No More Learning

? 4 The Function of Art and the Differentiation of the Art System
I
One of the few constants in the century-old academic history of sociol- ogy is the assumption that modern society is characterized by a certain de-
1
gree of social differentiation and by some unique form of differentiation. Historical development, it turns out, is subject not only to differentiation
2
but also to de-differentiation.
ory and the theory of evolution have altered the manner in which the the- orem of differentiation is justified and how it is conceptually framed. To- day, one no longer works with analogies based on the paradigm of the division of labor, which was believed to occur spontaneously whenever there was an opportunity, simply because of its yields or its productive ra- tionality. It is doubtful that more differentiation, or differentiation at the level of the division of labor, is generally desirable. (Adam Smith already pointed out its disadvantages. ) Currendy, an overall critical, more skepti- cal, and doubtful attitude prevails. This does not change the fact that the theorem of differentiation posits a crucial accent, if not the main criterion for distinguishing modern society from its predecessors. However, if dif- ferentiation in its specifically modern form turns out to be not as benefi- cial as was previously assumed, then one needs to revise one's judgment of modern society. Many indications point toward this.
A first step--which hardly improves our relation to the tradition--is to describe modern society as a functionally differentiated system. Generally speaking, this means that the orientation toward specific functions (or problems) of the social system catalyzes the formation of subsystems that
Moreover, the elaboration of systems the-
m
134 The Function of Art and the Differentiation of the Art System
dominate the face of society. If one wants to investigate the consequences of this development and wants to know how differentiation affects the subdomains of social communication (in this case art), then one must fo- cus one's conceptual apparatus more accurately. Most importantly, one must clarify how functions can serve as evolutionary "attractors," and in
3
precisely what sense subsystems constitute systems in their own right. A description of the art system that takes these background assump- tions for granted and analyzes the form of social differentiation in general systems-theoretical terms yields consequences that will accompany us from now on. Today, systems theory is a highly developed, albeit contro- versial, analytical instrument. It requires theoretical decisions that do not directly concern art. (This, of course, holds for other--for example, semi- ological--analyses of art as well. ) In conjunction with the thesis that soci- ety is a functionally differentiated system and is in this form historically unique, a systems-theoretical orientation has further consequences. It means that the different functional systems are treated in many respects as comparable. The terminology we introduced earlier demonstrates this in remarkable detail. Issues such as system formation and system boundaries, function, medium and forms, operative closure, autopoiesis, first- and second-order observation, and coding and programming can be investi- gated with regard to any functional system. As these investigations take shape and yield answers, a theory of society emerges that does not depend on discovering a unified meaning behind society--for example, by deriv- ing societies from the nature of man, from a founding contract, or from an ultimate moral consensus. Such propositions may be treated as part of the theory's subject matter, as different forms of self-description available to the system of society. What ultimately characterizes society, however,
4
manifests itself in the comparability of its subsystems.
In a domain such as art (just as for law, science, politics, and so on), we
discover not unique traits of art but features that can be found, mutatis mutandis, in other functional systems as well--for example, the shift to a mode of second-order observation. Art participates in society by differen- tiating itself as a system, which subjects art to a logic of operative clo- sure--just like any other functional system. We are not primarily con- cerned with problems of causality, of society's influence on art and of art on society. (Such issues are of secondary importance. ) Nor do we advocate the defensive attitude that die autonomy of art ought to be upheld and protected. Modern art is autonomous in an operative sense. No one else
The Function of Art and the Differentiation of the Art System 135
does what it does. This is why questions concerning die independence or dependence of art can arise in a causal sense. The societal nature of mod- ern art consists in its operative closure and autonomy, provided that soci- ety imposes this form on all functional systems, one of which is art.
We base the following analyses on a distinction, namely, on the distinc- tion between system/environment relations, on the one hand, and system/ system relations, on the other. When dealing with system/environment re- lations, the system constitutes the internal side of the form, whereas the environment is its unmarked space. "The environment" is nothing but an empty correlate of the system's self-reference; it provides no information. If, however, we are dealing with system/system relations, then the other side can be marked and indicated. In this case, art no longer deals with "everything else" but with questions such as whether and to what extent the artist is motivated by political convenience or by wealthy customers.
Insofar as system/environment relations are concerned, system differen- tiation merely replicates the difference between system and environment within the system, that is, it reenters the two-sided form system/environ-
5
ment into the system. The decisive question is whether, and in what ways,
other autopoietic systems, endowed with their own autonomy and their
own operative closure, can emerge within the autopoietic system of soci-
ety (which is closed with regard to its own operation of communication).
The answer lies in the problems that occur in the system at large, problems
that take over the subsystems as their own functions, because these func-
tions can be fulfilled nowhere else. Older social formations provide exam-
ples of such operative closure--urban communities based on center/
periphery differentiation, and aristocratic societies based on stratification.
But if at times centers of privileged life partially differentiate themselves,
this does not mean that autopoietic, operationally closed subsystems are
established within society at large--except within the dominant frame-
work of segmentary differentiation. Only given functional differentiation
do the subsystems generated according to this principle become opera-
tionally autonomous, because none of these systems can fulfill the func-
6
tion of the other.
In system/system relations, the concept of form becomes relevant in a
different way. Only in such relations can one speak of a "form of differen- tiation" in the sense that a system's type of differentiation informs the sys- tem of the other systems it must expect in its environment: systems of the same type in the case of segmentation, systems of a different type in the
136 The Function of Art and the Differentiation of the Art System
case of a center/periphery differentiation, and both similar and different systems in the case of functional differentiation. The differentiation of a functional system already indicates that there must be other such systems in its environment--whatever else the environment might contain--for the simple reason that all the necessary functions of the system as a whole must be taken care of in one way or another.
