社会学视野下的艺术品拍卖

Art Auction in the Sociological Perspective

艺术品拍卖不仅是一个经济现象,同时也是一个确立艺术品的价值与归属的复杂社会过程。自20世纪70年代以来,关于艺术品拍卖的社会学研究逐渐兴起。鲍德里亚关于艺术品拍卖的符号政治学批判构成了拍卖社会学最早的理论源头之一。史密斯1989年问世的经典著作《拍卖:价值的社会建构》则奠定了拍卖社会学的实证研究基础。史密斯从社会建构论视角出发将拍卖理解成一个价值的社会建构过程,其中,围绕拍卖而形成的“社区结构”以及拍卖场上的“戏剧表演”对于艺术品的价值确立起到了关键作用。在史密斯之后,拍卖中的互动过程、拍卖价格及其影响、拍卖行的组织与行动策略、作为“计算装置”的拍卖图录,构成了社会学视野下艺术品拍卖研究的四个主要进路。随着中国拍卖业与艺术市场的发展,对于艺术品拍卖的本土社会学研究面临重要的机遇与挑战。将拍卖引入研究视野有助于扩展中国社会学的传统界限,为经济社会学、组织社会学、艺术社会学和文化社会学的研究提供新的议题与生长空间。

Art auction is not only an economic phenomenon,but also a complex social process to establish the value and attribution of artworks.Since the 1970s,sociological research on art auctions has gradually been on the rise.Jean Baudrillard’s(鲍德里亚)critique of symbolic politics on art auctions constituted one of the earliest theoretical sources of auction sociology.Charles W.Smith’s(史密斯)classic work,Auction:The Social Construction of Value(《拍卖:价值的社会建构》),which appeared in 1989,laid the foundation for the empirical study of auction sociology.From the social constructionist perspective,Smith understood auctions as a process of social construction of value,in which the communal structure formed around auctions and the dramatic performances on the auction floor play a key role in establishing the value of artworks.After Smith,the interactive processes in auctions,the auction prices and their impacts,the organization and action strategies of auction houses,and the auction catalogue as a computational device,constitute four main paths in the study of art auctions from the sociological perspective.With the development of the Chinese auction industry and art market,there are important opportunities and challenges for local sociological research on art auctions.The introduction of auctions into the research landscape helps to expand the traditional boundaries of Chinese sociology,providing new topics and growth space in the studies of economic sociology,organizational sociology,art sociology and cultural sociology.