No More Learning

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. Secondary forms of making the improbable plausible become necessary: in other words, one needs an art industry. The art system sup- plies institutions in which it is not unlikely to find works of art--muse- ums, galleries, exhibitions, theater buildings, social contacts with art ex- perts, critics, and so forth. But this is merely the first step in approaching art. Institutions (in Goffman's terminology) supply only the "frame" for condensed expectations; they generate a receptive attitude for observing
52
striking objects as art.
of redundancy and surprise; it must deliberately create and resolve the paradox that information is at once necessary and superfluous. The art- work, in other words, must indicate itself as a concrete and unique object
and by searching for the improb-
The artwork must provide its own configuration
The Function of Art and the Differentiation of the AruSystem 155
in order to demarcate the frame for displaying universal or exemplary truths. (Logicians might insist on distinguishing multiple levels of analy- sis, or be forced to accept "self-indication" as the third value in the analy-
53 sis of the distinctions displayed in art. )
Redundancies, in the form of the system's own constructions, are rein-
54
troduced in two stages--via frames and works.
cation thus created are unthinkable in the unprepared everyday life of so- cial communication. From the perspective of the artwork, this does not mean that hetero-references lose their significance. On the contrary, as we mentioned earlier, they acquire their function qua hetero-references pre- cisely within the protected differentiation of a unique domain for creating and elaborating information. Within this domain, actors on stage or in the novel can be endowed with motives, and paintings acquire represen- tative functions that are not confused with ordinary social reality, even though they refer to reality in a manner that implies both proximity and distance.
This explains why rejecting utility is not the same as rejecting hetero- reference--if it were, self-reference would collapse for lack of a distinc- tion. Rather, the form of self-reference--the distinction between self- reference and hetero-reference--must be reconstructed internally. In science, this happens via the combination of methodological (internal) and theoretical (external) considerations, but also by differentiating lin- guistic levels: at a certain level, science always employs a socially given lin- guistic material that might be used in other contexts as well (this is the
55
well-known "ordinary language" argument).
trend. As we noted earlier, art remains dependent on materials that can be used outside of art as well, albeit in different ways. Art works with stone, wood, metal, or other materials to create sculptures; it employs bodies in dance and the theater, colors in painting, and ordinary words in poetry. The point is to highlight within the material--which is indispensable for perception--a difference in usage. It is crucial that art dissolves the all- too-compact references to the environment that were still common in the eighteenth century in accordance with the notion of art as imitation. Not even the principles and rules of (an otherwise valid) morality can be in- herited in uncontrolled ways, lest the impression arise that the work of art
56
serves moral instruction and edification.
releasing art and literature from its ties to reality cannot be identified yet, especially not as a principle. A certain type of English literature--such as
Possibilities of intensifi-
In art, we see a comparable
Still, a clear tendency toward
156 The Function of Art and the Differentiation of the Art System
Pamela--still teaches that morality may turn out to be quite useful in practice. One has the impression, however, that every restriction to a spe- cific relationship between morals and art/literature is now taken note of and provokes objections, especially when it can be described in a national comparison as typically English or typically French. As a result, art even- tually meanders toward autonomy after all. Hetero-references are not al- lowed to affect the forms that art must select freely if it is to accomplish operative closure. They are restricted to the elements that serve as the me- dial substratum of art. The medium's capacity of dissolution, which un- derlies the loose coupling of its elements, adjusts to the work's formative intent. The more abstract the form combination that is to be presented, the more the medium must be dissolved. But even then the medial sub- stratum continues to support the hetero-references against which the work's self-reference must stand out.
V
The differentiation of the art system has been observed from within the system itself and has been described in terms of various semantics of dis- tance. We have shown this in the previous section. We tacitly assumed that works of art present discrete sections of the perceptible world (which is certainly true). Works of art are objects. One can recognize them as works of art (as distinct from other objects or processes) and can see how, at least when they occur in an artistic manner, they give rise to a distinct system almost spontaneously. This account, however, ignores the analyti- cal resources we introduced in previous chapters; besides, other theoreti- cal sources encourage us to go further.
Psychic and social systems create their operative elements in the form of extremely short-lived events (perceptions, thoughts, communications) that vanish as soon as they occur. In the same way, in creation and observation works of art unfold as a sequence of events. But how? In the course of pro- ducing or encountering an artwork, one moves from one operation to the next. One must be capable of generating both continuity and discontinu- ity, which is easier in reality than in theory. What happens during this process?
