Henri Testelin, Sentiments de plus Habiles Peintres sur la Pratique de la Peinture et la
Sculpture
(Paris, 1696), p.
Niklas Luhmann - Art of the Social System
Wolfdietrich Rasch (Munich, 1984), pp.
268-76 (269).
But there is no need to exaggerate.
One might as well try not to let one's view of the artwork be spoiled by the museum.
? 4
1. See Georg Simmel, Ober sociale Differenzierung: Soziologische undpsycholo- gische Untersuchungen (Leipzig, 1890), and Emile Durkheim, De la division du
travail social (Paris, 1893). On the currency of this assumption, see Jeffrey C. Alexander and Paul Colomy, eds. , Differentiation Theory and Social Change:
Comparative and Historical Perspectives (New York, 1990).
2. See,e. g. ,CharlesTilly,"ClioandMinerva,"inJohnC. McKinneyandEd-
ward A. Tiryakian, eds. , Theoretical Sociology: Perspectives and Developments (New York, 1970), pp. 433-36; Edward A. Tiryakian, "On the Significance of De- differentiation," in S. N. Eisenstadt and H. J. Helle, eds. , Macro-Sociological
Theory: Perspectives on Sociological Theory, vol. 1 (London, 1985), pp. 118-34. 3. Compare Parsons's fatal answer to this question, which states that subsys- tems specializing in one of four possible functions must fulfill all of these four functions themselves and can be recognized as such only in this way--a require-
ment that resulted in an endless repetition of the schema within the schema.
4. Inhistheoryofageneralactionsystem,TalcottParsonsproposedaconcept of the nonarbitrary nature of the consequences of system differentiation, which re- sembles our own despite differences in detail. We would suggest that this is the heart of Parsons's theory, which yielded a number of fruitful comparative analyses.
5. To clarify the matter we should note that we are talking about operations that separate system and environment. As far as observations are concerned, the reentry of the form into the form generates the internal distinction between self- reference and hetero-reference.
6. This argument clearly shows that the system's dependency on other systems for the fulfillment of certain functions is the condition and mark of the auton- omy of every functional system. Specific independence depends, in other words, on a considerable degree of specific dependency. This must be kept in mind when encountering the repeated objection that the dependency of art on a mon- etary market economy could infringe upon the autonomy of the art system.
7. See, e. g. , Benedetto Varchi, Lezzione nella quale si disputa della maggioranza delle arti. . . (1547X quoted from Paola Barocchi, ed. , Trattati d'arte del cinque- cento, vol. 1 (Bari, 1960), pp. 1-58.
Notes to Pages 136-41
3Si
8. One can find a justification for this trend, e. g. , in George Puttenham, The Arte ofEnglish Poesie (1589; Cambridge, 1970), pp. 4zflF.
9. See Torquato Tasso on the styles of "magnifica o sublime, mediocre ed
umile" in Discorsi dell'arte e in particolare sopra ilpoema eroico, quoted from Prosa (Milan, 1969), pp. 349-729 (3921! . ).
10. See Henri Testelin, Sentiments deplus Habiles Peintres sur la Pratique de la Peinture et la Sculpture (Paris, 1696), quoted from the unpaginated Introduction. See also pp. iif. , 17.
11. See Aldo Schiavone, Nascita della giurisprudenza: Cultura aristocratica e pensiero giuridico nella Roma tardo-repubblicana (Bari, 1976), pp. 36ff. Similarly, Samuel Richardson states at the beginning of the eighteenth century that for the
typical gendeman, art is "a fine piece of workmanship, and difficult to be per- formed, but produces only pleasant ornaments, mere superfluidities" (in Dis- course on the Dignity, Certainty, Pleasure and Advantage of the Science ofa Con- noisseur [1719], quoted from The Works [London, 1773; rpt. Hildesheim, 1969],
pp. 241-346 [244]).
12. See the distinction between an internal (mental) and an external disegno
(one put into practice) in Federico Zuccaro, L'idea dei Pittori, Scultori edAr- chitetti (Turin, 1607), quoted from Scritti d'Arte Federico Zuccaro (Florence, 1961), pp. 149-352 (explicidy, p. 152).
13. On situating this idea within the sociological tradition of "functional equivalents," see Niklas Luhmann, "Funktion und Kausalitat," in Luhmann, Soziologische Aufkldrung, vol. 1 (Opladen, 1970), pp. 9-30.
14. This remark is directed against a tradition that believed it sufficed to de- fine meaning from the perspective of consciousness.
15. For more elaborate analyses, see Niklas Luhmann, Soziale Systeme: Grun- drifieiner allgemeinen Theorie (Frankfurt, 1984), pp. 91-147; trans, as Social Sys- tems, trans. John Bednarz, with Dirk Baecker (Stanford, Calif. , 1995), pp. 59-102.
16. See, e. g. , Hans Belting, Bild undKult: Eine Geschichte des Bildes vor dem Zeitalter der Kunst (Munich, 1990).
17! For such a view, see Dirk Baecker, Die Beobachtung der Kunst in der Gesell- schafi, ms. 1994.
18. See Kant, Kritik der Urteibkrafi, ? 49.
19. See the distinction between narrow and broad coupling in Peter Fuchs, Moderne Kommunikation: Zur Theorie des operativen Displacements (Frankfurt, 1993). PP- i39ff-
20. See Chapter 3, section III, above.
21. See the well-known passage in Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, Dialektik der Aufkldrung (1947), quoted from Adorno, Gesammelte Schrifien, vol. 3 (Frankfurt, 1981), pp. i4iff. See also the initially unpublished chapter "Das Schema der Massenkultur," ibid. , pp. 299! ? .
