No More Learning

42. August Wilhelm Schlegel, Die Kunstlehre (Pt. 1 of the lectures on literature and art), quoted from Kritische Schriften undBriefe, vol. 2 (Stuttgart, 1963), p. 13. Justifications of this view vary according to whatever terminology is accepted at
the time. A well-known eighteenth-century version states, e. g. , that beauty pleases necessarily ami immediately and therefore has no place for the intervention (= association) of interests. See Francis Hutcheson, An Inquiry Concerning Beauty, Order, Harmony, Design, Treatise I of his Inquiry into the Original ofOur Ideas ofBeauty and Virtue (1725; 4th ed. , 1738; critical ed. The Hague, 1973), ? 1, XIII, pp. 36f. For an elaboration from the viewpoint of associationist psychology, which excludes even art criticism with its interfering reflections, see Archibald Alison, Essays on the Nature and Principles of Taste (Edinburgh-London, 1790; rpt. Hildesheim, 1968). On criticism, see pp. 7ff. Others aim directly at self-
Notes to Pages 152-55
355
reference and infer from it the necessity of disregarding utility (even if there is one), as, e. g. , Karl Philipp Moritz in his definition of the beautiful as "that which
is completed in itself. " See his Schriften zur Asthetik undPoetik: KritischeAusga. be (Tubingen, 1962), pp. 3ft
43. In classical and romantic aesthetics, to postulate an "end in itself" was a way of blocking references to further purposes beyond the work and of present- ing the work as closed in upon itself.
44. On the history of this originally theological formula, see Werner Strube, "'Interessenlosigkeit': Zur Geschichte eines Grundbegriffs der Asthetik," Archiv
fur Begriffigeschichte 23 (1979): 148-74.
45. See Jean-Paul Sartre, Qu'est-ce que la litttrature? in Situations, II (Paris,
1948), pp. 9ifF. : unlike the shoemaker, the writer cannot produce for his own de- mand.
46. Friedrich Schiller, Uber die dsthetische Erziehung des Menschen in einer Reihe von Briefen, quoted from Sdmtliche Werke, vol. 5 (Munich, 1967), p. 638. Schiller is no rigorous thinker, and his claim cannot be meant seriously; other-
wise one could not speak of an aesthetic education to begin with, nor could one expect a political amelioration of the state by way of such a detour. Indeed, the individual could not be understood as a focus for the integration of diverse do- mains of life.
47. See Karl Wilhelm Ferdinand Solger, Vorlesungen uber Asthetik, ed. Karl Wilhelm Ludwig Heyse (Leipzig, 1829; rpt. Darmstadt, 1973), p. 51.
48. We shall return to this question in Chapter 5, below.
49. SeeChapter3,above.
50. According to Arthur O. Lovejoy, The Great Chain ofBeing: A Study ofthe
History ofan Idea (1936; rpt. Cambridge, Mass. , 1950).
51. For examples from England, see Russell Fraser, The War Against Poetry
(Princeton, 1970), pp. i44ff.
52. See Erving Goffman, Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization ofEx-
perience (New York, 1974). Earlier formulations of this sort can be found in Max Weber, Edmund Husserl, and Alfred Schiitz, who maintain that interpretive un- derstanding and the transcendence of the momentary nature of experience in time presuppose typified patterns of order. A frame analysis has the advantage that it does not depend on similarity between the frame and a detail accessible from within this frame. Pace Alexander Dorner, the museum does not have to be a Gesamtkunstwerk.
53. See Francisco Varela, "A Calculus for Self-reference," InternationalJournal of General Systems % (1975): 5-24.
54. See again Heinz von Foerster's notion of "double closure" in Observing Systems (Seaside, Calif. , 1981), pp. 3046? .
55. In the wake of the critique of the theory of logical empiricism, see esp.
356 Notes to Pages 155-61
Kenneth J. Gergen, Toward Transformation in Social Knowledge (New York, 1982), pp. iooff.
56. Consider the abstract nature of this argument: in this context, material and morality are functionally equivalent forms of hetero-reference that constrain the work's room for play so long as they are not--as hetero-references--subject to the internal control by forms.
57. Spencer Brown, Laws ofForm (1969; rpt. New York, 1979), pp. 10,12.
58. In the sense of Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge (Chicago, 1958). For more on the same topic, see issue 1/2 of Revue internationale de systemique 6 (1992).
59. We again refer to Derrida, "Signature Event Context," in Margins ofPhi- losophy, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago, 1982), pp. 307-30.