57
Following Spencer Brown's terminology,
requirement of condensation and confirmation. On the one hand, identi- fications must be generated to observe the same in different situations and
one might speak of a double
The Function of Art and the Differentiation of the Art System 157
allow for repetitions and for the recursive recall and anticipation of further events. Meaning must be condensed into forms that can be employed re- peatedly. On the other hand, such condensations must fit ever new con- texts and, when this succeeds, be confirmed as fitting. In this way, conden- sations become replete with possibilities. What results from this process can no longer be fixed or accessed by definitions. Using it requires experience
58
gathered within the same system; it presupposes "implicit knowledge. "
59
Jacques Derrida's analysis of writing,
though informed by a different
approach, arrives at similar conclusions. Derrida asks how repetition {itera-
tion) is possible in different situations. The objects of repetition are rup-
tures that are posited together with signs. These ruptures must be mobile;
they must be capable of shifting {diffirance of the difference), which re-
quires that the object of the sign (referent) and its indicating intention (sig-
60
nifiant) remain absent.
this means that the sequentialization of events and the recursivity necessary to identify discrete events generate and presuppose a separation between system and environment.
A distinct art system differentiates itself because the observations that produce and contemplate artworks are processed se- quentially. Only under these conditions can artworks function as bearers of communication.
In another terminology, the condition of operative closure might be de- scribed as autonomy. Autonomy implies that, within its boundaries, au- topoiesis functions unconditionally, the only alternative being that the system ceases to exist. Autonomy allows for no half-measures or gradua-
61
tion; there are no relative states, no more or less autonomous systems. Either the system produces its elements or it does not. A system that par- tially relies on external elements or structures because it cannot operate without them--a computer, for example--is not an autopoietic system.
This is not to say that the system's size or its boundaries might not be subject to variation. Nor does it follow from our terminology that there can be no evolution, that autopoietic systems have no history. Changes in structure and, all the more so, gains in complexity--an increase in the number and variability of elements--are certainly possible; indeed, they are typical of autopoietic systems. But any "more or less" refers exclusively to the system's complexity. In this sense, autopoiesis and complexity are conceptual correlates, and it is the task of the theory of evolution to trace the connections between them.
Assuming that the system's autopoiesis is at work, evolutionary thresh-
Translated into the language of systems theory,
158 The Function of Art and the Differentiation of the Art System
olds can catapult the system to a level of higher complexity--in the evo- lution of living organisms, toward sexual reproduction, independent mo- bility, a central nervous system. To an external observer, this may resem- ble an increase in system differentiation or look like a higher degree of independence from environmental conditions. Typically, such evolution- ary jumps simultaneously increase a system's sensitivity and irritability; it is more easily disturbed by environmental conditions that, for their part, result from an increase in the system's own complexity. Dependency and independence, in a simple causal sense, are therefore not invariant magni- tudes in that more of one would imply less of the other. Rather, they vary according to a system's given level of complexity. In systems that are suc- cessful in evolutionary terms, more independence typically amounts to a greater dependency on the environment. A complex system can have a more complex environment and is capable of processing a greater amount of irritation internally, that is, it can increase its own complexity more rapidly. But all of this can happen only on the basis of the system's opera- tive closure.
When presenting the history of the art system, we must take these the- oretical foundations into account, lest we switch to an entirely different theory. Historically, the differentiation of a system always occurs on the basis of independent system achievements, that is, under the condition of autopoietic autonomy (how else? ). Within this framework, however, dif- ferentiation occurs in the form of a rapid increase in internal complexity. Evolution presupposes a self-generated nucleus of autopoietic autonomy, which is recognized and utilized only in retrospect. Evolution, in other words, is a form of structural change that produces and reproduces its
62
own preconditions.
sionally makes a leap forward, the question is always how much complex- ity may still be compatible with the autopoietic autonomy of a system whose irritability by the environment increases accordingly. More accu- rately, differentiation means nothing other than the increase in complex- ity within a fully differentiated system.