Notes to Pages 142-46
352
957)> corresponding reflections on the worldly meaning of the calculus of probability.
23. Roman Ingarden, in Das literarische Kunstwerk (1931; 4th ed. Tubingen, 1972), p. 234, notes with astonishment that this "modification of being" is so unique that it can barely be put into words.
24. See the portrayal of habitual communication in everyday life when others are present, or in television dialogues, in politics, and so forth by Rainald Goetz
in such titles as Angst, Festung Kronos (Frankfurt, 1989-1993). I am referring here to a conversation with Rainald Goetz.
25. See Arthur C. Danto, The Transfiguration ofthe Commonplace: A Philoso- phy ofArt (Cambridge, Mass. , 1981).
26. The notion of admiratio combines astonishment and admiration [Ver- wunderung und itavunderung]. Moreover, it oscillates between the (positive or negative) states ofthe soul and the effectuation of such states via a striking incident that has been rendered plausible. See Baxter Hathaway, Marvels and Common- places: Renaissance Literary Criticism (New York, 1968). In the theory of art, this prevents--as early as Aristotle--a notion of mimesis/imitatio as mere copying. The most compact and concise formulation of this concept can be found in Descartes, Lespassions de I'ame, quoted from CEuvres etLettres, Pl&ade ed. (Paris, 1952), Art. 53, p. 723. L'admiration is the prime passion, an astonishment in the face of deviation. It is not yet knowledge--not yet coded in the binary true/false.
In current terminology, one might speak of an "irritation" or "perturbation. " The function of art apparently is to prepare the ground for something that can subsequently be elaborated under conditions of binary coding (of art as well? ).
27. See Ulrich Schulz-Buschhaus, "Bandellos Realismus," RomanischesJahr- buch 37 (1986): 107-26.
28. On the necessity of defending poetry in a state of (an allegedly) declining social reputation against the pretentious truth claims of philosophy and histori- ography, see, e. g. , Sir Philip Sidney, The Defense ofPoetry (1595; Lincoln, Nebr. , 1970), pp. i3ff.
29. See Niels Werber, Literatur als System: Zur Ausdifferenzierung literarischer Kommunikation (Opladen, 1992), esp. pp. 63ff. Werber maintains that the dis- tinction interesting/boring will be used from now on as a code by the system.
See also Gerhard Plumpe, Asthetische Kommunikation der Moderne, vol. 1, Von Kant bis Hegel (Opladen, 1993), pp. 22fi, I56ff. This view conflicts with a number
of noteworthy remarks, especially by the romantics, on the notion of the inter- esting, and it is at odds with the further development of this notion in the idea of the beautiful. There seems to be a general agreement, however, that the notion that art must be interesting results from its orientation toward the market.
30. Not surprisingly, this holds for other functional systems as well. We find
22. See George Spencer Brown, Probability and Scientific Inference (London, Ion
Notes to Pages 146-48
353
an emphasis on such code values as lawfulness, truth, affluence in the sense of property, and so forth, though there is not yet a sufficiendy formal specification of function to explain why the code displays a positive and a negative value.
31. For important analyses of how the world is presupposed and produced as
a basis for belief that allows consciousness to shift its awareness, see Edmund Husserl, Erfahrung und Urteil: Untersuchungen zur Genealogie der Logik (Ham- burg, 1948), esp. ? j-<), pp. 23ff. Husserl's emphasis is on the world as presuppo- sition--on how it typifies connective possibilities and thus serves as a substra-
tum that makes possible the shifting of experiential horizons. Reversing this point, one could argue that recursive operation and the possibility of repetition
it implies are constitutive of the emergence of identity and of typifications that
are understood to be a substratum of reality and that whatever is actualized as in- tention and communication passes lightly over its surface.
32. Hegel, Vorlesungentiberdie Asthetik, Pt. 1, quoted from G. E. W. Hegel, Werke in zwanzig Banden, vol. 13 (Frankfurt, 1970), p. 199. On p. 125, Hegel
writes about Dutch painting: "Gegen die vorhandene prosaische Realitat ist da- her dieser durch Geist produzierte Schein das Wunder der Identitat, ein Spott, wenn man will, und eine Ironie tiber das aufierliche natiirliche Dasein. "
33. We need to remind ourselves, however, that such a sense of reality requires that there be something else from which it distinguishes itself, whether this might be--possibly misleading--language, or whether it might be religion, sta- tistics, or politics.
34. "In einem wahrhaft schonen Kunstwerk soil der Inhalt nichts, die Form
aber alles tun," one reads, e. g. , in Friedrich Schiller, Uber die dsthetische Erziehung des Menschen in einer Reihe von Briefen, %iA letter, quoted from Friedrich Schiller, Samtliche Werke, vol. 5,4th ed. (Munich, 1967), p. 639. Earlier in the text, Schiller rejects the notion of a "middle ground" between form and matter, maintaining
diat art can "cancel" [aufheben] this distinction--but how? one might ask, if not
in die form of a reentry of the form into die form.
35. See Niklas Luhmann, Soziologie des Risikos (Berlin, 1991), esp. i68ff.
36. Following Alberti, an early version of this problem concerns die relation-
ship between harmonious proportion and variety. See Paolo Pino, Dialogo dipit- tura (1548) quoted from Paola Barocchi, ed. , Trattati d'arte del cinquecento, vol. 1 (Bari, i960), pp. 93-139 (104). See also the warning against an excess of "deliber-
ate" variety in Lodovico Dolce, Dialogo della pittura (1557), quoted from the Barocchi edition, ibid. , pp. 141-206 (i79f. ); and Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo, Trat- tato dell'arte delta pittura et architettura (Milan, 1585), Chap. 26, pp. 89f.