60. Ibid.
61. Onecancertainlyrejectthisconceptualdecision,butonewouldthensac- rifice almost everything gained by the concept.
62. Frequently, the point has been made that evolution theory breaks with an "archaeological" explanation in terms of origins. Even causal observation and ex- planation are evolutionary possibilities and vary according to the complexity of the system.
63. For a corresponding historical account of the European university, see Rudolf Stichweh, Der fruhmoderne Staat und die europaische Universitdt: Zur Interaktion von Politik und Erziehungssystem im ProzeJ? ihrer Ausdijferenzierung (16. -18. Jahrhundert) (Frankfurt, 1991).
64. Forexamples,seeJamesHall,AHistoryofIdeasandImagesinItalianArt (London, 1983), pp. 4fF. and passim.
65. Belting, BildundKult, p. 538.
66. For a study that draws on an analysis of contemporary treatises, see Mi- chael Baxandall, Painting and Experience in Fifteenth-Century Italy (Oxford, 1972).
67. We think of Michelangelo's notorious and often-mentioned appearance in
front of the Pope--with his felt cap on his hat. For a justification, see Francisco
de Hollanda, Vier Gesprdche iiber die Malerei, gefuhrt zu Rom 1538 (Vienna, 1899), p. 23. It is important not to mistake this behavior for courdy service.
68. See Caroll W. Westfall, "Painting and the Liberal Arts: Alberti's View," Journal ofthe History ofIdeas 30 (1969): 487-506.
69. Seeesp. MartinWarnke,Hofkiinstler. ZurVorgeschichtedesmodernenKiin- stiers (Cologne, 1985); further, Klaus Disselbeck, "Die Ausdifferenzierung der Kunst als Problem der Asthetik," in Henk de Berg and Matthias Prangel, eds. , Kommunikation und Differenz: Systemtheoretische Ansatze in der Literatur- und Kunstwissenschaft (Opladen, 1993), pp. 137-58.
70. For an overview, and on the ambiguous relationship to birth nobility, see Warnke, Hofkiinstler, pp. 202ff.
Notes to Pages 161-62
357
71. "Eadem ratione [= suo iure, thanks to exceptional talent, N. L. ] dicimus nobilem pictorem, nobilem oratorem, nobilem poetam," says the intetlocutor in Ctistoforo Landino, De vera nobilitate (ca. 1440; Florence, 1970), p. 55. What matters is "la virtu propria," proclaims the painter Paolo Pino, not without pride {Dialogo di Pittura [Vinegia, 1548], quoted from Paola Barocchi, ed. , Trattati d'arte del cinquecento, vol. 1 [Bari, i960], pp. i^zf. ). Pino goes on to emphasize the significance of education and of distinguished social intercourse (p. 136).
72. See Benedetto Varchi, Lezzione nella quale si disputa della maggioranza delle arti e qualsiapiu nobile, la scultura 0 la pittura (1547), in Barocchi, Trattati d'arte del cinquecento, vol. 1, pp. 1-58. See also Pino, in Barocchi, Trattati d'arte del cinquecento, vol. 1, pp. i27ff. (Painting is superior to sculpture. )
73. On predecessors from the humanist rhetorical tradition who offered con-
cepts (e. g. , varietas 01 ornamentum) that became relevant later, see Michael Bax- andall, Giotto and the Orators: Humanist Observers ofPainting in Italy and the Discovery ofPictorial Composition 1350-1450 (1971; rpt. Oxford, 1988), and Baxan- dall, Painting and Experience in Fifteenth-Century Italy. The typical motive was already to evaluate artists and artworks, to praise them and distinguish among them.
74. Efforts to assimilate to the norms of an aristocratic lifestyle are evident
from very early on--especially in the claim that the artist does not work for money and is rewarded not for a single work but for his virtu, as well as in the notion that works of art cannot be paid for with money. Within the context of a biographical report, see Girolamo Frachetta, Dialogo del Furore Poetico (Padua, 1581; rpt. Munich, 1969), p. 4. For an overview, see Warnke, Hofkiinstler, p. 194. Such considerations have nothing to do with criteria of artistic evaluation but concern the relationship between art and the economy.
75. See the references in Chapter 1, n. 93.
76. Early references (from around 1500) to renowned artists who managed to gain a certain independence can be found in Donat De Chapeaurouge, Die An-
fdnge derfreien Gegenstandswahl durch den Kunstler, in Schulerfestgabefur Herbert von Einem (Bonn, 1965), pp. 55-62. On unauthorized deviations from the con-
tract and on tendencies to stray from given models, see H. W. Janson, "The Birth of'Artistic License': The Dissatisfied Patron in the Early Renaissance," in Guy F.
