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This book was written for me. I am the director of arts foundation focusing on avant garde digital art and I have an abiding interest in house design and function.
Halle wrote this book to refute popular art theories: that high art is a cultural barrier or that art is controlled and directed by corporations or that art is evidence of the power structure that shuts out the working class from the upper classes. In his investigation of 200 homes in Manhattan the Long Island suburbs he found a distinct difference in art in upper class homes and working class homes, especially Catholic working class home. But he also found a profound set of similarities. First, the predominant art displayed in all homes are landscapes, preferably depopulated landscapes of a calm and ordered nature. Even upper class homes that have abstract art often describe it as "looking like clouds" or the sea or a meadow. Secondarily, no homes feature painted formal portraits of the head of household. Instead both upper and working class household had numerous family only pictures taken at leisure moments in stand alone frames. Thirdly, there is a correlation between the display of "primitive" non-Western art, especially African art, and political affiliation.
If you are interested in the display of art, not in museums, but in the actual homes where people live with it, this is a fascinating book. ( )
Dubbed as "You Are What You Hang (or Don't)" by the New York Times,Inside Culture takes us on a tour of 160 homes in and around New York City, from affluent townhouses on Manhattan's Upper East Side and rowhouses in blue-collar Brooklyn to middle and upper-class suburbs of Long Island. The result is an unprecedented portrait of the use of cultural artifacts—fine art, photographs, religious art—in private lives.
"This is a first-class addition to what we know about culture in the specific rather than the abstract."—Howard S. Becker, Contemporary Sociology
"This book is well worth reading, especially in your own home."—Eugene Halton, American Journal of Sociology
"David Halle's researches earned him a license amateur voyeurs would kill for. . . . Refreshing for readers outside his discipline."—Peter Campbell, London Review of Books
"[This book] tells us interesting things about ourselves. . . . It affords us a birds-eye view of American culture from which we can see . . . unsuspected patterns of tastes and acquisitions."—James Gardner, Washington Times
"[A] voyeuristic thrill. . . . Lucid and entertaining. . . . A fascinating book that will open the eyes of anyone who's ever glibly said about art, 'I know what I like.' After reading Inside Culture, they'll also know a little bit more about why."—Maureen Corrigan, New York Observer
(retrieved from Amazon Wed, 06 Jan 2010 10:47:26 -0500)
Wikipedia in English
Halle wrote this book to refute popular art theories: that high art is a cultural barrier or that art is controlled and directed by corporations or that art is evidence of the power structure that shuts out the working class from the upper classes. In his investigation of 200 homes in Manhattan the Long Island suburbs he found a distinct difference in art in upper class homes and working class homes, especially Catholic working class home. But he also found a profound set of similarities. First, the predominant art displayed in all homes are landscapes, preferably depopulated landscapes of a calm and ordered nature. Even upper class homes that have abstract art often describe it as "looking like clouds" or the sea or a meadow. Secondarily, no homes feature painted formal portraits of the head of household. Instead both upper and working class household had numerous family only pictures taken at leisure moments in stand alone frames. Thirdly, there is a correlation between the display of "primitive" non-Western art, especially African art, and political affiliation.
If you are interested in the display of art, not in museums, but in the actual homes where people live with it, this is a fascinating book. (