Henri Testelin, Sentiments de plus Habiles Peintres sur la Pratique de la Peinture et la Sculpture (Paris, 1696), p. 18, distinguishes the variety of contrast from the econ- omy of contours and warns of "incompatible things" (p. 19). In poetics, one finds
the distinction between verisimile (for redundancy) and meraviglioso or mirabile
Notes to Pages 149-52
354
(for variety) alongside the old distinction between the one and the many (unita/moltitudine). See, e. g. , Torquato Tasso Discorsi dell'artepoetica e inpartico- laresopra ilpoema eroico (1587), quoted from Prosa (Milan, 1969). On unitalmolti- tudine = varieta, see Tasso, pp. 372f? ; he opts for moltitudine because it is pleas- ing. What matters in the distinction verisimilelmeraviglioso is an "accoppiamento" (p. 367) to be accomplished by a "maggior diletto" "o piu del verisimile o piu del mirabile" (p. 366). John Dryden, to mention afinalexample, maintains that Eng-
lish theater is superior to French theater because it exhibits greater variety while paying attention to the demands of redundancy ("variety if well order'd"). See John Dryden, Of Dramatick Poesie: An Essay, 2d ed. (1684; London, 1964), pp. 78ff. (quote on p. 79), and also Chap. 6, n. 35.
37. See Umberto Eco's fitting formulation: "L'arte piu que cognoscere il mondo, produce dei complimenti del mondo, delle forme autonome che s'ag- giungiano a quelle esistenti esibendo leggi proprie et vita personale" (Opera aperta [1962; 6th ed. Milan, 1988], p. 50).
38. Evidence for this view from outside the mainstream (which is therefore symptomatic) can be found, e. g. , in Karl Heinrich Heydenreich, System derAs- thetik (Leipzig, 1790; rpt. Hildesheim, 1978).
39. See, e. g. , Howard Rheingold, Virtual Reality (New York, 1991); Martin Kubaczek, "Zur Entwicklung der Imaginationsmaschinen: Der Text als virtuelle Realitat," Faultlinei (1992): 93-102; or some of the contributions in Gerhard Jo-
hann Lischka, ed. , Der entfesselte Blick: Symposion, Workshops, Ausstellung (Bern, 1993)-
40. See Mark Siemons, "Damonen im Biiro: Die Computer-Messe 'System 93' droht mit virtuellen Welten," Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, October 23, 1993, p. 27.
41. See esp. Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, "Fiir eine Erfindung des mittelalter- lichen Theaters aus der Perspektive der friihen Neuzeit," in Festschriftfur Walter Haug undBurghart Wachinger (Tiibingen, 1992), vol. 2, pp. 827-48.
42. August Wilhelm Schlegel, Die Kunstlehre (Pt. 1 of the lectures on literature and art), quoted from Kritische Schriften undBriefe, vol. 2 (Stuttgart, 1963), p. 13. Justifications of this view vary according to whatever terminology is accepted at
the time. A well-known eighteenth-century version states, e. g. , that beauty pleases necessarily ami immediately and therefore has no place for the intervention (= association) of interests. See Francis Hutcheson, An Inquiry Concerning Beauty, Order, Harmony, Design, Treatise I of his Inquiry into the Original ofOur Ideas ofBeauty and Virtue (1725; 4th ed. , 1738; critical ed. The Hague, 1973), ? 1, XIII, pp. 36f. For an elaboration from the viewpoint of associationist psychology, which excludes even art criticism with its interfering reflections, see Archibald Alison, Essays on the Nature and Principles of Taste (Edinburgh-London, 1790; rpt. Hildesheim, 1968). On criticism, see pp. 7ff. Others aim directly at self-
Notes to Pages 152-55
355
reference and infer from it the necessity of disregarding utility (even if there is one), as, e. g. , Karl Philipp Moritz in his definition of the beautiful as "that which
is completed in itself. " See his Schriften zur Asthetik undPoetik: KritischeAusga. be (Tubingen, 1962), pp. 3ft
43. In classical and romantic aesthetics, to postulate an "end in itself" was a way of blocking references to further purposes beyond the work and of present- ing the work as closed in upon itself.
44. On the history of this originally theological formula, see Werner Strube, "'Interessenlosigkeit': Zur Geschichte eines Grundbegriffs der Asthetik," Archiv
fur Begriffigeschichte 23 (1979): 148-74.
45. See Jean-Paul Sartre, Qu'est-ce que la litttrature? in Situations, II (Paris,
1948), pp. 9ifF. : unlike the shoemaker, the writer cannot produce for his own de- mand.
46. Friedrich Schiller, Uber die dsthetische Erziehung des Menschen in einer Reihe von Briefen, quoted from Sdmtliche Werke, vol. 5 (Munich, 1967), p. 638. Schiller is no rigorous thinker, and his claim cannot be meant seriously; other-
wise one could not speak of an aesthetic education to begin with, nor could one expect a political amelioration of the state by way of such a detour. Indeed, the individual could not be understood as a focus for the integration of diverse do- mains of life.
47. See Karl Wilhelm Ferdinand Solger, Vorlesungen uber Asthetik, ed. Karl Wilhelm Ludwig Heyse (Leipzig, 1829; rpt. Darmstadt, 1973), p. 51.
48. We shall return to this question in Chapter 5, below.
49. SeeChapter3,above.
50. According to Arthur O. Lovejoy, The Great Chain ofBeing: A Study ofthe
History ofan Idea (1936; rpt. Cambridge, Mass. , 1950).
