A Hoax? Cultural Socialization, Artistic Practice and Endorsement of a Delegitimizing Belief about Modern Painting in Spain
Article Sidebar
Main Article Content
Abstract
This article examines endorsement of the statement that modern painting is a “hoax” and, in many cases, could be made by a child. The item is conceptualized as a composite delegitimizing belief compatible with judgments about skill, effort, intention, or cultural authority, rather than as an unequivocal measure of denying artistic status. The study uses microdata from the Spanish Centre for Sociological Research survey Culture and Lifestyles (Study 3476, 2024). The weighted analytical sample comprises 3,493 adult respondents. Nested ordinal logistic models are estimated, followed by a partial proportional odds model because the proportionality assumption is partly violated. The model is assessed through sensitivity analyses. Overall, 34.8 per cent of the full weighted sample agrees with the statement. Respondents’ own cultural socialization and experience in painting, drawing, or sculpting show inconclusive estimates; parental and religious findings depend on the model specification. By contrast, broader cultural participation is associated with lower endorsement, whereas centrist and right-wing ideological positions are associated with higher endorsement. The educational gradient weakens after cultural participation and ideology are introduced. The findings describe conditional associations without establishing the irrelevance of socialization or identifying causal mediation, while also establishing the explanatory limits of a single composite survey item.
Downloads
Article Details
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
Este artículo se distribuye bajo Creative Commons Atribución-NoComercial 4.0 (CC BY-NC 4.0) .
References
Airoldi, M. (2024). The nested relationality of perceived legitimacy: Mapping taste hierarchies with granular digital traces. Poetics, 102, 101864. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.poetic.2024.101864
Berghman, M., y van Eijck, K. (2009). Visual arts appreciation patterns: Crossing horizontal and vertical boundaries within the cultural hierarchy. Poetics, 37(4), 348- 365. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.poetic.2009.06.003
Bourdieu, P. (1984). Distinction: A social critique of the judgement of taste. Harvard University Press.
Bourdieu, P., Darbel, A., y Schnapper, D. (1991). The love of art: European art museums and their public. Polity Press.
Brant, R. (1990). Assessing proportionality in the proportional odds model for ordinal logistic regression. Biometrics, 46(4), 1171-1178. https://doi.org/10.2307/2532457
Cebula, M. (2020). Traditional vs. modern art: The status and network antecedents of visual art preferences. Polish Sociological Review, 209(1), 41-63. https://doi.org/10.26412/psr209.03
Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas. (2024a). Estudio 3476. Cultura y estilos de vida: resultados marginales. https://www.cis.es/es/estudios/cultura-y-estilos-de-vida
Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas. (2024b). Estudio 3476. Cultura y estilos de vida: cuestionario y ficha técnica. https://www.cis.es/es/estudios/cultura-y-estilos-de-vida
Chan, T. W., y Goldthorpe, J. H. (2007). Social stratification and cultural consumption: The visual arts in England. Poetics, 35(2-3), 168-190. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.poetic.2007.05.002
Cho, H., y Schwarz, N. (2008). Of great art and untalented artists: Effort information and the flexible construction of judgmental heuristics. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 18(3), 205- 211. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcps.2008.04.009
Daenekindt, S., y Roose, H. (2017). Ways of preferring: Distinction through the “what” and the “how” of cultural consumption. Journal of Consumer Culture, 17(1), 25- 45. https://doi.org/10.1177/1469540514553715
DiMaggio, P. (1996). Are art-museum visitors different from other people? The relationship between attendance and social and political attitudes in the United States. Poetics, 24(2- 4), 161- 180. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0304-422X(96)00008-3
Friedman, S., Savage, M., Hanquinet, L., y Miles, A. (2015). Cultural sociology and new forms of distinction. Poetics, 53, 1-8. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.poetic.2015.10.002
Halle, D. (1993). Inside culture: Art and class in the American home. University of Chicago Press.
