English sociologist of art Janet Wolff says that all art is situated both historically and in relation to the status groups that produce it and share a taste for it. Tracing the relationships between the situation and the art is the difficult task of the sociology of art.
The theoretical model used by art historians results in their focusing heavily on the body of art itself, showing how styles influence and develop out of each other. Alternatively, the “interpretive” theory of anthropologist Clifford Geertz—described in his essay, “Art as a Cultural System” —emphasizes the idea that the meaning system of the art participates in the larger meaning system of the culture: the larger system provides the key to the art.