VI
From a sociological standpoint, the differentiation of a social subsystem can be inferred from what it demarcates and specifies as relevant in the en- vironment. Certain environmental relationships become more important;
If evolution suggests a gradual process that occa-
The Function of Art and the Differentiation of the Art System 159
as a result, others are treated with indifference. This distinction presup- poses that autopoiesis is well established, in other words, that the stakes of art are readily apparent. In the late Middle Ages, this means that art was no longer a matter of skillfully carrying out the instructions of a client. In a somewhat more suitable terminology, one might say that a self-oriented art system searches for "supporting contexts" that leave enough room for
63
its own autonomy and its own choices.
What we retrospectively identify as art in the Middle Ages, in antiquity,
or in non-European cultures fulfilled subordinate functions in those other contexts. A first decisive step toward differentiation had already been made via the shift from a magical to an educational use of the visual arts in the context of Christian religion. In retrospect, we recognize the tremendous difficulties involved in such a shift. We can imagine how hard it must have been to guide viewers, especially the lower classes, from a magical to a rep- resentational understanding of images, which focused on recounting fa- miliar narratives. We recognize these difficulties in clerical taboos against
64
images or in efforts to adapt older visual motifs,
tempts to supplement the treasure house of forms by elaborating the most important themes of Christian religion and clerical history.
Apparently there was never a direct transition from a magical under- standing of art to artistic autonomy. Artworks of the Middle Ages (more accurately, works that we would identify as art) were meant to highlight certain religious or other social meanings; they emphasized such meanings and ensured that they could be experienced repeatedly. Within a well- ordered cosmos, created for the sake of the Good and the Beautiful, art took on memorial and educational functions. Its task was transmission, not innovation, and the only freedom it claimed (a freedom nonetheless) was ornamentation (we assume that ornamentumlornatum was under- stood in the sense of the rhetorical tradition, as expressing the perfection of the creation, rather than as mere adornment). Not until the late Mid- dle Ages can one speak of a situation in which art follows internal criteria. As Hans Belting has shown in great detail, "the aura of the sacred gives
65
way to the aura of art. "
evolution, the enormity of this transition is astonishing, as is typical of evolutionary leaps. Sufficient skills and experience in the most diverse realms were certainly available, as was a sense for an ornamental play of forms familiar to the ear and the eye. So-called preadaptive advances had already been made. But how could one conceive of art-specific criteria if
Within the context of a sociological theory of
and above all in the at-
160 The Function of Art and the Differentiation of the Art System
art was not evaluated independently of the contexts that made it mean- ingful? And how could the observation of art as art get off the ground, if such criteria did not yet exist?
With European history, the Italian courts provided exceptional start-up conditions for this. During the Middle Ages either guilds or individual monks were in charge of artistic activities of the most diverse kind. As early as the fourteenth century, the culture of the courts began to free it- self from these constraints. The stimulation to do so arrived in Italy via Paris and Naples, then throve in the special conditions that existed in small territorial states. After an initial time of confusion, relationships of domi- nation ceased to be defined by social rank. Within city-states or small ter- ritories, including the Vatican, such relationships were oriented by politi- cal oligarchy (in Florence, for example) or the court. The absence of a centralized state was crucial for the political use of money. On the one hand, Italy (especially Florence) played a leading role in developing a mon- etary economy (in an export-oriented textile industry, in trade and bank- ing, and in the administration of church income). On the other hand, Italy did not produce a centralized state. In other parts of Europe, income from trade lost its political function for cities and was channeled into larger units--via the purchase of political positions, the acquisition of patents of nobility, or credit. In Italy, such efforts remained focused in the significantly smaller courts, after larger military ambitions (by Milan, for example) had failed. The form of the new territorial state, especially the courdy state, was not yet secured. Whether a new prince belonged to the category of "rex" or "tyrannus" and whether he would build a palace or a fortress on the city's territory were open questions. In this situation, polit- ically motivated patronage developed (or, in Venice, patronage based on a republican oligarchy), and patrons began to compete with one another. The value of artworks, which in the trades was based on material (gold, ex-
66
pensive blues) and labor, shifted toward artistic skill. As a result, the fine
67
arts and individual artists were endowed with new value,
especially in the
domains of architecture, painting, sculpture, and poetry. The first treatise
on painting, Alberti s Delia Pittura, claimed nobilita and virtu for the best
(not all! ) painters, thus elevating their work to the rank of the artes lib-
68
erales, and this goal required the presentation and evaluation of their abil-
ities. Unlike those caught in patron/client relationships based on land ownership, artists were mobile and could take their skills and reputation elsewhere if local conditions were unsatisfactory. According to the con-
The Function of Art and the Differentiation of the Art System 161
ventions of bourgeois theory, such a gain in prestige is described as "ad- vancement," but it might be more accurate to emphasize the emergence of new and enthusiastically cultivated differences in rank. One began to de- marcate lower domains that came to be considered mechanical rather than
69
belonging to the liberal arts.
its close ties to the guilds, integrating it into the personal, insecure, and corrupt relationships that characterized die courts.