Hanquinet, L., Roose, H., y Savage, M. (2014). The eyes of the beholder: Aesthetic preferences and the remaking of cultural capital. Sociology, 48(1), 111-132. https://doi.org/10.1177/0038038513477935
Harrell, F. E., Jr. (2015). Regression modeling strategies: With applications to linear models, logistic and ordinal regression, and survival analysis (2.ª ed.). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-19425-7
Hawley-Dolan, A., y Winner, E. (2011). Seeing the mind behind the art: People can distinguish abstract expressionist paintings from highly similar paintings by children, chimps, monkeys, and elephants. Psychological Science, 22(4), 435-441. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797611400915
Herrera-Usagre, M. (2013). La transmisión intergeneracional de aptitudes y actitudes culturales. Adaptando el paradigma de la omnivoridad cultural para Andalucía. Revista Internacional de Sociología, 71(1), 143-167. https://doi.org/10.3989/ris.2011.11.25
Jucker, J.-L., Barrett, J. L., y Wlodarski, R. (2014). “I just don’t get it”: Perceived artists’ intentions affect art evaluations. Empirical Studies of the Arts, 32(2), 149-182. https://doi.org/10.2190/EM.32.2.c
Kruger, J., Wirtz, D., Van Boven, L., y Altermatt, T. W. (2004). The effort heuristic. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 40(1), 91-98. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0022-1031(03)00065-9
Landau, M. J., Greenberg, J., Solomon, S., Pyszczynski, T., y Martens, A. (2006). Windows into nothingness: Terror management, meaninglessness, and negative reactions to modern art. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 90(6), 879-892. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.90.6.879
Liao, S.-y., Meskin, A., y Knobe, J. (2020). Dual character art concepts. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 101(1), 102-128. https://doi.org/10.1111/papq.12301
Mikalonytė, E. S., y Kneer, M. (2025). The folk concept of art. Synthese, 205(1), Artículo 2. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-024-04812-8
Mood, C. (2010). Logistic regression: Why we cannot do what we think we can do, and what we can do about it. European Sociological Review, 26(1), 67-82. https://doi.org/10.1093/esr/jcp006
Newman, A., Goulding, A., y Whitehead, C. (2013). How cultural capital, habitus and class influence the responses of older adults to the field of contemporary visual art. Poetics, 41(5), 456- 480. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.poetic.2013.07.001
Pelowski, M., Gerger, G., Chetouani, Y., Markey, P. S., y Leder, H. (2017). But is it really art? The classification of images as “art”/“not art” and correlation with appraisal and viewer interpersonal differences. Frontiers in Psychology, 8, Artículo 1729. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01729
Purhonen, S., Verboord, M., Sirkka, O., Kristensen, N. N., y Janssen, S. (2023). Definitely (not) belonging to culture: Europeans’ evaluations of the contents and limits of culture. Poetics, 101, Artículo 101840. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.poetic.2023.101840
Rius-Ulldemolins, J. (2026). Espacio social y actitudes hacia la cultura: Afinidades entre factores sociodemográficos, ideológicos y el debate legitimismo versus populismo cultural. Revista Española de Investigaciones Sociológicas, 195, 79-102. https://doi.org/10.5477/cis/reis.195.79-102
Silva, E. B. (2006). Distinction through visual art. Cultural Trends, 15(2- 3), 141- 158. https://doi.org/10.1080/09548960600712942
Silva, E. B. (2008). Cultural capital and visual art in the contemporary UK. Cultural Trends, 17(4), 267-287. https://doi.org/10.1080/09548960802615414
Snapper, L., Oranç, C., Hawley-Dolan, A., Nissel, J., y Winner, E. (2015). Your kid could not have done that: Even untutored observers can discern intentionality and structure in abstract expressionist art. Cognition, 137, 154-165. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2014.12.009
Straffon, L. M., Perea-García, J. O., den Blaauwen, T., y Kret, M. E. (2026). Traces of intentionality: Balance, complexity, and organization in artworks by humans and apes. Topics in Cognitive Science, 18(2), Artículo e70022. https://doi.org/10.1111/tops.70022
van Eijck, K. (2012). The impact of religious identity and social orientations on visual arts appreciation. European Sociological Review, 28(3), 394-407. https://doi.org/10.1093/esr/jcr006
Williams, R. (2006). Generalized ordered logit/partial proportional odds models for ordinal dependent variables. The Stata Journal, 6(1), 58-82. https://doi.org/10.1177/1536867X0600600104
Ziano, I., Yeung, S. K., Lee, C. S., Shi, J., y Feldman, G. (2023). “The effort heuristic” revisited: Mixed results for replications of Kruger et al. (2004)’s experiments 1 and 2. Collabra: Psychology, 9(1), Artículo 87489. https://doi.org/10.1525/collabra.87489