These reflections suggest a certain developmental logic in the evolution of forms of differentiation. This is not a matter of decomposing a given whole into its parts. Forms of differentiation are not principles of decom- position. If they were, then the transition from one form to another would be difficult to imagine. Rather, the system of society as a whole involves the possibility for differentiating operatively closed subsystems. When, and only when, this happens, the subsystem assumes a form that presupposes another side. The specific system type suggests what kinds of other systems can be expected on the other, external side of the form: other setdements if the form is a settlement; systems of lower rank if differentiation rests on a claim to higher rank; and eventually other functional systems if the differ- entiated system specializes itself along functional lines. In this way, religion was crucial for the development of the early modern state, first as ammu- nition for civil wars and later--after reorganizing itself during the triden- tium and within the corresponding structures of a state church that evolved in the Protestant world--as a partner in another, political function.
The relations between art and stratificatory differentiation are certainly more complex than one might expect in retrospect. When one distin- guishes individual genres and then asks how they can be connected, the
7
problem presents itself as one of hierarchical ranking --that is, in the
terms in which the unity of society or of the world is described. Hierarchy makes people look upward--even if it increasingly conflicts with the self- image of art. On the one hand, the nobility certainly did commission art- works. Art finds appropriate objects, persons, and destinies only in the
8
highest social circles. There is a connection here to the moral-pedagogi-
cal function of art. At the bottom of the social hierarchy, there is not enough room for free action, hence no example for excellence. Stylistic forms of rhetoric and poetry vary accordingly, depending on the rank of
9
the persons depicted. According to Henri Testelin, even drawing must
take social status into account and draw rustic country folks with rough
10
strokes while using clear lines to represent grave and serious people. Ludwig Tieck's novels, princes and dukes are still indispensable, but
In
The Function of Art and the Differentiation of the Art System 137
poverty contributes equally important possibilities for action. On the
other hand, the indispensability of social rank for the novel does not nec-
essarily mean that the upper classes developed an understanding or inter-
est in art. The nobility in the Roman republic was said to consider poetry
supervacua (or, in an older expression, supervacena [superfluous, unneces-
11
sary]) and turned to law for intellectual stimulation.
Apparendy, the de-
velopment of art was motivated less by the private interests of the upper
classes than by the presentation of public-communal affairs of a political
or religious nature; art, in other words, developed with an eye toward cer-
tain functions. From very early on, certain structures in the theory of art
address every (appropriately trained) observer and no longer anticipate a
12
bifurcation along birth rank.
pendendy of social status and to decide for itself who understands some- thing about art and who doesn't.
We are all the more justified in asking: What happens to art if other so- cial domains, such as the economy, politics, or science, establish them- selves as functional systems? What happens when they focus more nar- rowly on a special problem, begin to see everything from this perspective, and eventually close themselves off with an eye toward this problem? What is art if in fourteenth-century Florence the Medicis support art as a way of politically legitimizing money acquired in dubious ways, which they sub- sequendy invest in consolidating their political position? What happens to art if the functionally oriented differentiation of other systems pushes so- ciety as a whole toward functional differentiation? Will art become the slave of other functional systems, which dominate from now on? Or does --as indeed we shall argue--the increasing automatization of functional systems challenge art to discover its own function and to focus exclusively on this function? The developments leading to the Italian Renaissance ap- pear to confirm this hypothesis.
II
Investigating the function of art requires clarification of the systems- theoretical relevance of this line of questioning. Contrary to popular be- lief, the notion of function has nothing to do with the purpose of actions or institutions. Unlike purpose, function does not serve the orientation of first-order observers--of the actor himself, his advisors, or his critics. An operation needs no knowledge of its function; it can substitute a purpose
Theory prepares art to think itself inde-
138 The Function of Art and the Differentiation of the Art System
(for example, the making of an artwork). The advantage is a temporal lim- itation of the operation, a formation of episodes that come to an end when the purpose is accomplished or turns out to be impossible. A pur- pose is a program that seeks to diminish, if not to cancel, the difference between a desired condition and the actual state of the world. In this re- spect, purpose, too, is a two-sided form. It fixes a condition that carries the world along as its external side until the purpose is accomplished.
13
A function is nothing other than a focus for comparison.
problem (one speaks of a "reference problem") in such a way that multiple solutions can be compared and that the problem remains open for further selections and substitutions. In this sense, functional analysis is a method- ological principle that can be applied by any observer to any problem (in- cluding purposes). The arbitrariness of functional analysis is reduced when the observer selects a system reference--here, when we restrict our focus to reference problems within society. Thanks to this restriction, we can ob- serve a number of circular relationships. The reference problem is marked in the system that looks for solutions by marking the problem. This hap- pens only when solutions to the problem suggest themselves. In this sense, the solution creates the problem it helps resolve. The observational terms problem and Junction serve only to reproblematize established institutions in view of possible alternatives or to find out how far one can go in ex- ploring variations without exploding the functional context.
Unlike traditional doctrines of the division of labor, social theory as- sumes that the grounds for the existence of particular institutions never re- side in their functions--as ifAristode's older teleological explanation cbuld be replaced by a functional explanation. The theory of evolution offers ex- planations for historical changes in the societal system that draw on the notion that functions--as evolutionary "attractors"--can influence the di- rection of the evolutionary process and the possibilities of verification they entail. Orientation with respect to functions evolves, too, whether it re- mains latent (hence visible only to a second-order observer) or directly in- fluences the functional systems' testing of possibilities.
