Introduction to the sociology of art Art and society are in a state of continuous, mutual dependence, which propagates itself like a chain reaction. This only implies that they influence each other, that society is modified by art whose product it is, and that art in a given society confronts a structure which presupposes many of its characteristics’, but also that every change in one sphere is linked to change in the other (Perkins and Horward, 13). This calls forth a further change in the system in which the change originates. Every step sets the clockwork in motion; to express it visually; the pictures on both sides reflect each other in endless refractions, looking like a hall of mirrors. This way, there is a constant multiplication and intensification of stimuli, a restless rush, and jockeying for the position in the race of competing social and artistic forces without which the interchange would take on a dialectical character (Hauser 24). It is simply the question of interdependence between the individual phases of two developmental; series. There is no actual struggle between the opposing positions to buy an inner contradiction that drives them on, keeps them in motion, and spurs them toward a settlement. The relationship between art and society is in some ways like the relationship between body and soul: neither are they contradictory, nor can they be in harmony (Zolberg 37). Whether it is in the genesis of individual works, the act of reception, or the course of the history of style, the dialectical development of art does not proceed from the antagonism between social and artistic interests. It results from conflicting artistic intentions, problems, possibilities of the solution, and means of representation. Simply put, it is the result of individual differentiation, of a change in taste and style which social development only provides the spur to, but which does not proceed from a contradiction between art and society. An antithetical attitude is not antagonism, and interaction is not a dialectical dispute. There are antagonisms within society and within art, but there is none between society and art (Alexander 46). On the one hand, the fact that society influences art, and on the other hand, that art influences society does not imply that a change goes with a change with the other. Art and society exist as two discrete, though not necessarily isolated, realities side by side with each other (Zolberg 92). They neither correspond to nor contradict each other. They neither divide nor unite each other; however, deep the traces the one leaves upon the structure of the other. As indicated earlier, they are like body and soul, indivisible, but they have no common aim or meaning. Therefore, their reciprocal relationship is quite different from the relationship in art between spontaneity and convention, between the will to expression and its means, between form and content (Alexander 48). The study of art encourages anthropologists to deal with the temporality of cultural processes, to connect the experimental dimension of culture, the immediacy of performance with longer-term and more general processes. Works of art have different durations. Art can be one of the channels through which the image of a culture