French Literature Reviews - 2026
B. Lahire, Ceci n'est pas qu'un tableau. Essay on Art, Domination, Magic and the Sacred
Art and Visual Culture
Ceci n'est pas qu'un tableau. Essay on Art, Domination, Magic and the Sacred
Bernard LAHIRE
La Découverte, 2020
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762 p.
16 EUR
ISBN: 9782348064173
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In 1657, Nicolas Poussin painted Landscape with the Flight into Egypt. The canvas subsequently disappeared for several centuries. In the 1980s, various versions of the painting resurfaced; leading experts clashed, analytical laboratories and courts intervened, and many sought to authenticate and claim the masterpiece.
What does this story, with its detective-like intrigue, tell us? What constitutes the value of a work of art? And where does this aura attached to creators and their works come from? Bernard Lahire demonstrates that the sacred has never disappeared from our world, but rather that we have lost the ability to see it. Social magic is as omnipresent in economics, politics, law, science, and art as it is in mythology and religion. It is this enchanting effect that transforms an animal sculpture into a totem, a piece of metal into currency, ordinary water into holy water, and elevates a painting from the status of a mere copy to that of a masterpiece.
Drawing eruditely upon anthropology, history, and sociology, this book examines the belief systems upon which our institutions and perceptions rest. Radically questioning art and its emancipatory ambitions, it reveals the forms of domination hidden behind the admiration of works of art.
View the book on the publisher's website...
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Bernard Lahire, professor of sociology at the École normale supérieure de Lyon (Max Weber Centre) and senior member of the Institut universitaire de France, has published some twenty books, including L'Homme pluriel (Nathan, 1998), Franz Kafka. Éléments pour une théorie de la création littéraire (La Découverte, 2010), Dans les plis singuliers du social (La Découverte, 2013), Ceci n'est pas qu'un tableau (La Découverte, 2015), L'Interprétation sociologique des rêves (La Découverte, 2018), and Enfances de classe (Le Seuil, 2019).
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An article on this work can be read on en-attendant-nadeau.fr:
"Buying a Painting", by Paul Bernard-Nouraud (published online December 4, 2020).
An American collector owns a painting, Nicolas Poussin's The Flight into Egypt, which was considered an original and later deemed a fake. The two decades over which this story unfolds, from the mid-1980s to 2007, only partly explains the scope of the book Bernard Lahire derived from it in 2015, now reissued in paperback as Ceci n'est pas qu'un tableau.
See also on nonfiction.fr:
The sociology of art and culture has long sought to understand the mechanisms behind aesthetic valuation and the consecration of cultural works. By examining the debates surrounding Nicolas Poussin's Landscape with the Flight into Egypt, the study engages with a broader intellectual tradition that investigates how belief systems underpin economic, political, and artistic institutions. Drawing upon anthropology, history, and sociology, the work explores the persistence of the sacred and the operations of social magic across various domains of modern life.
Bernard Lahire questions traditional assumptions about art and its emancipatory ambitions by analyzing the aura attached to creators and their works. The volume addresses the forms of domination hidden behind the admiration of cultural artifacts and investigates the belief systems that shape human perception. Readers interested in the sociological interrogation of aesthetics, belief, and institutional authority may find this study relevant to contemporary discussions in cultural sociology and the humanities.
"If It Is Not Just a Painting, What Else Is It?", by Christian Ruby (published online September 24, 2020).