Lytle and Stephen Orgel, eds. , Patronage in the Renaissance (Princeton, 1981), pp. 344-53. On the (overestimated) influence of learned humanists on artistic com- missions, see Charles Hope, "Artists, Patrons, and Advisers in the Italian Renais- sance," in Lyde and Orgel, Patronage in the Renaissance, pp. 239-343.
77. A caesura as radical as this one can be responsibly posited only in retro- spect. It must be further differentiated according to regions or artistic genres. If one aims at a broader concept of specifically cultural accomplishments, one finds that patronage and market orientation overlap each other at all times. See (with-
358
Notes to Pages 165-64
out specific textual evidence) Raymond Williams, The Sociology of Culture (New York, 1982), pp. 38ff.
78. See Francis Haskell, "The Market for Italian Art in the Seventeenth Cen- tury," Past and Present 15 (1959): 48-59.
79. How difficult it must have been to come to terms with this delicate ques- tion can be inferred from the amount of space dedicated to it in de Hollanda's dialogues on painting (1538). See de Hollanda, "Gesprache iiber die Malerei," pp. 37, 95ff. , i4iff.
80. See Iain Pears, The Discovery ofPainting: The Growth ofInterest in the Arts in England, I68O~IJ68 (New Haven, Conn. , 1988). On further developments, es- pecially on price increases for paintings, see Gerald Reidinger, The Economics of
Taste: The Rise and Fall ofPicture Prices 1760-1960 (London, 1961). Foracompre- hensive treatment of the topic that includes literature and politics, see Michael
Foss, The Age ofPatronage: The Arts in England 1660-1750 (London, 1974). On the situation in Holland (which was characterized by an underdeveloped pa- tronage system, by estate auctions and lotteries, by a scarcity of specialized art dealers, by localized production, and by the lack of reputations capable of dri-
ving up the prices), see John Michael Montias, Artists and Artisans in Delft: A Socio-Economic Study ofthe Seventeenth Century (Princeton, N. J. , 1982), esp. pp. i83ff. On the breakdown of the Italian system of patronage, which led to an ex- port-oriented art market and to Italian artists being active abroad, see Francis Haskell's detailed study (which treats the seventeenth and the eighteenth cen- turies) , Patrons and Painters: A Study in the Relations Between Italian Art and So- ciety in the Age of the Baroque (London, 1963). From an entirely different view- point--namely, of doux commerce and the thematic of images--see further David H. Solkin, Paintingfor Money: The Visual Arts and the Public Sphere in Eighteenth-Century England'(New Haven, Conn. , 1993).
81.
On nostalgic reminiscences concerning a lost security, see Pears, The Dis- covery ofPainting, pp. i33ff.
82. This concerns only the genres of painting and etching, although, for po- etry, one finds similar observations about the increasing dominance of publish- ing houses and the reading public. This holds for the new periodicals and espe- cially for the novel, which aims to present accessible individual destinies and an exciting plot.
83. A remark by Michael Hutter, "Literatur als Quelle wirtschaftlichen Wach- stums," Internationales Archivfur Sozialgeschichte der deutschen Literatur16 (1991): 1-50 (11).
84. See Jonathan Richardson, who places great trust in the clarity of distinc-
tions and cognitive competence in A Discourse on the Dignity, Certainty, Pleasure and Advantage of the Science of a Connoisseur (1719), quoted from The Works (London, 1773; rpt. Hildesheim, 1969), pp. 239-346. On the context and on
Notes to Pages 164-66
359
Richardson's history of reception, see also Lawrence Lipking, The Ordering of the Arts in Eighteenth-Century England(Princeton, N. J. , 1970), pp. ic>9ff.
85. See Foss, The Age of Patronage, pp. 33ff.
86. Pears, The Discovery of Painting, pp. yii. , formulates the problem: "If ab- solute standards existed and men were equipped to recognise those standards, then plainly a divergence of opinion indicated that some people functioned bet- ter than others. "
87. See, e. g. , William Hogarth, The Analysis of Beauty, written with a view of fixing thefluctuating Ideas of Taste (London, 1753; Oxford, 1955), esp. pp. 23ff. The distinction between competent and incompetent criticism on the basis of
objective criteria is, of course, much older. See, e. g. , de Hollanda, "Gesprache liber die Malerei," pp. i37ff.