51. For examples from England, see Russell Fraser, The War Against Poetry
(Princeton, 1970), pp. i44ff.
52. See Erving Goffman, Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization ofEx-
perience (New York, 1974). Earlier formulations of this sort can be found in Max Weber, Edmund Husserl, and Alfred Schiitz, who maintain that interpretive un- derstanding and the transcendence of the momentary nature of experience in time presuppose typified patterns of order. A frame analysis has the advantage that it does not depend on similarity between the frame and a detail accessible from within this frame. Pace Alexander Dorner, the museum does not have to be a Gesamtkunstwerk.
53. See Francisco Varela, "A Calculus for Self-reference," InternationalJournal of General Systems % (1975): 5-24.
54. See again Heinz von Foerster's notion of "double closure" in Observing Systems (Seaside, Calif. , 1981), pp. 3046? .
55. In the wake of the critique of the theory of logical empiricism, see esp.
356 Notes to Pages 155-61
Kenneth J. Gergen, Toward Transformation in Social Knowledge (New York, 1982), pp. iooff.
56. Consider the abstract nature of this argument: in this context, material and morality are functionally equivalent forms of hetero-reference that constrain the work's room for play so long as they are not--as hetero-references--subject to the internal control by forms.
57. Spencer Brown, Laws ofForm (1969; rpt. New York, 1979), pp. 10,12.
58. In the sense of Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge (Chicago, 1958). For more on the same topic, see issue 1/2 of Revue internationale de systemique 6 (1992).
59. We again refer to Derrida, "Signature Event Context," in Margins ofPhi- losophy, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago, 1982), pp. 307-30.
60. Ibid.
61. Onecancertainlyrejectthisconceptualdecision,butonewouldthensac- rifice almost everything gained by the concept.
62. Frequently, the point has been made that evolution theory breaks with an "archaeological" explanation in terms of origins. Even causal observation and ex- planation are evolutionary possibilities and vary according to the complexity of the system.
63. For a corresponding historical account of the European university, see Rudolf Stichweh, Der fruhmoderne Staat und die europaische Universitdt: Zur Interaktion von Politik und Erziehungssystem im ProzeJ? ihrer Ausdijferenzierung (16. -18. Jahrhundert) (Frankfurt, 1991).
64. Forexamples,seeJamesHall,AHistoryofIdeasandImagesinItalianArt (London, 1983), pp. 4fF. and passim.
65. Belting, BildundKult, p. 538.
66. For a study that draws on an analysis of contemporary treatises, see Mi- chael Baxandall, Painting and Experience in Fifteenth-Century Italy (Oxford, 1972).
67. We think of Michelangelo's notorious and often-mentioned appearance in
front of the Pope--with his felt cap on his hat. For a justification, see Francisco
de Hollanda, Vier Gesprdche iiber die Malerei, gefuhrt zu Rom 1538 (Vienna, 1899), p. 23. It is important not to mistake this behavior for courdy service.
68. See Caroll W. Westfall, "Painting and the Liberal Arts: Alberti's View," Journal ofthe History ofIdeas 30 (1969): 487-506.
69. Seeesp. MartinWarnke,Hofkiinstler. ZurVorgeschichtedesmodernenKiin- stiers (Cologne, 1985); further, Klaus Disselbeck, "Die Ausdifferenzierung der Kunst als Problem der Asthetik," in Henk de Berg and Matthias Prangel, eds. , Kommunikation und Differenz: Systemtheoretische Ansatze in der Literatur- und Kunstwissenschaft (Opladen, 1993), pp. 137-58.
70. For an overview, and on the ambiguous relationship to birth nobility, see Warnke, Hofkiinstler, pp. 202ff.
Notes to Pages 161-62
357
71. "Eadem ratione [= suo iure, thanks to exceptional talent, N. L. ] dicimus nobilem pictorem, nobilem oratorem, nobilem poetam," says the intetlocutor in Ctistoforo Landino, De vera nobilitate (ca. 1440; Florence, 1970), p. 55. What matters is "la virtu propria," proclaims the painter Paolo Pino, not without pride {Dialogo di Pittura [Vinegia, 1548], quoted from Paola Barocchi, ed. , Trattati d'arte del cinquecento, vol. 1 [Bari, i960], pp. i^zf. ). Pino goes on to emphasize the significance of education and of distinguished social intercourse (p. 136).
72. See Benedetto Varchi, Lezzione nella quale si disputa della maggioranza delle arti e qualsiapiu nobile, la scultura 0 la pittura (1547), in Barocchi, Trattati d'arte del cinquecento, vol. 1, pp. 1-58. See also Pino, in Barocchi, Trattati d'arte del cinquecento, vol. 1, pp. i27ff. (Painting is superior to sculpture. )
73. On predecessors from the humanist rhetorical tradition who offered con-
cepts (e. g. , varietas 01 ornamentum) that became relevant later, see Michael Bax- andall, Giotto and the Orators: Humanist Observers ofPainting in Italy and the Discovery ofPictorial Composition 1350-1450 (1971; rpt. Oxford, 1988), and Baxan- dall, Painting and Experience in Fifteenth-Century Italy. The typical motive was already to evaluate artists and artworks, to praise them and distinguish among them.
74. Efforts to assimilate to the norms of an aristocratic lifestyle are evident
from very early on--especially in the claim that the artist does not work for money and is rewarded not for a single work but for his virtu, as well as in the notion that works of art cannot be paid for with money. Within the context of a biographical report, see Girolamo Frachetta, Dialogo del Furore Poetico (Padua, 1581; rpt. Munich, 1969), p. 4. For an overview, see Warnke, Hofkiinstler, p. 194. Such considerations have nothing to do with criteria of artistic evaluation but concern the relationship between art and the economy.