Under the circumstances, all hopes for advancement of the arts, for the recognition and support of innovations, for one's share of social prestige and a privileged lifestyle had to be based on the system of patronage, es- pecially on the courts. Although, starting in the sixteenth century, print was commonly used to discuss the features and intentions of various artis- tic genres, and poetry benefited from print, it would have been absurd to expect support for a differentiated art from "the common people" or to entrust the arts to "public opinion. " What could be perceived as a trend toward autonomy was restricted to interactions within the system of pa- tronage and to the insistence on internal criteria for evaluating art. At die same time, the patronage provided by the courts created a mechanism for protecting the arts from regulation by guilds and from integration into the ongoing stratification of households. The courtly state was about to leave behind the difference between the nobility and the people--which was based on social rank and was responsible for the failure of classical ideas of republican "liberty. " The artist, now held in high esteem, no longer found his place in the order of stratification (although some did re-
70
ceive the patent of nobility
). Despite his common birth, the artist could
gain recognition.
71
Although the pattern was already moving toward func-
Legally, this demarcation liberated art from
tional differentiation, semantics, especially in the debates about artistic
genres and artists, was still completely dominated by considerations of
72
rank.
This schema generated a need for criteria enabling the attribution
of superior rank,
73
indeed for criteria diat could not be derived from the
contemporary discussion of nobility, which was flourishing for perhaps
74
Today it may strike us as puzzling that the first impetus to differentia- tion should have been brought about by a high-ranking system of patron- age. The most important consequences may have been motivated by pa- tronage's need for decisions--not only decisions that concern a particular edifice, a certain purchase or commission, but also decisions of a new kind that are difficult to grasp, since they require judgments about artists and
the last time.
16z The Function of Art and the Differentiation of the Art System
artworks. Recommendations and court intrigues might have played a role in such decisions, but in the end the work itself had to show whether or not one could attain recognition by presenting oneself as having commis- sioned it. In order to make decisions of this sort, one needed criteria, and criteria had to be elaborated in writing and publicized. All of this needed to be developed in retrospect and was waiting, so to speak, for the arrival of the printing press.
In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the theory of art developed against this background. Theory inquired into the idea of beauty and, from this position, degraded ornament to mere adornment. Via concepts such as concetto [conceit], disegno, and acutezza [wit], the discussion moved away from the doctrine of harmonious proportion and increasingly em- braced irrational concepts of taste or ventures into the realm of the no so que. One continued to adhere to the ancient principle of imitation while making room, within this principle, for opportunities to go beyond what was given in nature. One appreciated spontaneity, inspiration, deviation from models, ingenious innovations. Sketches, drafts, and unfinished pro-
75
jects were hailed as artworks of a special kind
tially served as a basis for interacting witJh the prince or for recommending certain projects or the artist himself, and only later turned out to be pleas- ing in their own right. (There are reports of princes who visited artists' stu- dios. ) But such tendencies presupposed sufficiently well-established crite- ria of selection. In the course of an extended self-observation, on the level of composition and style the art system gained independence vis-a-vis its clients. It could now take the criteria of evaluation into its own hands and
76
make them more dynamic.
afford to exaggerate, because one was aware of the limits of what was tol- erable. At the other end of the spectrum, the same trend manifested itself in the late-seventeenth-century appreciation of "sublime" simplicity, which no longer risked being mistaken for a lack of artistic skill. Apart from that, we find a highly developed technical literature that provides instructions, and with Veronese and Rubens we see the beginnings of a workshop orga- nization, in which the bearer of reputation had the function of outlining projects, giving instructions, and signing the works. We shall return to this point in conjunction with the self-description of art.
The next leap forward in the development of art occurred toward the
end of die seventeenth century, motivated by changes in the supporting
77
--perhaps because they ini-
On the one hand, this meant that one could
context and by the shift from a courtly system of patronage to the market.
