13 hod., optionally

1. Explanation of basic sociological approaches to art; protosociology (Burckhardt, Schucking, Guyau, Taine); differentiation of approaches and paradigms (socio-gnoseological and institutional); contradictions of art historical internalism and externalism (text vs. context).
2. The social history of art (Francastel, Hauser); Hauser and Clark; sociological turn in Aesthetics (G. Dickie) and history of art (Moxey, Baxandall); social dilemmas of the art world (Gablik, Bell).
3. The functions of art in change (Bürger, Benjamin) and in relation to different segments of society; varying approaches of critical and liberal theories (Harrington); the question of autonomy and heteronomy (subversion and affirmation).
4. Author as a product of the art world – "desacralization of creation" (concepts of Berufung, contraction, contagion), forms of "enchantment" (Bourdieu, Zolberg); role and status of the artist in history (Burke, Haynes) and in the present; status inconsistency (elite or hyperactivity?).
5. Creation or production? The sociological dilemma (how to reconcile the pattern of production with its innovations) and its solution in Bourdieu’s application of the notion game (concepts of batch and illusio), typology of traditions and innovation (Zolberg, Becker), role of convention in pragmatics of work (Becker).
6. The path of the work to the recipient; modeling (distribution and commodification) of aesthetic experience; establishing a high culture; canon-producing institutions.
7. Other changes in the distribution of art (from patronage and custom work to exhibition forms), distribution institutions and their influence; the current boom of art and alignment with the corporate sphere (Stallabrass, Abbing), market distribution (Thurn, Velthius, Thompson).
8. Forms of consumption; the critique of "pure vision" (Bourdieu); visual sociology and visual studies (+ image anthropology: Belting, Summers); instruments (Chaplin, Elkins, Sturkenwright); vision instruments – gaze (Jay and skopic modes).
9. Art and its social use (communicative functions); the question of values (anti-essentialist concepts) and the communication (to what extent is the art of communication), experience and understanding (user typology - Adorno); active conception of the viewer (Constrictive receptionist school, cultural and media studies).
10. The problem of high and low culture (Zahradek, Gans, Bourdieu versus Peterson); criticism of social use of high culture and deviance to low culture (CCCS and cultural studies); the question of kitsch and carnevalization of culture (Kulka, Featherstone); conservative criticism (Bell, Scruton).
11. Ideology (utopia) in the artwork from Marxists and structuralists (Lukács, Goldmann, Alhusser) after the CCCS in Birmingham and contemporary visual studies; coding concept, and connotation (S. Hall); symbolic power and self-concept (J. B. Thompson); symbolic violence, naturalization and field fracture (Bourdieu); disagreements of ideological reading (Berger).
12. The power of artwork – subversion and utopian art potential. Innovation as social deviation (Merton), pluralist (artistic fiction as a social alternative, Zuska).