75.
? 4
1. See Georg Simmel, Ober sociale Differenzierung: Soziologische undpsycholo- gische Untersuchungen (Leipzig, 1890), and Emile Durkheim, De la division du
travail social (Paris, 1893). On the currency of this assumption, see Jeffrey C. Alexander and Paul Colomy, eds. , Differentiation Theory and Social Change:
Comparative and Historical Perspectives (New York, 1990).
2. See,e. g. ,CharlesTilly,"ClioandMinerva,"inJohnC. McKinneyandEd-
ward A. Tiryakian, eds. , Theoretical Sociology: Perspectives and Developments (New York, 1970), pp. 433-36; Edward A. Tiryakian, "On the Significance of De- differentiation," in S. N. Eisenstadt and H. J. Helle, eds. , Macro-Sociological
Theory: Perspectives on Sociological Theory, vol. 1 (London, 1985), pp. 118-34. 3. Compare Parsons's fatal answer to this question, which states that subsys- tems specializing in one of four possible functions must fulfill all of these four functions themselves and can be recognized as such only in this way--a require-
ment that resulted in an endless repetition of the schema within the schema.
4. Inhistheoryofageneralactionsystem,TalcottParsonsproposedaconcept of the nonarbitrary nature of the consequences of system differentiation, which re- sembles our own despite differences in detail. We would suggest that this is the heart of Parsons's theory, which yielded a number of fruitful comparative analyses.
5. To clarify the matter we should note that we are talking about operations that separate system and environment. As far as observations are concerned, the reentry of the form into the form generates the internal distinction between self- reference and hetero-reference.
6. This argument clearly shows that the system's dependency on other systems for the fulfillment of certain functions is the condition and mark of the auton- omy of every functional system. Specific independence depends, in other words, on a considerable degree of specific dependency. This must be kept in mind when encountering the repeated objection that the dependency of art on a mon- etary market economy could infringe upon the autonomy of the art system.
7. See, e. g. , Benedetto Varchi, Lezzione nella quale si disputa della maggioranza delle arti. . . (1547X quoted from Paola Barocchi, ed. , Trattati d'arte del cinque- cento, vol. 1 (Bari, 1960), pp. 1-58.
Notes to Pages 136-41
3Si
8. One can find a justification for this trend, e. g. , in George Puttenham, The Arte ofEnglish Poesie (1589; Cambridge, 1970), pp. 4zflF.
9. See Torquato Tasso on the styles of "magnifica o sublime, mediocre ed
umile" in Discorsi dell'arte e in particolare sopra ilpoema eroico, quoted from Prosa (Milan, 1969), pp. 349-729 (3921! . ).
10. See Henri Testelin, Sentiments deplus Habiles Peintres sur la Pratique de la Peinture et la Sculpture (Paris, 1696), quoted from the unpaginated Introduction. See also pp. iif. , 17.
11. See Aldo Schiavone, Nascita della giurisprudenza: Cultura aristocratica e pensiero giuridico nella Roma tardo-repubblicana (Bari, 1976), pp. 36ff. Similarly, Samuel Richardson states at the beginning of the eighteenth century that for the
typical gendeman, art is "a fine piece of workmanship, and difficult to be per- formed, but produces only pleasant ornaments, mere superfluidities" (in Dis- course on the Dignity, Certainty, Pleasure and Advantage of the Science ofa Con- noisseur [1719], quoted from The Works [London, 1773; rpt. Hildesheim, 1969],
pp. 241-346 [244]).
12. See the distinction between an internal (mental) and an external disegno
(one put into practice) in Federico Zuccaro, L'idea dei Pittori, Scultori edAr- chitetti (Turin, 1607), quoted from Scritti d'Arte Federico Zuccaro (Florence, 1961), pp. 149-352 (explicidy, p. 152).
13. On situating this idea within the sociological tradition of "functional equivalents," see Niklas Luhmann, "Funktion und Kausalitat," in Luhmann, Soziologische Aufkldrung, vol. 1 (Opladen, 1970), pp. 9-30.
14. This remark is directed against a tradition that believed it sufficed to de- fine meaning from the perspective of consciousness.
15. For more elaborate analyses, see Niklas Luhmann, Soziale Systeme: Grun- drifieiner allgemeinen Theorie (Frankfurt, 1984), pp. 91-147; trans, as Social Sys- tems, trans. John Bednarz, with Dirk Baecker (Stanford, Calif. , 1995), pp. 59-102.
16. See, e. g. , Hans Belting, Bild undKult: Eine Geschichte des Bildes vor dem Zeitalter der Kunst (Munich, 1990).
17! For such a view, see Dirk Baecker, Die Beobachtung der Kunst in der Gesell- schafi, ms. 1994.
18. See Kant, Kritik der Urteibkrafi, ? 49.
19. See the distinction between narrow and broad coupling in Peter Fuchs, Moderne Kommunikation: Zur Theorie des operativen Displacements (Frankfurt, 1993). PP- i39ff-
20. See Chapter 3, section III, above.
21. See the well-known passage in Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, Dialektik der Aufkldrung (1947), quoted from Adorno, Gesammelte Schrifien, vol. 3 (Frankfurt, 1981), pp. i4iff. See also the initially unpublished chapter "Das Schema der Massenkultur," ibid. , pp. 299! ? .
Notes to Pages 142-46
352
957)> corresponding reflections on the worldly meaning of the calculus of probability.