The question about the function of art is therefore the question of an observer who must presuppose an operatively generated reality; otherwise it would never occur to him to raise this question. This observer can be an external observer, such as a scholar or a sociologist. But the system in question can also be an observer: it can observe itself and raise the ques- tion of its own functioning. This does not do away with the necessity of
It marks a
The Function of Art and the Differentiation of the Art System 139
distinguishing between operation and observation. The operation of artis- tic communication does not depend on whether the function of art is problematized, let alone clarified. The operation occurs when it occurs (and doesn't if it doesn't), and if it needs motives, then it can find them anywhere.
Like all other functions that occur in society (whether or not they are differentiated as systems), the function of art can be traced to problems of meaningful communication. Meaning serves as the medium not only of communication but also of consciousness. One must therefore conceive of the specificity of this medium in very general terms without assuming a
14 psychic or social-system reference.
The formal specificity of meaning, whose formative capacity qua medium we introduced earlier, manifests itself in phenomenological as well as in modal-theoretical analyses. Both types of analysis presuppose a temporal restriction of meaning, a time-related actualization of meaning in an instant of experience or of communication. To the system opera- tions that employ this medium, meaning always presents itself as actual. But actuality frays (William James) and refers to other, at the moment unactualized possibilities of actualizing meaning (Husserl). Actuality ex- ists only as a starting and connecting point for further references. In modal-theoretical terms, the unity oi the medium of meaning resides in a difference--the difference between actuality and potentiality. Under con- ditions of meaning, systems always operate on the internal side of this form, that is, in the mode of actuality. They cannot operate "potentially. " But since an operation is an event that vanishes immediately after it is produced, any operation that is controlled by meaning must move be- yond actuality toward what is otherwise possible. Something pertaining to the realm of potentiality must be actualized, which in turn requires that the difference between actuality and potentiality occur at the heart of ex- perience and communication--formally speaking, the form "reenters" the form. At the same time, transcending the boundary between actuality and potentiality in actual operations requires a specific indication of the pos- sibility to be apprehended, an indication that can occur only selectively and contingently, by pushing aside all other possibilities.
15
For the time being, this short description must suffice. It suggests that
all the problems to be solved in the system of society are directly or indi- rectly related to the structure of the medium of meaning. When func- tional systems differentiate themselves, the corresponding reference prob-
140 The Function of Art and the Differentiation of the Art System
lems are abstracted to the point where existing institutions can be pre- sented as solutions, while other, functionally equivalent solutions come into view. Religion, for example, initially struggles with the problem that meaning references point toward an unfamiliar terrain and eventually lose themselves in indeterminacy. A differentiated science focuses on research and on actualizing as yet unknown truths or untruths for the sake of structuring the realm of possible propositions by means of the true/untrue code and on the basis of decision programs (theories, methods) related to this code. At the same time, science treats currently improbable or re- jected perspectives as a reservoir for findings that may turn out to be ten- able after all. The economy seeks to secure supplies for a sufficient (albeit in principle unlimited) amount of time in the future, even though it can- not operate in the present except on the basis of actual states of affairs. In politics, one wants to ensure, via collectively binding decisions, that oth- ers are bound by such decisions, even if they did not consent or are in no position to retract their consent. In law, one seeks to create a security of expectations that persists and promises social support in the face of ac- tions that contradict such expectations.
But what about art?
We are not missing the mark if we assume that in earlier societies the ob- jects we retrospectively perceive as art and store in museums were pro- duced as supports for other functional circles, rather than in view of a spe-
16
cial function of art.
for the playful transgression of the necessary in producing objects of ordi- nary utility. In retrospect, we describe the intricate, specifically artistic form combinations of such works as incidental, as ornamental. In any event, the link between functional specification and the differentiation of functional systems constitutes a sociohistorical nexus, which long remained protected by familiar contexts. Not until artistic possibilities of this sort reached a high degree of evidence and independence did the specific function of art take hold as an attractor for creating forms that now followed their own dynamic and began to react to their own realization. This apparently hap- pened for the first time in classical Greece and then again during a period that deserves to be called the "Renaissance. "
But where is the orientation toward a special function of art headed? The distinctions we used earlier to characterize the artwork yield no direct answer to this question. In accordance with the literature on the subject, we established that an artwork does not grow naturally but is an artifi-
This holds especially for religious symbols, but also
The Function of Art and the Differentiation of the Art System 141
daily manufactured object, and we emphasized its lack of utility for social contexts of any sort (whether economic, religious, or political). The ques- tion "What's the point? " remains an open, self-canceling question. To pursue it further, we must formulate more radically the difference that art establishes in the world.
One might start from the assumption that art uses perceptions and, by
doing so, seizes consciousness at the level of its own externalizing activity.
The function of art would then consist in integrating what is in principle
incommunicable--namely, perception--into the communication net-
17
work of society. Kant already located the function of art (of the presen-
tation of aesthetic ideas) in its capacity to stimulate thinking in ways that
1
exceed verbal or conceptual comprehension. ^ The art system concedes to
the perceiving consciousness its own unique adventure in observing art- works--and yet it makes available as communication the formal selection that triggered the adventure. Unlike verbal communication, which all too quickly moves toward a yes/no bifurcation, communication guided by perception relaxes the structural coupling of consciousness and commu-
19
nication (without destroying it, of course).
entailed in the world of perception is recovered in language and against the narrow focus of language. And the encapsulation of perception within the psyche prevents one from subjecting one's perceptions to a test for consensus. Consensus becomes an issue only in verbal communication, in commentary, where it is raised in an entirely inadequate manner.