88. See Thomas E. Crow, Painters and Public Life in Eighteenth-Century Paris (New Haven, Conn. , 1985), pp. iff.
89. "Allthiswasleadingtoagrowingappreciationofpicturesaspicturesrather than as exclusively the records of some higher truth; a body of connoisseurs was coming into being prepared to judge pictures on their aesthetic merits, and con- sequendy the subject-matter of painting was losing its old primaeval importance. " This is how Haskell, Patrons and Painters, p. 130, characterizes this trend.
90. See Foss, TheAge ofPatronage, pp. 162ft". ; and further Raymond Williams, Culture and Society 1/80-ip^o (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, 1961), pp. 5off. Williams dates the beginnings of the dependence of literature on the market to the second and third decades of the eighteenth century. But one already finds similar observations somewhat earlier, e. g. , in Shaftesbury. On Shaftesbury's vain attempts to distance himself (in printed books! ) from the book market, see Jean-
Christophe Agnew, Worlds Apart: The Market and the Theater in Anglo-American Thought, is$o-ij$o (Cambridge, 1986), pp. i62ff.
91. The reader, "diese unbekannte Gottheit," one reads (! ) in Peter Leberecht. See Ludwig Tieck, Friihe Erzahlungen und Romane (Munich, n. d. ), p. 136. One also finds the demand that the reader should forget as quickly as possible, so that new books can be written and sold.
92. Williams, Culture and Society, p. 53.
93. See Gerhardt Plumpe, Asthetische Kommunikation der Moderne, vol. 1, Von Kant bis Hegel (Opladen, 1993). Plumpe describes aesthetics as a reaction to the social differentiation of the art system.
94. See Klaus Disselbeck, Geschmack und Kunst: Eine systemtheoretische Un- tersuchung zu Schillers Briefen "Ober die asthetische Erziehung des Menschen (Opladen, 1987).
95. Hegel, Vorlesungen iiber die Asthetik, vol. 1, in Werke, vol. 13 (Frankfurt, 1970), p. 25. See also Plumpe, Asthetische Kommunikation, p. 300, with an eye to the problem of systems differentiation.
360 Notes to Pages 160-yo
96. See Walter Benjamin's well-known study Der Begriffder Kunstkritik in der deutschen Romantik (Frankfurt, 1973).
97. Hegelians would respond that pure self-reference is possible nonetheless, namely, as "absolute Spirit"--a spirit that excludes only exclusion--or, as we would put it, as paradox.
98. On the transition from symbol to sign, see also Kristeva, Semeiotike: Re- cherches pour un simanalyse (Paris, 1969), pp. n6ff. : "La deuxieme moitie' du Moyen Age (Xllle-XVe siecle) est une pdriode de transition pour la culture eu- rope'enne: la pensee du signe remplace celle du symbole" (116). A comparison with our own use of the concepts of symbol and sign reveals differences, which we do not need to elaborate here. The next turning point, which occurs in the nine- teenth and twentieth centuries, remains outside Kristeva's analysis, even though she addresses this shift elsewhere, in conjunction with text-art (e. g. , p. 244).
99. SeeHeinrichCorneliusAgrippavonNettesheim,Deoccultaphilosophica libri tres (1531), quoted from Opera, 2 vols. (Hildesheim, 1970), vol. 1, pp. 1-499. On mathematics, see esp. Book II, pp. iS3ff. ; on religion, see Book III, pp. 3ioff.
100. Henri Gouhier has shown that Descartes's dualistic metaphysics ex- cludes symbolization (Henri Gouhier, "Le refus du symbolisme dans le human- isme cartesien," in Umanesimo e simbolismo, Archivio di filosofia [1958], pp. 65-74)-
101. This holds for other and quite different usages as well. In ancient Greek, symbolaion meant an agreement or contract, especially when fixed in writing; in this sense, the symbol is a characteristic feature, it provides evidence for something.
102. The symbol not only has a religious meaning that refers to the Creator but also corresponds to the family tradition in aristocratic societies. In both con- texts, the origin is conceived in terms of a presence of the past whereby, in most cases, it is not explicitly restricted to the dimension of time. In the same sense, the goal (telos) is already present, even if the movement is still under way.
103. See Wilhelm Perpeet, Asthetik im Mittelalter (Freiburg, 1977).
104. See M. M. Davy, Essai sur la symbolique romane (Paris, 1955). On further connections, see Albert Zimmermann, ed. , Der Begriffder Repraesentatio im Mit- telalter: Stellvertretung Symbol, Zeichen, Bild (Berlin, 1971).