The Function of Art and the Differentiation of the Art System 163
During the collapse of the Roman patronage system around the mid-sev- enteenth century, a remote patronage for Italian art emerged throughout
78
Europe, depending on expert mediators who knew the right people. basic stock of tradable art could be found in the tremendous art collections of individual patrons--which often comprised several hundred paintings and occasionally were liquidated--and to a lesser extent in the studios of artists. These collections contained a stock of ready-made products. The market regulated acquisitions and sales by means of prices. There was plenty of wealth, thanks to the rapid development of capitalist agriculture in the wake of the restoration, although in the eighteenth century wealth consisted predominantly of real estate rather than liquid capital. The mar- ket reflected limited means in the form of enormous price discrepancies, which subsequently--but presumably only much later--motivated specu- lative acquisitions as a financial investment. These price differences mir- rored the internal dynamic of the market rather than artistic quality (even though unsuccessful works were eliminated). Producing for a certain client (portraits, buildings, and so on) was not impossible, but was determined in part by market estimates--in the sense that negotiations about commis- sions concerned prices rather than the content of the work (the client had to be interested in acquiring a typical work of a particular artist). Increas- ingly, market yields became a symbolic equivalent of an artist's reputation. They replaced oral recommendations within a circle of high-ranking pa- trons and their followers; and they substituted for the tedious personal ne- gotiations with a patron, which always included irrational values such as
79
aristocratic generosity and symbols of the artist's reputation.
Once again, a peripheral situation in European developments provided the decisive impetus that triggered the shift toward market conditions in Italy. The first major market to specialize in the acquisition and sale of art-
80
works emerged in England, which depended on imports.
money had to be available for investment. Patronage, which had been
81
based on personal relationships,
These collections tended to consist in acquisitions from abroad, frequently from auctions, and they were liquidated again when the occasion arose (for
82
example, with hereditary succession).
the decisions that motivated individual acquisitions depended on experts who knew how to handle the distinction between original and copy and how to attribute a work to a certain artist. This distinction had been around for quite some time; it now took over the function of generating
was replaced by large art collections.
The value of such collections and
Here, too,
A
164 The Function of Art and the Differentiation of the Art System
83
scarcity and guaranteeing prices.
one still demanded and sought to
that supposedly distinguished the
defined himself by social rank and
self instead on his expertise, that
While interest in collecting artworks no longer depended on the internal hierarchy of the upper classes, insistence on objective criteria created the fatal side effect of differentiating socially, on a rather shaky basis, between
86
experts and nonexperts.
longer be expected from the upper classes; indeed, it could no longer be lo- cated within a stratified order at all. Art became a business that involved risk. Artists began to resist the pretensions of "connoisseurs" and experts who themselves were incapable of producing artworks and thus had no
87
hands-on experience in creating art.
In Paris, the establishment of peri-
At the level of general criteria of taste,
develop the competency of judgment
84
upper classes. The patron no longer
aristocratic generosity but based him-
is, on function-specific capabilities.
85
The expertise required by the market could no
odic art exhibitions in "salons" (beginning in 1737) triggered a flood of
88 public commentary attacking the irresponsible criticism of the salons. In-
stead of being justified by (in principle fulfillable) demands on the upper classes, art criticism became a parasite, feeding off the relationship between artist and recipient (buyer). In a sense, criticism took the insecurities that accumulate in this relationship and reworked them from within the art system. In this way, art criticism lost its secure ground; it had to give up its pretensions to represent the only correct view, and it could no longer ap- peal to truth. At most, it could claim coauthorship of the work in a man- ner that anticipated romantic criticism; Scottish moral philosophy would later do its part in historicizing the problem in the domains of law, moral- ity, and aesthetics. National differences regarding artistic production and taste could be as fascinating as historical ones. One sought ways to classify art that no longer depended on unconditionally correct criteria.
The economic orientation granted art much more freedom than re-
liance on patrons such as churches, princes, or leading aristocratic houses.