An independent relation between redundancy and variety characterizes perception. In a manner that is matched neither by thought nor by com- munication, perception presents astonishment and recognition in a single in- stant. Art uses, enhances, and in a sense exploits the possibilities of per- ception in such a way that it can present the unity of this distinction. To put it differently, art permits observation to oscillate between astonishment and recognition, even if this requires worldly media such as space and time
20
as a means of securing continuity.
the automatic recognition of what is already known--the kind of pleasure produced by the "culture industry" that was so arrogantly rejected by
21
Horkheimer and Adorno.
described in antiquity, refers to the unity of the difference between aston- ishment and recognition, to the paradox that both intensify one another. Extravagant forms play an increasingly important role in this process. Such forms reflect upon the problem without drawing on the mundane famil-
The freedom of movement
This is not a matter of indulging in
Rather, the pleasure of astonishment, already
142 The Function of Art and the Differentiation of the Art System
iarity of objects: for example, by quotations from other works that render repetitions at once familiar and strange; or by a self-referential gesture by the text that calls upon the reader to understand the allusion when the text is mentioned within itself. However, a more precise analysis would show very quickly that the identification of repetition relies on perception rather than on conceptual abstraction. Art specializes in this problem, and this distinguishes it from ordinary efforts to cope with small irritations in everyday perception.
This also explains why the art system must, in principle, distinguish it- self--indeed, distance itself--from religion. Religious communication is concerned with what is essentially imperceptible, and it is marked by this concern. For art, the question remains whether it suffices to think of its function in terms of integrating a specific section of the environment into communication--that is, in terms of a "reentry" into communication of the difference between perception and communication--or whether one should expect the function of art to reside in its relationship to the world as such, that is, in the manner in which art establishes in the world a real- ity of its own while making this reality a part of the world. This appears to be precisely what art accomplishes when it describes die world as such (and not just spectacular instances) from the perspective of astonishing redundancies.
The work of art, then, establishes a reality of its own that differs from ordinary reality. And yet, despite the work's perceptibility, despite its un- deniable reality, it simultaneously constitutes another reality, the meaning of which is imaginary or fictional. Art splits the world into a real world and an imaginary world in a manner that resembles, and yet differs from, the use of symbols in language or from the religious treatment of sacred objects and events. The function of art concerns the meaning of this split--it is not just a matter of enriching a given world with further ob-
22
jects (even if they are "beautiful").
The imaginary world of art offers a position from which something else
can be determined as reality--as do the world of language, with its po- tential for misuse, or the world of religion, albeit in different ways. With- out such markings of difference, the world would simply be the way it is. Only when a reality "out there" is distinguished from fictional reality can one observe one side from the perspective of the other. Language and re- ligion both accomplish such a doubling, which allows us to indicate the given world as real Art adds a new twist to this detour, which leads via the
The Function of Art and the Differentiation of the Art System 143
imagination away from and back to reality--art realizes itself in the realm
of perceptible objects. Any other doubling of reality can be copied into
die imaginary reality of the world of art--the doubling of reality and
dream, for example, of reality and play, of reality and illusion, even of re-
23
ality and art.
freedoms and limitations in the choice of forms unknown to language and religion. What accounts for the peculiar originality of Greek art might well be its courage to push aside any scruples of religious hubris and count on technical-poetical realizations that made their intent perceptible.
Only within a differentiated distinction between a real and a fictional, imagined reality can a specific relationship to reality emerge, for which art seeks different forms--whether to "imitate" what reality does not show (its essential forms, its Ideas, its divine perfection), to "criticize" reality for what it does not want to admit (its shortcomings, its "class rule," its com- mercial orientation), or to affirm reality by showing that its representation succeeds, in fact, succeeds so well that creating the work of art and look- ing at it is a delight. The concepts imitation/critique/affirmation do not exhaust the possibilities. Another intent might address the observer as an individual and contrive a situation in which he faces reality (and ulti- mately himself) and learns how to observe it in ways he could never learn in real life. One thinks here particularly of the novel. The novel is an im- itation that, rather than referring to reality directly, copies one imaginary reality into another such reality.
It is generally true, for art as well, that the function of a communication system is not equivalent to its positive code value--the function of law is not simply being legal. Nor is it the business of art to manufacture beau- tiful, successful, interesting, or spectacular objects and present them for the sake of pleasurable consumption or admiration. The function of art is difficult to detect, even when one takes into account that the positive code value must be distinguishable from its opposite to reveal its preferential status. This may suffice as an orientation for the coded communication of everyday life. Sociological interest in the notion of function goes further. In art, it aims at the "other side" of the distinction that art introduces into the world. The question might be rephrased as follows: How does reality appear when there is art?
In creating a double of reality from which reality can be observed, the artwork can leave it to the observer to overcome this split--whether in an idealizing, critical, or affirmative manner, or by discovering experiences of
Unlike language and religion, art is made, which implies
144 The Function of Art and the Differentiation of the Art System
his own. Some texts are meant to be affirmative and oppose the hyper-
24
critical addiction to negativity --yet they can be read in an ironical or
melancholy mode or as mirroring one's own experiences with communi- cation. The artwork commits the observer to fixed forms. Within the con- text of modern communication, however, this constraint leaves room for applying the formally established difference between imagined and ordi- nary reality in multiple ways. Because it embeds its forms in objects, art need not enforce a choice between consensus and dissent, or between an affirmative and a critical attitude toward reality. Art needs no reasonable justification, and by unfolding its power of conviction in the realm of per- ceptible objects, it demonstrates this. The "pleasure" afforded by the art- work, according to traditional doctrine, always also contains a hint of ma- licious joy, indeed of scorn, directed against the vanity of seeking access to the world through reason.
