Foreword Preface Part One: Fundamentals 1. Totality of Life and the Totality of Art 2. Spontaneity and Convention 3. Sociology and Psychology 4. Art and Historicity Part Two: The Interaction between Art and Society Introduction: Interaction and Dialectic 5. Art as a Product of Society 6. Society as the Product of Art Part Three: Dialectic: Light and Will-o'-the-Wisp 7. The Concept of Dialectic 8. The Principle of Contradiction 9. The Dialectic of History and Nature 10. The Dialectic of the Aesthetic 11. Limits of Dialectic Part Four: En Route from Author to Public 12. Address and Discussion 13. On the Experience of Art 14. The Consumers of Art 15. The Mediators 16. Art Criticism 17. Institutions of Mediation 18. The Art Trade 19. Understanding and Misunderstanding 20. Success and Failure 21. Social and Antisocial Motives Part Five: The Differentiation of Art According to Cultural Strata 22. Class and Culture 23. The Art of the Cultural Elite 24. Folk Art 25. Popular Art 26. Mass Art 27. An Interpretation of Mass Culture 28. The Mass Media 29. Pop Art Part Six: The End of Art? 30. Concepts of the Demise of Art 31. Presuppositions of Present-Day Art 32. Symptoms of Crisis in Present-Day Art

First published in 1982, The Sociology of Art considers all forms of the arts, whether visual arts, literature, film, theatre or music from Bach to the Beatles. The last book to be completed by Arnold Hauser before his death in 1978, it is a total analysis of the spiritual forces of social expression, based upon comprehensive historical experience and documentation. Hauser explores art through the earliest times to the modern era, with fascinating analyses of the mass media and current manifestations of human creativity. An extension and completion of his earlier work, The Social History of Art, this volume represents a summing up of his thought and forms a fitting climax to his life's work. Translated by Kenneth J. Northcote.