It furthered an evaluation of artworks that was independent of subject
89
matter,
ate specialized institutions of interaction and mediation. No longer de- pendent on a patron's decisions and on negotiations with him, art found itself in the double grip of the demands raised by the art market and a public art criticism. To the extent that the art market relied on economic trends, it was unstable. But it offered two advantages. On the one hand, the market could use the general economic medium of money, while on
and it required less interaction, although the market did gener-
The Function of Art and the Differentiation of the Art System 165
the other hand, it operated without competition and without the threat of being displaced, which facilitated its isolation from other markets within the economic system. (This is less true when people become concerned with "conspicuous consumption" and art is replaced by coaches, yachts, servants, and so forth--or vice versa. ) But the market also generated de- ception and the need to protect oneself against fraud. It created networks of influence that differed from courdy intrigues, and, thanks to a stronger dynamic of its own, it cared little about what art thought of itself. As a re- sult, economic dependencies were felt more painfully and could no longer be balanced by shifting one's allegiance to another patron; instead, such dependencies had a systemic effect. The relationships between die art sys- tem and the economic system could no longer be controlled via the no- tion of generally accepted criteria. Buyers no longer needed to legitimize themselves by their expertise, and if they made fools of themselves, they were certainly no fools on the market.
The tendencies in painting we have discussed can be observed, several
90
decades later, in poetry as well.
The market, with its agents, readers/
buyers, publishers, and reviewers, turned into a generalized patron, but one
could not respond to the market as one responded to a person. In Parsons's
terminology, this change can be described as a shift, within a given set of
pattern variables, from the particular to the universal. On the one hand, a
market orientation allows more specialized offerings, while on the other
hand, it provokes defensive reactions--a written polemic against publish-
ers and reviewers (for example, Jean Paul), a rejection of productions that
91 might stimulate sales (for example, Ludwig Tieck's Peter Lebrecht), and,
at a more general level of self-description, a contrastive revalorization of art as culture: "At a time when the artist is being described as just one more producer of a commodity for the market, he is describing himself as a spe-
92
cially endowed person, the guiding light of the common life. " The fact
that the debate about good taste eventually subsides must be seen in the same context: when sales are at stake, public models of taste are no longer acceptable; and in the final third of the eighteenth century they gave way to the idea of the genius who disciplines himself---a notion that revives the old nexus between melancholy and discipline.
Academic philosophy in Germany reacted to increased uncertainty in the realm of evaluative criteria by developing a specialized aesthetics that
93
pursued theoretical projects of its own.
tended to gloss over its own failure to register the fact that the social situ-
This high-level conceptual effort
166 The Function of Art and the Differentiation of the Art System
ation of the art system was undergoing yet another fundamental, and by now obviously irreversible, transition toward functional differentiation. Around 1800, however, the situation was still far from clear. Processes of bifurcation at odds with hierarchical structures began to distinguish them- selves, especially vis-a-vis politics ("the state") and the economy ("com- mercial society," "system of needs," "society"). In the meantime, it had be- come evident that religion was not a science in the usual sense and that the family, bound by love, was not a contractual relationship (despite Kant). Hopes for a "culture state" that would offer education and artistic taste as a preemptive measure against revolutionary aspirations had
94
quickly become obsolete.
can substitute for any other. As a result, the internal criteria of individual functional systems lost their plausibility within society at large. There was a vague awareness of these changes, but a new concept of society that would provide an explanation was still lacking.
When Hegel speaks of the end of art, "In all these respects, art--ac- cording to its highest determination--is, and remains, for us a thing of
95
the past,"
to society and worldly affairs and must henceforth acknowledge its own differentiation. Art can still claim universal competence for almost every- thing, but it can do so only as art and only on the basis of a specific mode of operation that follows its own criteria.
The notion that art, as represented by artists, can find a knowledgeable and sympathetic counterpart somewhere else in society must be sacrificed as well. A supporting context--if this is what one is looking for--is no longer available. A model based on complementary roles for artists and connoisseurs can no longer represent the couplings between the art system and society. Rather, it represents the differentiation of art as communica- tion in society. The interaction between artists, experts, and consumers differentiates itself as communication, and it takes place only in the art system, which establishes and reproduces itself in this manner. What ro- manticism called "art criticism" is integrated into the art system as a
96
"medium of reflection,"
fact, romanticism was the first artistic style to embrace the new situation of an autonomous art system. Starting with romanticism, the only social support of art is that each functional system deals with its own function, claims priority for its own function, and develops no further competen- cies that point beyond the system. This also means that each system pro-
It had become clear that no functional system
he can mean only one tiling: art has lost its immediate relation
and its task is to complete the artist's work. In
The Function of Art and the Differentiation of the Art System 167
duces an excess of communicative possibilities--mainly because of the in- difference of other systems--and therefore requires self-limitation, that is, "auto-nomy. " The romantic movement intuitively grasped this situation, for which it compensated by focusing on self-reflection, by embracing the temporal difference between subjective reflection and what appears to be the objectively given world, by emphasizing writing as an absence that symbolizes absences, and by counting on concepts such as self-possession, sobriety, and irony. The semantics of romantic reflection was still search- ing for itself in the sense of searching for a goal displaced to infinity. What it actually reflected upon, however, is the autonomy imposed upon art-- the functional differentiation of society. This situation seems to have re- mained unchanged for the past two hundred years. Only the extent to which the system provokes itself has been perfected.