All of these attempts may be directed at discovering and realizing vari-
ous possibilities of order on the basis of an increasing freedom and a grow-
ing distance vis-a-vis an established reality. In ancient Greece--which may
have been the first culture to reflect upon artworks as independent reali-
ties--a problem of meaning might have been at stake, created by the dis-
crepancies between religion, urban politics, a new monetary economy, and
a state of knowledge that needed to be fixed in writing. As Arthur Danto
suggests, art may have developed parallel to philosophy in ways that could
still be adequately described as imitation (like the search for truth in phi-
25
losophy).
the relationship between art and religion, however, especially in conjunc- tion with the return to the artistic endeavors of antiquity in the Renais- sance. An independently developed sense of form in art leads to gains in autonomy, especially when art develops its own dynamics and begins to react to itself. The supporting function of objects defined in religious, po- litical, or stratificatory terms diminishes and is eventually cast off as inessential. Everyday life becomes worthy of art, and what used to be sig- nificant is subjected to distorting misrepresentations.
In painting, this de- velopment began around the second half of the sixteenth century, in nar- rative, somewhat later. Common values were not just negated or turned on their head; they were neutralized and rejected as distinctions for the sake of demonstrating possibilities of order that had nothing to do with them. This is how art of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries reacted to a new social situation marked by the erosion of a unified religious world-
Further developments created an entirely different situation for
The Function of Art and the Differentiation of the Art System 145
view, a monetary crisis of the nobility, the imposition of order by the ter- ritorial state, and the new rationalism of mathematical-empirical science with its geometrical methods. Against these trends, art developed proce- dures and principles of its own--novelty, obscurity, style-consciousness, and eventually a self-description that thematizes the various artistic genres and sets them apart from the new rationalism.
The transitional motives that contributed to this trend must be estab- lished via detailed historical investigations. At a time of rapid social change, one strove to make visible a new order that was described much later as the order of bourgeois society. Profit motives became worthy of lit- erature, and peasants became suitable for portraits. In the second half of the nineteenth century, technology became a legitimate topic in artistic genres of the most diverse kind. In a sense, art projects a society unable as yet to experience and describe itself adequately--especially in the nine- teenth century. Persistent validities are subverted by irony--as in Flau- bert's Madame Bovary--and reflected upon in the tragic destiny of the hero or heroine.
In the twentieth century, one encounters artworks that seek to cancel the difference between a real and an imagined reality by presenting them- selves in ways that make them indistinguishable from real objects. Should we take this trend as an internal reaction of art against itself? Or is it an indication that confronting a reality that is the way it is and changes the way it does no longer makes sense? There is no need to answer this ques- tion, which is bound to fail anyhow and would prove only that this fail- ure has become the object of reflection. No ordinary object insists on be- ing taken for an ordinary thing, but a work that does so betrays itself by this very effort. The function of art in such a case is to reproduce the dif- ference of art. But the mere fact that art seeks to cancel this difference and fails in its effort to do so perhaps says more about art than could any ex- cuse or critique. Here, what we learn to observe is the inevitable and in- eradicable rule of difference.
The theory of art produces reflections that accompany these develop- ments. According to traditional doctrine, art was meant to evoke a feeling
26
of astonishment and admiration (admiratio). It placed the soul into an
otherwise unattainable contemplative state, distanced from daily routines,
and pointed it toward the essential. This was accomplished by a realistic
27
depiction of improbable and yet possible events --after all, the gospel
teaches nothing else. The question of whether poetry is suited for this pur-
146 The Function of Art and the Differentiation of the Art System
pose remained controversial until the sixteenth century, due to a long ped-
28
agogical tradition of relying on Aristotle.
theory of literature adjusted to a (positively valued) fictionality. One then
29
demanded that the work be "interesting. "
(transcendental) poetry to be the core of art. A trend becomes apparent,
30
but a function of art was still lacking.
turns on creating a difference between two realities or, to put it differently, on providing the world with an opportunity to observe itself. There are several ways to accomplish this goal; religion is one of them. Moreover, this difference assumes historically different forms. This is why we insist on the question of the specific sense in which art can function as an evo- lutionary "attractor. "
Even when dealing with art, we cannot help constructing an everyday world. The difference between actuality and potentiality, which produces meaning and shifts from one moment to the next, is projected onto a sta-
31
ble reality, an ontological world that is presupposed as invariant.
though things move and some are subject to change, the world remains as it is; otherwise one could distinguish neither movement nor change. This certitude is reaffirmed in die formulas of religion and natural philosophy. The skeptical humanism of the sixteenth century and the seventeenth cen- tury's questioning of certitude raise doubts at this level. But the everyday assumption of a reality--one now speaks of "moral certitude" or "common sense"--cannot be shaken by such doubts. Nor can one do without it.
