transformed into a masterpiece, that a decorative object could become a national treasure? This is a story permeated by social magic  the social alchemy that transforms lead into gold, the ordinary into the extraordinary, the profane into the sacred.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Focusing on this extraordinary case, Bernard Lahire lays bare the beliefs and social processes that underpin the creation of a masterpiece. Like a detective piecing together the clues in an unsolved mystery he carefully reconstructs the steps that led from the same material object being treated as a copy of insignificant value to being endowed with the status of a highly-prized painting commanding a record-breaking price. He thereby shows that a painting is never just a painting, and is always more than a piece of stretched canvass to which brush strokes of paint have been applied: this object, and the value we attach to it, is also the product of a complex array of social processes – with its distinctive institutions and experts – that lies behind it. And through the history of this painting, Lahire uncovers some of the fundamental structures of our social world. For the social magic that can transform a painting from a simple copy into a masterpiece is similar to the social magic that is present throughout our societies, in economics and politics as much as art and religion, a magic that results from the spell cast by power on those who tacitly recognize its authority. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBy following the trail of a single work of art, Lahire interrogates the foundations on which our perceptions of value and our belief in institutions rest and exposes the forms of domination which lie hidden behind our admiration of works of art.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Few books can truly claim to be a tour de force. \u003ci\u003eThis is not Just a Painting\u003c\/i\u003e by Bernard Lahire is truly one of those rare works. Beginning with the account of a purchase of a controversial work by Nicolas Poussin by the Musee des Beaux-Arts in Lyon, Lahire develops a creative and innovative approach to sociological theorizing, weaving together culture, politics, and social psychology as the basis for understanding how societies operate. The book is operatic in the breadth. Building on the intersection of magic, dominance, and the aesthetic, Lahire has presented a set of ideas that demands close attention and intense dialogue. Paintings are never just paintings; they are tools through which society conceptualizes itself.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eGary Alan Fine, James E. Johnson Professor of Sociology, Northwestern University; author \u003ci\u003eTalking Art: The Practice of Culture\u003c\/i\u003e and the \u003ci\u003eCulture of Practice in MFA Education\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\"Lahire’s wide-ranging and profoundly scholarly book digs deeply into the meanings sociology can find in and attribute to works of art. He puts his knowledge of art history and aesthetic theory to good use in the exploration and deepening of sociological investigations, nowhere better than in his discussion of the work of Poussin.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eHoward Becker, author of \u003ci\u003eArt\u003c\/i\u003e\u003ci\u003e Worlds\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e“Gloriously eccentric… thought-provoking and original” \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eCatholic Herald\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cp\u003e\"superb...exhaustive...finely detailed...\" \u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eLA Review of Books\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTable of Contents\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eAcknowledgements\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eIntroduction. Unravelling a canvas\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eFlights into Egypt: trajectories, rivalries and controversies\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eBreaking away from legends\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eCategorised and classified paintings and retrospective illusions\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe real: between material continuity and social discontinuity\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe objects of research: status, values and modes of behaviour\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003ePulling on a loose thread\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eCoda\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eBook 1. History, domination and social magic\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eChapter 1. Self-evident facts and foundations of beliefs\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eChapter 2. Domination and social magic\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe objective forms of domination\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eA problem hidden beneath the fragmentation of points of view\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eCapital or symbolic effects?\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eOutline of a general theory of the magic of power\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eChapter 3. Linked oppositions: dominators\/dominated and sacred\/profane\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eA history of the linked transformations of power and the sacred\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eMagic and power in stateless societies\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eMagic and power in State societies\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe high and the low\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003ePolitical fictions or how man created God in his image\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eStruggles for the appropriation of the sacred\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eSecularisation, sanctification and the sacred foundations of all society\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eBook 2. Art, domination, sanctification\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eChapter 4. The expansion of the domain of the sacred: the emergence of art as an autonomous domain, separate from the profane.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003ePoets and artists, sovereigns and demiurges\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe history of a collective sanctification\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eFrom relics to works of art\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe separation of art and life\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eAdmire first, interpret later\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eBeneath admiration, domination\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe magic of paintings\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eFables and hoaxes\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eCopies and forgeries\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eChapter 5. Authentication and attribution\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eWhere to look for scientific truths?\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe expert: doing things with words\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003ePerformative act I: the catalogue raisonné\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003ePerformative act II: the exhibition\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eAttributions and disattributions: controversies and changes of opinion\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe history and logic of attributionism\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eScience in the service of the sacred\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eTaking the ‘obvious’ out of the authentic\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eBook 3. On Poussin and some Flights into Egypt\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eChapter 6. Sublime Poussin: master of French classicism\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eJourney of an artist against time and tide: independence and creative freedom\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003ePainter-philosopher and artist\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eOn Poussin’s success\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eTo art, a nation’s gratitude\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eChapter 7. The fabulous destiny of paintings attributed to Nicolas Poussin\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eLinks, associations and changes in status\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eHistories of paintings\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe painting of a great painter whose talent is declining\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eOn the trail of an admirable painting\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThree canvases resurface\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eA growing controversy\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe comparison test\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe behind the scenes activity of the gallery owners\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe first public recognition of the ‘Pardo’ version\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eNew developments: the request for the annulment of the 1986 sale\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe acquisition of a national treasure\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eIn search of sponsors\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe magic of a masterpiece\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe end of a controversy\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe conditions of enchantment and disenchantment\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eA version without an expert\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eChapter 8. Poussin, science, law and the art market\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003ePoussin in the laboratory\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eAnalyses of the ‘Piasecka-Johnson’ version\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eAnalyses of the ‘Pardo-MBA de Lyon’ version\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003ePoussin in court\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eErreur sur la substance\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eA determining precedent: the case of Olympos and Marsyas or the ‘Saint-Arroman case’\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe trial of the ‘other Poussin affair’\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe price of a painting\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eChapter 9. How each person plays their game\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eArt historians: who has the eye?\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eSir Anthony Blunt (1907-1983)\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eSir Denis Mahon (1910-2011)\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eJacques Thuillier (1928-2011)\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003ePierre Rosenberg (1936-)\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe gallery owners: playing (and losing) the game\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eA museum director playing (and winning) her game\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eConclusions\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eWorking outside the fields\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eAt the root of beliefs\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eExposing the invisible monster\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eA fragile learned game\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003ePost-scriptum. The conditions for scientific creation\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eNotes\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eSummary of information sources consulted\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eBibliography\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eSupplementary Bibliography\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eIndex\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e","brand":"John Wiley and Sons Ltd","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49409525023063,"sku":"9781509528691","price":17.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9781509528691.jpg?v=1730507102","url":"https:\/\/bookcurl.com\/products\/this-is-not-just-a-painting-9781509528691","provider":"Book Curl","version":"1.0","type":"link"}