23. Roman Ingarden, in Das literarische Kunstwerk (1931; 4th ed. Tubingen, 1972), p. 234, notes with astonishment that this "modification of being" is so unique that it can barely be put into words.
24. See the portrayal of habitual communication in everyday life when others are present, or in television dialogues, in politics, and so forth by Rainald Goetz
in such titles as Angst, Festung Kronos (Frankfurt, 1989-1993). I am referring here to a conversation with Rainald Goetz.
25. See Arthur C. Danto, The Transfiguration ofthe Commonplace: A Philoso- phy ofArt (Cambridge, Mass. , 1981).
26. The notion of admiratio combines astonishment and admiration [Ver- wunderung und itavunderung]. Moreover, it oscillates between the (positive or negative) states ofthe soul and the effectuation of such states via a striking incident that has been rendered plausible. See Baxter Hathaway, Marvels and Common- places: Renaissance Literary Criticism (New York, 1968). In the theory of art, this prevents--as early as Aristotle--a notion of mimesis/imitatio as mere copying. The most compact and concise formulation of this concept can be found in Descartes, Lespassions de I'ame, quoted from CEuvres etLettres, Pl&ade ed. (Paris, 1952), Art. 53, p. 723. L'admiration is the prime passion, an astonishment in the face of deviation. It is not yet knowledge--not yet coded in the binary true/false.
In current terminology, one might speak of an "irritation" or "perturbation. " The function of art apparently is to prepare the ground for something that can subsequently be elaborated under conditions of binary coding (of art as well? ).
27. See Ulrich Schulz-Buschhaus, "Bandellos Realismus," RomanischesJahr- buch 37 (1986): 107-26.
28. On the necessity of defending poetry in a state of (an allegedly) declining social reputation against the pretentious truth claims of philosophy and histori- ography, see, e. g. , Sir Philip Sidney, The Defense ofPoetry (1595; Lincoln, Nebr. , 1970), pp. i3ff.
29. See Niels Werber, Literatur als System: Zur Ausdifferenzierung literarischer Kommunikation (Opladen, 1992), esp. pp. 63ff. Werber maintains that the dis- tinction interesting/boring will be used from now on as a code by the system.
See also Gerhard Plumpe, Asthetische Kommunikation der Moderne, vol. 1, Von Kant bis Hegel (Opladen, 1993), pp. 22fi, I56ff. This view conflicts with a number
of noteworthy remarks, especially by the romantics, on the notion of the inter- esting, and it is at odds with the further development of this notion in the idea of the beautiful. There seems to be a general agreement, however, that the notion that art must be interesting results from its orientation toward the market.
30. Not surprisingly, this holds for other functional systems as well. We find
22. See George Spencer Brown, Probability and Scientific Inference (London, Ion
Notes to Pages 146-48
353
an emphasis on such code values as lawfulness, truth, affluence in the sense of property, and so forth, though there is not yet a sufficiendy formal specification of function to explain why the code displays a positive and a negative value.
31. For important analyses of how the world is presupposed and produced as
a basis for belief that allows consciousness to shift its awareness, see Edmund Husserl, Erfahrung und Urteil: Untersuchungen zur Genealogie der Logik (Ham- burg, 1948), esp. ? j-<), pp. 23ff. Husserl's emphasis is on the world as presuppo- sition--on how it typifies connective possibilities and thus serves as a substra-
tum that makes possible the shifting of experiential horizons. Reversing this point, one could argue that recursive operation and the possibility of repetition
it implies are constitutive of the emergence of identity and of typifications that
are understood to be a substratum of reality and that whatever is actualized as in- tention and communication passes lightly over its surface.
32. Hegel, Vorlesungentiberdie Asthetik, Pt. 1, quoted from G. E. W. Hegel, Werke in zwanzig Banden, vol. 13 (Frankfurt, 1970), p. 199. On p. 125, Hegel
writes about Dutch painting: "Gegen die vorhandene prosaische Realitat ist da- her dieser durch Geist produzierte Schein das Wunder der Identitat, ein Spott, wenn man will, und eine Ironie tiber das aufierliche natiirliche Dasein. "
33. We need to remind ourselves, however, that such a sense of reality requires that there be something else from which it distinguishes itself, whether this might be--possibly misleading--language, or whether it might be religion, sta- tistics, or politics.
34. "In einem wahrhaft schonen Kunstwerk soil der Inhalt nichts, die Form
aber alles tun," one reads, e. g. , in Friedrich Schiller, Uber die dsthetische Erziehung des Menschen in einer Reihe von Briefen, %iA letter, quoted from Friedrich Schiller, Samtliche Werke, vol. 5,4th ed. (Munich, 1967), p. 639. Earlier in the text, Schiller rejects the notion of a "middle ground" between form and matter, maintaining
diat art can "cancel" [aufheben] this distinction--but how? one might ask, if not
in die form of a reentry of the form into die form.
35. See Niklas Luhmann, Soziologie des Risikos (Berlin, 1991), esp. i68ff.
36. Following Alberti, an early version of this problem concerns die relation-
ship between harmonious proportion and variety. See Paolo Pino, Dialogo dipit- tura (1548) quoted from Paola Barocchi, ed. , Trattati d'arte del cinquecento, vol. 1 (Bari, i960), pp. 93-139 (104). See also the warning against an excess of "deliber-
ate" variety in Lodovico Dolce, Dialogo della pittura (1557), quoted from the Barocchi edition, ibid. , pp. 141-206 (i79f. ); and Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo, Trat- tato dell'arte delta pittura et architettura (Milan, 1585), Chap. 26, pp. 89f.