This is why art searches for a relationship to everyday life that differs
from the rationalist philosophy of Descartes or from the mathematical
physics of a scientist such as Newton or Galileo. Unlike philosophy, art
does not search for islands of security from which other experiences can
be expelled as fantastic or imaginary, or rejected as a world of secondary
qualities or enjoyment, of pleasure or common sense. Art radicalizes the
difference between the real and the merely possible in order to show
through works of its own that even in the realm of possibility there is or-
der after all. Art opposes, to use a Hegelian formulation, "the prose of the
32
world,"
This leads us back to the ancient topic of astonishment, which affects
not only the observer of art but also the artist. The observer may be struck by the work's success and then embark on a step-by-step reconstruction of how it came about. But the artist is equally struck by the order that emerges from his own hands in die course of a rapidly changing relation-
but for precisely this reason it needs this contrast.
In the eighteenth century, the
Romanticism considered
We can establish that this function
Even
The Function of Art and the Differentiation of the Art System 147
ship between provocation and possible response, problem and solution, ir- ritation and escape. This is how order emerges from self-irritation, which, however, requires the prior differentiation of a medium of art to decide
33 that this order differs in its stakes from what occurs elsewhere in reality.
The real world is always the way it is, nothing otherwise. It interferes with human purposes in its own way, but always with reference to the spe- cific differences established by these purposes. Once the choice of purpose ceases to be self-evident and becomes subject to varying preferences (in- terests), purposes cannot be ordered unless they are subsumed under gen- eral purposes. Art opposes not only the status quo but also any attempt to introduce purposes into the world. The artistic rendering of the real so- lidifies reality in order to contrast the possible as a realm capable of order, of an order without purpose.
One such possibility is to show that striving for purposes ends in tragedy. Another is to render in a comic light what others take seriously. Such moves convince only if they succeed aesthetically and as form, that is, when they manage to offer an alternative order. In the language of a tra- dition that is still effective today, one might say that the aesthetic means, not the objects of art, must elicit conviction.
So long as art is bound by a reality that guarantees the compatibility of objects and events, the problem is solely one of imitation. To the extent, however, that art begins to work with feigned realities, it becomes difficult if not impossible to decide whether the objects depicted--blue horses, talking cats, dogs with nine tails, an irregular time that leaps forward or does not move at all, or other such "psychedelic" realities--can coexist side by side. When reality can no longer secure their coexistence, art must supply aesthetic guarantees of its own. This is relatively harmless so long as art is concerned with altering the color of objects in the manner of ex- pressionism or with presenting unrealistic narrative contexts. But such strategies already suggest that hetero-references merely serve as a pretext for displaying alternate possibilities of order. One can go even further and reduce hetero-reference to the material--color, wood, stone, or garbage-- thus demonstrating an improbable order at the material level.
Within the gravitational field of its function, modern art tends to ex- periment widi formal means. The word formal here does not refer to the
34
distinction, which at first guided modern art,
or form and content, but to the characteristics of an indicating operation that observes, as if from the corner of its eye, what happens on the other
between form and matter
148 The Function of Art and the Differentiation of the Art System
side of form. In this way, the work of art points the observer toward an ob- servation of form. This may have been what was meant by the notion "au- totelic. " However, the social function of art exceeds the mere reconstruc- tion of observational possibilities that are potentially present in the work. Rather, it consists in demonstrating the compellingforces of order in the realm of the possible. Arbitrariness is displaced beyond the boundaries of art into the unmarked space. If, following Spencer Brown's injunction to draw a distinction, one transgresses this boundary and steps from the unmarked into the marked space, things no longer happen randomly. From now on, the dichotomy of success or failure governs every move. It generates a sense of proportion, which, like a calculus, gets caught in its own logic. This is true even if there is no preestablished idea, no essence or natural purpose to guide the process (whatever motive consciousness or communication might suggest).
Taking one's direction from possibilities rather than relying on the world's natural drift becomes a problem, because one knows, nonetheless, that the world is the way it is and not otherwise. Why count on a deviat- ing course by placing one's stakes on purposes? Whence this courage? Wasn't Prometheuss gift of fire considered a violation? And what about the
techne of the Greeks? What about die boundless striving for wealth or the current obsession with technological innovation? In the old world, one could hope to counteract such trends by invoking an ethics of justice and modesty or by practicing an aristocratic distance--modern society's aware- ness of risk invites us to think of similar remedies. But once risk is thema-
35
tized, such remedies cease to convince.
lem with a different one. Art raises the question of whether a trend toward "morphogenesis" might be implied in any operational sequence, and whether an observer can observe at all except with reference to an order-- especially when observing observations.
From this perspective, the formal complexity a work is capable ofachiev- ing becomes a crucial, indeed, the decisive variable. Whatever functions as the other side of a form requires decisions about further forms that gener- ate other sides of their own, which raises the problem of how much vari- ety the work's recursive integrity can accommodate and keep under con- trol. A number of traditional formulas describe this situation--such as the (pre-Leibnizian) notion of a harmonious relationship between order (re-
36
dundancy) and variety. Contrary to widely held notions, the function of
art is not (or no longer) to represent or idealize the world, nor does it con-
This is why art replaces this prob-
The Function of Art and the Differentiation of the Art System 149
sist in a "critique" of society. Once art becomes autonomous, the empha-
sis shifts from hetero-reference to self-reference--which is not the same as
self-isolation, not I'artpour I'art. Transitional formulations of this type are
understandable. But there is no such thing as self-reference (form) with-
out hetero-reference. And when art displays a self-positing order in the
medium of perception or imagination, it calls attention to a logic of real-
ity which expresses itself not only through the real but also in fictional re-
37
gality. Within the difference real/fictional reality, the unity of the world
(the unity of this difference) escapes observation by presenting itself as the order of the distinction's form.
