本文探討分析布爾迪厄對西方純美學與藝術場域自主化的起源與發展之論述。布爾迪厄強調由馬內及隨後之印象派所帶來的符號革命,必須擺在當時的藝術學院及其所表現的傳統畫風之背景下,加以分析,方能瞭解。此革命導出了我們現今常用來生產與瞭解「再現」的藝術感知與評價類別,即所謂的純美學。自主性的藝術生產場域之社會建構,是與強調藝術創作之泉源是在「再現」本身,而非被再現的事物之藝術感知模式(即純美學)並行前進的。此模式以對近代世界的底層和庸俗事物之描繪的美學形式,為最佳範例。更進一步而言,此新的規範要能夠持續下去,必須藝術愛好者也有一新的心智結構或慣習,即純凝視,意即能以藝術希求被瞭解之形式加以領會。
This essay looks at and analyzes Bourdieu's major arguments about the genesis and development of the pure aesthetics and the autonomization of the art field in the West. Bourdieu emphasizes that the symbolic revolution brought about by Manet and, after him, by the Impressionists, can only be understood if one analyzes the situation in and against which it developed, that is, the academic institution and the conventional style which is a direct expression of it. From this revolution emerged our own categories of perception and judgment, that is, pure aesthetics, which we now commonly use to produce and comprehend representations. The social construction of an autonomous field of art production goes hand in hand with the construction of a properly aesthetic mode of perception, namely, pure aesthetics, which places the sources of artistic creation in the representation and not in the thing represented. This mode never asserts itself as fully as in its capacity to give aesthetic form to the base and vulgar objects of the modern world. Furthermore, in order for this new nomos to sustain itself it also requires art lovers a new mental structure or habitus, that is, pure gaze, capable of apprehending the work of art as it demands to be apprehended.