When artists can no longer derive stimulation from tradition--or from a patron or the market, indeed, not even from art academies--new kinds of alliances begin to form within the art system. These alliances attract like-minded individuals and compensate for the lack of external support by providing self-affirmation within the group. One thinks of the Pre- Raphaelites, the Blue Rider, Bauhaus, the Gruppe 47, the Art & Language group, and countless other formations. Such organizations are not formal associations, nor do they depend on condensed interactions in the form of regular meetings. Instead, they are loose alliances, which create a sense of belonging and leave it up to individuals how long they want to commit themselves. Socially, these groups appear to be motivated by the desire to find support in similar efforts for unusual programmatic decisions, so that they do not come across merely as idiosyncratic moves by individuals.
VII
The differentiation of the art system--a process characterized simulta- neously by continuity and discontinuity--allows the relation between sys- tem and environment to be reintroduced into the system in the form of a relationship between self-reference and hetero-reference. As we recall, there can be no self-reference without hetero-reference, for it is not clear
97
how the self can be indicated if it excludes nothing.
self-reference and hetero-reference becomes an issue, searching for the common denominator in the meaning of reference suggests itself: What is the reference of "reference"?
When the unity of
16 8 The Function of Art and the Differentiation of the Art System
Depending on how the relationship between self-reference and hetero- reference is applied, we shall distinguish an art that is primarily symbolic from an art that thinks of itself as a sign, and we shall further distinguish an art that specializes in experimenting with form combinations? * Prior to its differentiation, art was considered symbolic if it searched for a higher meaning in its condensed ornamental relationships. In the course of the court- and market-oriented phases of its differentiation, art turned into a sign. The sign, by virtue of what was believed to be its objective reference, stood for what the artist, the connoisseur, and the lover of art had in com- mon. But once the differentiation of this community was realized as com- munication, the only remaining option was to observe the continual bal- ancing between self-reference and hetero-reference in the operations of the art system. Under these conditions, one finds the nexus between self- and hetero-reference in the formal combinations of artworks that facilitate an observation of observations.
Semantics follows sociostructural ruptures while glossing over disconti- nuities and thereby providing for recursions and transitions within the sys- tem. These evolutionary changes tend toward tolerating, indeed, toward favoring, the artwork's individual uniqueness. Under the regime of sym- bolic art, this would have made no sense. But when art is considered to be a sign, thinking of art in terms of its uniqueness becomes an option, and when art is understood to be a form combination, uniqueness becomes imperative--enforced by the mode of production and by the require- ments of understanding. At the same time, the trend toward individuality requires sacrificing all external support. It correlates with the social differ- entiation of the art system, which in turn motivates the perpetual renewal of the relationship between self-reference and hetero-reference. In similar ways, mathematics develops from a symbolic understanding of numbers (as late as Agrippa von Nettesheim") via Descartes's notion of numbers
100
as mental signs of space and infinity
constructs in modern mathematical logic. The parallel development of art and mathematics suggests general sociostructural transformations, which are outside our present scope. Instead, we restrict our focus to the art system.
We shall term symbolic an art that seeks to render present, within the ac- cessible world, what is inaccessible (unfamiliar, unobservable). Symbolic
101
art is always concerned with the unity of a difference, in this case, with
the unity of the specific difference between the accessible and the inacces-
to the formalism of self-limiting
God.
But visual and poetic symbolizations could develop freely so long
The Function of Art and the Differentiation of the Art System 169
sible. The symbol marks the inaccessible within the realm of the accessi- ble; we are therefore dealing with a form of reentry of a distinction into what it distinguishes. fThe symbol contains a reference to its own origin, which grounds the representation in its "given" form.