Art has no ambition to redeem society by exercising aesthetic control over an ever-expanding realm of possibility. Art is merely one of society's functional systems, and even though it may harbor universalistic ambi- tions, it cannot seriously wish to replace all the other systems or force these systems under its authority. The functional primacy of art holds exclu- sively for art. This is why, protected by its operative closure, art can focus on its own function and observe, from within ever-expanding boundaries, the realm of possibility with an eye toward fitting form combinations.
Art makes visible only the inevitability of order as such. That it draws on transhierarchical structures, on self-referential circularities, on different versions of a transclassical logic, and on overall greater degrees of freedom corresponds to the conditions of modernity and signals that a society dif- ferentiated along functional lines must do without authority and repre- sentation. Contrary to what traditionalists might suspect, art demon- strates that modernity does not necessarily imply a renunciation of order.
(The function of art, one could argue, is to make the world appear within the world--with an eye toward the ambivalent situation that every time something is made available for observation something else with- draws, that, in other words, the activity of distinguishing and indicating that goes on in the world conceals the worlds It goes without saying that striving for completeness or restricting oneself to the essential would be absurd. Yet a work of art is capable of symbolizing the reentry of the world into the world because it appears--just like the world--incapable of emendation.
The paradox unique to art, which art creates and resolves, resides in the observability of the unobservable. Today, this no longer means that art must focus on Ideas, on ideal forms, on the concept in the sense of Hegel's aesthetics. To our contemporary sensibility, it makes no sense to show the
150 The Function of Art and the Differentiation of the Art System
bright side of the world. Even the self-reference of thought is no longer di- rected toward perfection (in an Aristotelian manner). But it does make sense to broaden one's understanding of the forms that are possible in the world. Emphasizing such an understanding requires suppressing any hint of utility, for the world has no utility. Rather, the world displays all the qualities that Nicholas of Cusa ascribed to his God: it is neither small nor large, neither unity nor diversity, it neither has a beginning nor is it with- out beginning--and this is why the world needs forms.
Ill
Our previous considerations assumed the (anthropological) constancy of
human possibilities of perception. We focused on seeing, hearing, and to a
certain extent on tactile perceptions. Accordingly, we located the function
of art in its capacity to supply perception with other objects and to harness
these objects for a special type of communication. Astonishment, surprise,
and admiration were believed to occur in the realm of hetero-reference, in
the external world, and were meant to enrich this world. Accordingly, the
function of art was to show the return of order even under conditions of
improbable artistic variation. Although around 1800 art focused strictly on
the effectuation of sensations and feelings, an external motive was always
38
presupposed.
In the meantime, several attempts have been made to dissolve the an-
thropological conditions of perception (along with traditional art forms). On the one hand, one knows that perceptions are constructed in the cen- tral nervous system under conditions of operative closure. Consciousness must "justify" its belief that the world it perceives is indeed the external world. What appears to be an external world is, in fact, generated not by the resistance of an external world but rather by a resistance of the system against the operations of the system. On the other hand, opportunities for creating fictional worlds of perception abound--via drugs or other sug- gestive interventions, or by means of complex electronic devices. From the perspective of a traditional world semantics, such possibilities would seem to create illusory realities--comparable to the option of occasionally in- terrupting one's ordinary life with play. But when normality is a construct and the schema natural/artificial is no longer applicable or is perceived to be an implicitly hierarchical opposition in need of deconstruction, one faces the question of how the order of certain structures can still be justi-
The Function of Art and the Differentiation of the Art System 151
fied as primary. The notion of a "virtual reality" insinuates that a reality that can be apprehended by a natural human apparatus is out there after all, while at the same time one is at pains to show that this "natural appa- ratus" realizes only one possibility among many.
The literature on "cyberspace," virtual reality, imagination machines,
39
and so forth is growing rapidly. The same holds for attempts to investi-
gate the proximity of these recent developments to art. It is unclear what
exactly about such trends is specific to art. The mere fact that we are deal-
ing with artificially created perceptions that deviate from "nature" is not a
sufficient indication of their artistic quality. The striking expansion of vi-
sual possibilities, their increasing capacity for dissolution, and the possibil-
ity for switching back and forth, without further consequences, between
real and artificially generated realities--none of these trends proves that we
are dealing with works of art. It should strike us as odd that virtual worlds
can be purchased and that their descriptions always also serve commercial
40
purposes.
domain are characterized, as before, by a convincing combination of forms, or whether much more general concerns are at stake--to show, for example, that even after the deconstruction of anthropologically grounded schemata of perception, order continues to emerge whenever perception finds a reason to follow other perceptions.
IV
The differentiation of art as a system is most apparent in the internal blockage of hetero-references. In comparison with other functional sys- tems, this strikes us as characteristic of art.
Blocking hetero-reference is not a matter of eliminating causalities. Colors need to be mixed. Not every voice can sing. The theater needs a place for its performances, and we recognize the effects of differentiation in the isolation of certain spaces or buildings where a theatrical produc-
41
tion takes place at agreed upon times.
and simply do not happen when there is no money. Everywhere we see boundary-transcending causalities. Yet this is not the problem. When we speak of a blockage of hetero-references, we have in mind the requirement that the internal operations of an observing activity, when focused on a work of art, must be intelligible without hetero-reference. These operations are produced solely for the sake of observing observations.