105. On this issue, and on the gradual transformation of this guiding differ- ence into the code immanent/transcendent, see Niklas Luhmann, "Die Aus- differenzierung der Religion," in Luhmann, Gesellschafisstruktur und Semantik, vol. 3 (Frankfurt, 1989), pp. 259-357.
106. This example, representative of medieval symbolism, is from Eugenio Battisti, "Simbolo e Classicismo," in Umanesimo e simbolismo, Archivio di filosofia (1958), pp. 215-33.
107. In the sense of medium introduced in Chapter 3.
Notes to Pages 170-72 36i
108. Kristeva, Semeiotike, p. 116 (authors emphasis).
109. See also Renate Lachmann, Geddchtnis undLiteratur (Frankfurt, 1990), pp. 27ff.
no. Onthispoint,seeBelting'sdetailedstudy,BildundKult.
in. Stimulated by print, emblematics became a fashion in sixteenth-century texts and graphics that encroached on the terrain of the symbol. See Pierre Mes- nard, "Symbolisme et Humanisme," in Umanesimo e simbolismo, Archivio difilo- sofia (1958), pp. 123-29.
112. On the much-debated emergence of modern "fictional" theater, see Ag- new, Worlds Apart, who emphasizes parallel developments in the realms of ex- change and of supply markets.
113. Kristeva, Semeiotike, p. 117.
114. See, e. g. , the famous Iconologia by Cesare Ripa (Rome, 1603), which has since appeared in many enlarged editions. A modern, abbreviated version was published by Piero Buscaroli (Milan, 1992).
115. A wealth of freshly invented allegories and conceits can be found in Bal-
tasar Gracian, Criticdn oder Uber die allgemeinen Luster des Menschen (1651-1657; Hamburg, 1957). The narrative is only a pretext for a sequence of allegories re-
lated to the world and to morality.
116. See Kant, Kritik der Urteilskraft, ? 59: "Beide sind Hypothesen, d. i. Darstellungen (exhibitiones); nicht blofie Charakterismen, d. i. Bezeichnungen der BegrifFe durch begleitende sinnliche Zeichen, die gar nichts zu der An- schauung des Objekts Gehoriges enthalten. " See also Hans Georg Gadamer, "Symbol und Allegorie," in Umanesimo e simbolismo, Archivio difilosofia (1958), pp. 23-28; Gadamer, Wahrheit und Methode: Grundziige einer philosophischen Hermeneutik, 3d ed. (Tubingen, 1972), pp. 68ff. See also Moritz's rejection of al- legory on the grounds that allegory, as a sign, conflicts with the essence of beauty as self-perfection, in Moritz, "Ober die Allegorie," quoted from Schriften zurAsthetik undPoetik, pp. 112-25.
117. Gadamer, Wahrheit undMethode, p. 73.
118. See Solger, Vorlesungen iiber die Asthetik, esp. pp. i26ff.
119. The so-called logic of Port-Royal (1662) constitutes a milestone in this
development. Significantly, it rejects all forms of (obscure) symbolism in the in- terest of both religious reform and the new rationalism. See Antoine Arnauld and Pierre Nicole, La logique ou Van depenser. . . , critical ed. (Paris, 1965). At the same time, a sensuous theory of cognition emerged in England. Both were dominated by interest in a semantic stability that could circumvent the agenda of religion and die disposition of the nobility; this was therefore retrospectively described as "bourgeois. "
120. On this turn, see Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht and K. Ludwig Pfeiffer, eds. ,
362 Notes to Pages 175-74
Materialitdt der Kommunikation (Frankfurt, 1988); trans, in part as Materialities of Communication, trans. William Whobrey (Stanford, Calif. , 1994).
121. The use of the theater as a metaphor for this kind of production is a fa- miliar topic of historical investigation. On the deliberate and circular structure of this order, which includes even the political asymmetry of sovereignty, see also Louis Marin, Leportrait du roi (Paris, 1981).
122. Last but not least, religious art profited from this expansion, which, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, had at its disposal many means of rep- resenting transcendence--e. g. , by depicting its reflection in the faces of those who observed it. On the other hand, this presupposed (and required) the free- dom to turn inward. The representation itself no longer effectuated the presence of transcendence.
123. See Norman Knox, The Word "Irony" and Its Context, 1500-1750 (Durham, N. C. , 1961).