Henri Testelin, Sentiments de plus Habiles Peintres sur la Pratique de la Peinture et la Sculpture (Paris, 1696), p. 18, distinguishes the variety of contrast from the econ- omy of contours and warns of "incompatible things" (p. 19). In poetics, one finds
the distinction between verisimile (for redundancy) and meraviglioso or mirabile
Notes to Pages 149-52
354
(for variety) alongside the old distinction between the one and the many (unita/moltitudine). See, e. g. , Torquato Tasso Discorsi dell'artepoetica e inpartico- laresopra ilpoema eroico (1587), quoted from Prosa (Milan, 1969). On unitalmolti- tudine = varieta, see Tasso, pp. 372f? ; he opts for moltitudine because it is pleas- ing. What matters in the distinction verisimilelmeraviglioso is an "accoppiamento" (p. 367) to be accomplished by a "maggior diletto" "o piu del verisimile o piu del mirabile" (p. 366). John Dryden, to mention afinalexample, maintains that Eng-
lish theater is superior to French theater because it exhibits greater variety while paying attention to the demands of redundancy ("variety if well order'd"). See John Dryden, Of Dramatick Poesie: An Essay, 2d ed. (1684; London, 1964), pp. 78ff. (quote on p. 79), and also Chap. 6, n. 35.
37. See Umberto Eco's fitting formulation: "L'arte piu que cognoscere il mondo, produce dei complimenti del mondo, delle forme autonome che s'ag- giungiano a quelle esistenti esibendo leggi proprie et vita personale" (Opera aperta [1962; 6th ed. Milan, 1988], p. 50).
38. Evidence for this view from outside the mainstream (which is therefore symptomatic) can be found, e. g. , in Karl Heinrich Heydenreich, System derAs- thetik (Leipzig, 1790; rpt. Hildesheim, 1978).
39. See, e. g. , Howard Rheingold, Virtual Reality (New York, 1991); Martin Kubaczek, "Zur Entwicklung der Imaginationsmaschinen: Der Text als virtuelle Realitat," Faultlinei (1992): 93-102; or some of the contributions in Gerhard Jo-
hann Lischka, ed. , Der entfesselte Blick: Symposion, Workshops, Ausstellung (Bern, 1993)-
40. See Mark Siemons, "Damonen im Biiro: Die Computer-Messe 'System 93' droht mit virtuellen Welten," Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, October 23, 1993, p. 27.
41. See esp. Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, "Fiir eine Erfindung des mittelalter- lichen Theaters aus der Perspektive der friihen Neuzeit," in Festschriftfur Walter Haug undBurghart Wachinger (Tiibingen, 1992), vol. 2, pp. 827-48.
42. August Wilhelm Schlegel, Die Kunstlehre (Pt. 1 of the lectures on literature and art), quoted from Kritische Schriften undBriefe, vol. 2 (Stuttgart, 1963), p. 13. Justifications of this view vary according to whatever terminology is accepted at
the time. A well-known eighteenth-century version states, e. g. , that beauty pleases necessarily ami immediately and therefore has no place for the intervention (= association) of interests. See Francis Hutcheson, An Inquiry Concerning Beauty, Order, Harmony, Design, Treatise I of his Inquiry into the Original ofOur Ideas ofBeauty and Virtue (1725; 4th ed. , 1738; critical ed. The Hague, 1973), ? 1, XIII, pp. 36f. For an elaboration from the viewpoint of associationist psychology, which excludes even art criticism with its interfering reflections, see Archibald Alison, Essays on the Nature and Principles of Taste (Edinburgh-London, 1790; rpt. Hildesheim, 1968). On criticism, see pp. 7ff. Others aim directly at self-
Notes to Pages 152-55
355
reference and infer from it the necessity of disregarding utility (even if there is one), as, e. g. , Karl Philipp Moritz in his definition of the beautiful as "that which
is completed in itself. " See his Schriften zur Asthetik undPoetik: KritischeAusga. be (Tubingen, 1962), pp. 3ft
43. In classical and romantic aesthetics, to postulate an "end in itself" was a way of blocking references to further purposes beyond the work and of present- ing the work as closed in upon itself.
44. On the history of this originally theological formula, see Werner Strube, "'Interessenlosigkeit': Zur Geschichte eines Grundbegriffs der Asthetik," Archiv
fur Begriffigeschichte 23 (1979): 148-74.
45. See Jean-Paul Sartre, Qu'est-ce que la litttrature? in Situations, II (Paris,
1948), pp. 9ifF. : unlike the shoemaker, the writer cannot produce for his own de- mand.
46. Friedrich Schiller, Uber die dsthetische Erziehung des Menschen in einer Reihe von Briefen, quoted from Sdmtliche Werke, vol. 5 (Munich, 1967), p. 638. Schiller is no rigorous thinker, and his claim cannot be meant seriously; other-
wise one could not speak of an aesthetic education to begin with, nor could one expect a political amelioration of the state by way of such a detour. Indeed, the individual could not be understood as a focus for the integration of diverse do- mains of life.
47. See Karl Wilhelm Ferdinand Solger, Vorlesungen uber Asthetik, ed. Karl Wilhelm Ludwig Heyse (Leipzig, 1829; rpt. Darmstadt, 1973), p. 51.
48. We shall return to this question in Chapter 5, below.
49. SeeChapter3,above.
50. According to Arthur O. Lovejoy, The Great Chain ofBeing: A Study ofthe
History ofan Idea (1936; rpt. Cambridge, Mass. , 1950).
51. For examples from England, see Russell Fraser, The War Against Poetry
(Princeton, 1970), pp. i44ff.
