On bad art history the two most popular submission are nonsense charts (the ordinate!) like this and that.

Now, that reminded me of something. What? Ah, yes. I've seen a chart like that. Years ago. In a book. By Bourdieu. So I have posted him, too, doing exactly the same.

Bourdieu is very popular with all kinds of art institutions because you need to have the students read something and this Bourdieu guy wrote a plenty of thick books with "art" and "culture" in the title.

Now, this submission caused quite the rage in the comment section which did not quite suffice to drown the thread. So days later it's linked from badsocialscience. Some pearls from both threads:

How dare you? It's Bourdieu!

Once again, I'm not the biggest fan of Bourdieu but if you want to diss him to prove that you're super cool, you'll have to bring more to the discussion that 'I don't understand what is he saying so I'll make fun of him'

I know this will sound like an argument of authority fallacy but I just want to make it clear: Bourdieu is not a random internet troll but one of the most respected sociologist, anthropologist and philosopher of the 20th century in France and I really don't know on what bases you are telling me that he is not meticulous.

He's pretty important!

Ironically, one of my favorite art history books makes extensive use of Bourdieu.

It's not mathematics. It's ... 2deep4u!

I am very confused by the assertion that Bourdieu's diagram is mathematical... Like, I've seen a lot of Bourdieu diagrams (his "fields of power" and "field of literary production" which I've used in the study of science fiction) can be kinda opaque, but just because they contain geometry does not make them mathematical.

Surely it needs to claim that it's mathematical, or invoke mathematics, in order for it to be judged as pseudo-mathematical.

it's more of an illustrated vision of his analysis because sometimes it's easier to draw a diagram than to spend four pages explaining a concept.

Same user explaining this concept worth 4 pages or 3 parallel linear functions:

Have you actually tried to understand this chart? It's just stating something that I don't even think many people will disagree:

"Each of the major galleries was a gallery of the avant-garde at a more or less distant point in time"

In my own words: what is once avant-guard will become rear-guard. What was once only admired by young rebellious people will become a norm once those people get older and gain influence.

Is this really bad art history?

Well, it's still better than the original chart. More augury:

You're reading more in this than the picture wanted to illustrate: generations emerge, become old, and then disappear as time goes by.

So he's just saying that merely by the passage of time, generations of artists exist alongside each other, and the diagonal lines show how today's avant garde looks at what the previous generation did when it was avant-garde, and before it became consecrated.