| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立中興大學 === 外國語文學系所 === 103 === This thesis adopts the perspective of cultural materialism to examine the operation of art in three of Kazuo Ishiguro’s novels: An Artist of the Floating World, Never Let Me Go and Nocturnes. Characters in each novel have their own ways of valuing artworks; this thesis aims to prove that their uses of art follow a routine change from pure art to the social or political practice of art. This change of art comes from the influence of mechanical reproduction and social activity in the cultural field. Under these influences, artworks no longer reflect an artist’s empathy but rather become a product of the cultural structure. This thesis will first use Oscar Wilde’s views to deal with the definition of pure art and the duty of an artist, and then will seek to discover the change of mechanical reproduction in artworks through Walter Benjamin’s concepts, and finally adopt Pierre Bourdieu’s concepts to explore the operation of art in the cultural field.
The first chapters examine the meaning of art between clones and humans in Never Let Me Go and how they instrumentalize art for individual purposes through reproduction. The second chapter identifies Ono’s position in floating trends in An Artist of the Floating World and discovers how art operates in the market and artists establish social relations. The third chapter probes the operation of art in Nocturnes to clarify the position of artists, agents and audience in the cultural field, and investigates the relation between people involved in art and the distinction of taste in audience. This thesis will aim to prove that in the consumerist and capitalist age, there is no pure art but only socially and politically constructed art in our society.
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