52. See Erving Goffman, Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization ofEx-
perience (New York, 1974). Earlier formulations of this sort can be found in Max Weber, Edmund Husserl, and Alfred Schiitz, who maintain that interpretive un- derstanding and the transcendence of the momentary nature of experience in time presuppose typified patterns of order. A frame analysis has the advantage that it does not depend on similarity between the frame and a detail accessible from within this frame. Pace Alexander Dorner, the museum does not have to be a Gesamtkunstwerk.
53. See Francisco Varela, "A Calculus for Self-reference," InternationalJournal of General Systems % (1975): 5-24.
54. See again Heinz von Foerster's notion of "double closure" in Observing Systems (Seaside, Calif. , 1981), pp. 3046? .
55. In the wake of the critique of the theory of logical empiricism, see esp.
356 Notes to Pages 155-61
Kenneth J. Gergen, Toward Transformation in Social Knowledge (New York, 1982), pp. iooff.
56. Consider the abstract nature of this argument: in this context, material and morality are functionally equivalent forms of hetero-reference that constrain the work's room for play so long as they are not--as hetero-references--subject to the internal control by forms.
57. Spencer Brown, Laws ofForm (1969; rpt. New York, 1979), pp. 10,12.
58. In the sense of Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge (Chicago, 1958). For more on the same topic, see issue 1/2 of Revue internationale de systemique 6 (1992).
59. We again refer to Derrida, "Signature Event Context," in Margins ofPhi- losophy, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago, 1982), pp. 307-30.
60. Ibid.
61. Onecancertainlyrejectthisconceptualdecision,butonewouldthensac- rifice almost everything gained by the concept.
62. Frequently, the point has been made that evolution theory breaks with an "archaeological" explanation in terms of origins. Even causal observation and ex- planation are evolutionary possibilities and vary according to the complexity of the system.
63. For a corresponding historical account of the European university, see Rudolf Stichweh, Der fruhmoderne Staat und die europaische Universitdt: Zur Interaktion von Politik und Erziehungssystem im ProzeJ? ihrer Ausdijferenzierung (16. -18. Jahrhundert) (Frankfurt, 1991).
64. Forexamples,seeJamesHall,AHistoryofIdeasandImagesinItalianArt (London, 1983), pp. 4fF. and passim.
65. Belting, BildundKult, p. 538.
66. For a study that draws on an analysis of contemporary treatises, see Mi- chael Baxandall, Painting and Experience in Fifteenth-Century Italy (Oxford, 1972).
67. We think of Michelangelo's notorious and often-mentioned appearance in
front of the Pope--with his felt cap on his hat. For a justification, see Francisco
de Hollanda, Vier Gesprdche iiber die Malerei, gefuhrt zu Rom 1538 (Vienna, 1899), p. 23. It is important not to mistake this behavior for courdy service.
68. See Caroll W. Westfall, "Painting and the Liberal Arts: Alberti's View," Journal ofthe History ofIdeas 30 (1969): 487-506.
69. Seeesp. MartinWarnke,Hofkiinstler. ZurVorgeschichtedesmodernenKiin- stiers (Cologne, 1985); further, Klaus Disselbeck, "Die Ausdifferenzierung der Kunst als Problem der Asthetik," in Henk de Berg and Matthias Prangel, eds. , Kommunikation und Differenz: Systemtheoretische Ansatze in der Literatur- und Kunstwissenschaft (Opladen, 1993), pp. 137-58.
70. For an overview, and on the ambiguous relationship to birth nobility, see Warnke, Hofkiinstler, pp. 202ff.
Notes to Pages 161-62
357
71. "Eadem ratione [= suo iure, thanks to exceptional talent, N. L. ] dicimus nobilem pictorem, nobilem oratorem, nobilem poetam," says the intetlocutor in Ctistoforo Landino, De vera nobilitate (ca. 1440; Florence, 1970), p. 55. What matters is "la virtu propria," proclaims the painter Paolo Pino, not without pride {Dialogo di Pittura [Vinegia, 1548], quoted from Paola Barocchi, ed. , Trattati d'arte del cinquecento, vol. 1 [Bari, i960], pp. i^zf. ). Pino goes on to emphasize the significance of education and of distinguished social intercourse (p. 136).
72. See Benedetto Varchi, Lezzione nella quale si disputa della maggioranza delle arti e qualsiapiu nobile, la scultura 0 la pittura (1547), in Barocchi, Trattati d'arte del cinquecento, vol. 1, pp. 1-58. See also Pino, in Barocchi, Trattati d'arte del cinquecento, vol. 1, pp. i27ff. (Painting is superior to sculpture. )
73. On predecessors from the humanist rhetorical tradition who offered con-
cepts (e. g. , varietas 01 ornamentum) that became relevant later, see Michael Bax- andall, Giotto and the Orators: Humanist Observers ofPainting in Italy and the Discovery ofPictorial Composition 1350-1450 (1971; rpt. Oxford, 1988), and Baxan- dall, Painting and Experience in Fifteenth-Century Italy. The typical motive was already to evaluate artists and artworks, to praise them and distinguish among them.
74. Efforts to assimilate to the norms of an aristocratic lifestyle are evident
from very early on--especially in the claim that the artist does not work for money and is rewarded not for a single work but for his virtu, as well as in the notion that works of art cannot be paid for with money. Within the context of a biographical report, see Girolamo Frachetta, Dialogo del Furore Poetico (Padua, 1581; rpt. Munich, 1969), p. 4. For an overview, see Warnke, Hofkiinstler, p. 194. Such considerations have nothing to do with criteria of artistic evaluation but concern the relationship between art and the economy.
75.