It is currently difficult to decide whether works of art in this
Many things need to be paid for
152. The Function of Art and the Differentiation of the Art System
Following Plato's (? ) Greater Hippias, one tends to say that the artwork does not want to be understood in terms of its utility. "It is essential to art that it does not want to be useful. In a certain sense, the beautiful is the
42
antidote to utility; it is that which is liberated from utility. "
art is produced with the intent of not being useful, or, stated paradoxically,
43
it is a "an end in itself without purpose. "
The same idea is expressed by
the formula "disinterested pleasure. "
44
This demand is radical enough to
exclude even the artist from those who might benefit from his work.
Whereas an architect may eventually build a house for himself or a farmer
grow vegetables for himself in his own garden, an artist does not produce
a work of art (not a single one) for himself. He may fall in love with some
of his works and refuse to sell them. But this does not prevent him from
showing these works to others. This is particularly evident in literary texts,
which are never written to be read by the author, not even in singular
45
cases. The argument can be generalized. It holds for any work of art.
So long as the formulas of differentiation were content to reject utility, they could benefit from a general reluctance to identify humanity with utility. The aristocratic tradition of distinguishing between honestas and utilitas already opposed such an identification. But there are more radical claims--for example, when Schiller maintains that there is no path from
46
aesthetic pleasure to other pursuits.
itatio might again be mentioned in this context, or Solger s idea that the concept of nature covers only everyday perception ("the appearances of objects that can be perceived in the manner of common knowledge") and
47
therefore cannot be binding for art.
(individual) human being as subject, characteristic of humanistic aesthet- ics, resists a more accurate formulation of the societal differentiation of an art system and confines theory to searching for something "higher" within mankind.
Within the humanistic-anthropological context of the tradition, the topos of rejecting utility was initially meant to exclude cognitive under- standing and reason from aesthetic judgment. In the course of a barely reg- istered development, however, the rejection of utility turns into a semiotic path to block hetero-reference and direct the search for meaning inward. This is why one was content with an oppositional concept such as lack of utility, which remained vague and open to anything. A lack of utility can- not be refuted, even if the work is used for utilitarian purposes, for exam- ple, as a gift to pay off a debt or as a security for obtaining new credit.
The break with the tradition of im-
Generally speaking, the focus on the
The work of
The Function of Art and the Differentiation of the Art System 153
Such applications remain external to art. They contribute nothing to our understanding of the work, nor do they interfere with it. They are placed "orthogonally" in relation to the autopoiesis of art. The motives behind proclaiming something useless that might turn out to be useful after all must have other, deeper reasons, which obviously have to do with the function of art.
The "other world" of art is communicable only if all references to our habitual world are cut off. But the observer, at home in this world, is so- phisticated. It is necessary to block every return path into ordinary life and to prevent any speculations about intentions other than the ones the artist presents in die work.
This, however, does not answer the question of how art can possibly benefit from being told that it ought to be useless. Rejecting utility is not a recipe that makes much sense. The attempt to steer an opposite course by deliberately producing useless objects gets caught in the gravitational field of utility, since lack of utility is only the otlier side of die form of util- ity. Like the emphasis on autonomy, this is an entirely fruitless demon- stration; moreover, it says nothing about whether an artwork (in the sense
48
of the system's code) is successful or not.
In order to escape die distinction useful/useless and to circumvent die
paradoxes diat arise from it, or from formulations such as an "end in it-
self," we translate the problem into the language of information theory. /Now we can say: an artwork distinguishes itself by virtue of die lowprob- I ability of its emergence.
The work of art is an ostentatiously improbable occurrence. This fol- lows from the specific relationship between form and medium that is re-
49
alized in the work.
was created--no more and no less. When this interpretive aid is elimi- nated, we are plunged into the open, undetermined space of a medium's possibilities. Neither context nor an apparent purpose can motivate us to expect a work of art endowed witii specific forms. That it is recognized as a work of art nonetheless is due to the art system and its internal redun- dancies, and, in principle, to die work itself.
Under a hierarchical world architecture, supreme positions were rare and therefore improbable. Being close to someone at the top created distance from everyday life, which required no further evidence. In a society that is no longer differentiated along stratificatory lines, such benefits are no longer available. This leads--as we cannot emphasize strongly enough--
A recognizable purpose would explain why the work
154 The Function of Art and the Differentiation of the Art System
to the autonomy of art. But it does not sufficiently document the visible improbability of art. The frame established by the autonomy of art must somehow be filled. One way of doing this is by exploiting the temporal-
50
ization of the hierarchical world order
able in novelty and eventually in the avant-garde. Under the conditions of autonomy, this means that art must surpass itself and eventually reflect upon its own surpassing of itself. This increases the demands on the ob- server and favors the development of new kinds of skills in the realm of artistic production. In a society based on stratification, this trend manifests itself in a revalorization of the artist's social status, as one can show for Re- naissance Italy. Artists came from wealthy families (Brunelleschi, Ghiberti, Donatello, Masaccio, Alberti), or they were integrated into the circle of the prince's familiares. They received the patent of nobility, or they were honored in other ways, sometimes by receiving gifts. It became important to show through one's lifestyle that one did not work for money. The bi- ographies of such artists became the object of literature. Their social ad- vancement always also documented independence and individuality. And when the nobility did not recognize their equal status, as was generally the
51
case, they sought different criteria based on accomplishment and merit. Of course, such a move requires expertise on the part of the upper classes and, at the same time, places limits on the extravagance of artistic activity. In the twentieth century, a new trend began to emerge. One in- sulted the clients one portrayed by exposing the limits of their under- standing, and finally, when this trend became the object of reflection, one moved on, sacrificing in a spectacular (again, surprising) way the need to
demonstrate one's skill and to confront difficulties.
This strategy works only if one can show that the object in question is,
in fact, art.