It seems that the practice of "style art history" may be back in vogue partly because Bourdieu's notion of social "distinction" figures style as the essential condition that divides that which is art and that which is not. In this sense, style is essential to art; it is what defines a sphere of art over and against a sphere of a more generalized culture. Without style, there is no art. Furthermore, Bourdieu believes that a study of sociology must ultimately transgress this "sacred space" that art makes for itself, and conceive of artistic "taste" in terms not unlike the sense of the word that applies to food.
The more traditional notion of style, as typified by writers like Wolfflin uses style as an explanatory tool that is best applied from hindsight. This "holistic" concept of style, to use Gombrich's characterization, is a rather harmless use of the notion; it explains why a specific period's or place's art looks a certain way without questioning the social reasons behind a style's production. For Bourdieu, every style of art (that is, a "high" art which is distinguished from the more generalized mass of cultural products) distinguishes itself against previous styles. This in itself is not so groundbreaking or controversial, but he goes on to argue that the art work makes its meaning largely incomprehensible to those who do not have the education, or have not acquired enough experience in viewing art to understand the stylistic distinction, which is largely historical. One must be in the club. In this way, art is a marker of class and always "fulfil[s] a social function of legitimating class differences" (Bourdieu, 7).
As to whether Bourdieu's work on "distinction" legitimizes Zhu Qi's claim that Westerners do not understand Chinese avant garde art is questionable. Bourdieu's conclusion that art marks and legitimizes class differences is certainly at work in Zhu's argument, but the claim that Westerners do not "understand" Chinese art seems to reinforce much of what Bourdieu seeks to break or transgress. Zhu says that Westerners only gain a "superficial" understanding of Chinese art, which implies that there is a more essential meaning barred to them. In this way, Zhu characterizes Westerners similarly to the way Bourdieu characterizes "the people," as an uneducated mass who cannot understand the way art situates itself in a history of art, and therefore cannot understand the bulk of an art work's meaning. Westerners can only understand Chinese art in its (perhaps nonexistent) political, national and historical dimensions.
However, in claiming that Western critics and collectors only superficially understand Chinese art, Zhu is also arguing that this lack of engagement causes Westerners to value artists and art works that are so bad that not only are their meanings misunderstood, but the "true" meanings are themselves nonexistent or unoriginal in both eastern and western contexts. This argument also strikes me as a little weak. If so many artists are producing works specifically for a Western audience as Zhu says, then when a Westerner sees that work as engaging in dialogue with western styles, then isn't everything simply going to plan?
