No More Learning

Once the ties between art and religion began to relax,
110
art could ex- pand its competency to include "allegories" of common universals or "em-
blems" that present complex states of affairs in a condensed form.
from painting and poetry, the courtly theater of the fifteenth and six- teenth centuries staged allegories supported by an elaborate machinery which had to compensate for its lack of information and depth. Stage pro- ductions of this sort remained subordinate to the regime of the symbol-- the point was to render visible something that is essentially invisible--but they now included an awareness of their own exteriority, of the discrep- ancy between sign and signified, and they gave up the notion that they could bring about unity by virtue of their own operative means. Aside
*
111
Apart
The Function of Art and the Differentiation of the Art System 171
from religion (or within religion), a cosmos of essences established itself,
equipped with invariant universals--with virtues and vices, with time, or
with good or bad luck. But whatever art signified had to already be famil-
iar. The theater stage, which followed in the second half of the sixteenth
century, was a decisive step forward. Productions no longer took place
among the people or as elaborate courtly festivals but instead occurred at
self-determined times. Space was divided into the stage and the audience.
One had to pay to "get in. " The actors and the audience no longer shared
the tangible symbolization, the "representation" of the invisible in this
world--a representation that, in a religious sense, transcended life as a
world of appearances. Now both actors and audience participated in pro-
jecting appearances; they both knew how to see through appearances and
how to read signs as signs for something else--which now meant that
signs stood for the fatalities of individuals who had to learn to deal with
112
their own fate.
ideas, but at first its representations still presumed familiarity. With the growing supply of signs, the recognition eventually sunk in that there were too many of them, and that one could not rely on the "nature" of
113
At the formal level, art was free to experiment with new
signs but had to proceed selectively. As Kristeva points out,
this requires
a quantitative restriction in the amount of available symbols as well as a
sufficiently frequent repetition of these symbols. This is how the idea of
compiling allegories lexically arose, so that correspondences between
meanings and images would be accessible to those who wished to produce
114
accurate copies.
cially in the theater and later in the modern novel--to substitute narra- tiveplausibility for the quantitative limitation of symbols and to generate the necessary redundancies within artworks themselves rather than draw- ing them from the real world.
But all allegories were still mere signs. In a sense, the artwork debased it- self unless it aspired to more than allegory; it excluded itself from partici- pating in the essence of things. In so doing, art gained an important ad- vantage: the true/false schema broke down. Allegories were neither true nor false, or they were both true and false, depending on how one looked at them. Following the rationalistic tendency of modern thought, the realm of the symbol was consumed by the allegorical. Conceptually, it be- came increasingly difficult to distinguish between the two, until the lim- ited repertoire of conventional allegories was experienced as too restrictive. In the eighteenth century, one gave up the quasi-lexical standardization of
But more and more art offered the opportunity--espe-
172. The Function of Art and the Differentiation of the Art System
allegorical forms (in Alciat and Ripa) and left it to the artist to discover
115
suitable topics and forms of creativity. Kant acknowledges this situation
by reestablishing the concept of the symbol on the basis of a new distinc- tion--the distinction between schematic and symbolic--both of which he
116
This conceptual arrangement allows for the devaluation of the schematic
and for the "expansion of the concept of the symbol toward a universal
117
takes in an operative sense and posits against the concept of the sign.
Solger reduces the symbol/allegory distinction to the dis-
principle. "
tinction between existence and indication and distinguishes the symbol
118
from a merely signifying function.
ever, the concept of allegory loses its relationship to intuition.
Even in earlier times, allegorical art was unable to cover the entire realm
of art. The mere fact that art had shifted its hetero-reference from symbols
119
to signs was a step beyond the limitations of allegory. In the wake of
this shift, forms could become "classical"; they could strive for perfection and accomplish it on their own. It became possible to draw a meaningful distinction between the sign and its material basis and to treat the latter as interchangeable. Only much later did the questions arise of whether the material substratum of the sign might not in the end be more meaningful than a pure semiotics had assumed, and whether it might communicate
120
something in its own right.
The gradual, more implicit than explicit shift from symbol to sign
(which could draw on a semiology that originated in antiquity) may be re- lated to the fact that the concept of the sign facilitates the elaboration of complex patterns of distinction. In modern terminology, the sign mediates both between subject and object and between subject and subject; or, to put it differendy, it mediates between the factual and the social dimensions of meaning. The use of signs for the purpose of signification subjects itself to social observation; indeed (just like language) it is necessary only if one wants to communicate one's intention to others. When one uses signs rather than symbols, there is no need to mention the unity of the distinc- tion subject/object and subject/subject so long as a common reservoir of signs can be taken for granted and the selection is situationally motivated. Sociostructural and sociohistorical (evolutionary) conditions apparently confront communication with a complexity that has become more intense and yet is still restrained rather than internally open, so that an orientation toward signs is already necessary and still sufficient. This is why the seven- teenth century succeeded in staging, one more time, the unity of the po-
At such a level of abstraction, how-
The Function of Art and the Differentiation of the Art System 173
litical order of society in a theatrical ceremony that included all the signs
related to that order (for example, the king's body and his actions) and
could take for granted that the signs of representation would recruit the
121
players.
cept that the sign user must be observed as an observer and that the signi- fied is not the object itself but a correlate of sign use, a signifii.
Signs point toward nonpresence. An experience that can be actualized
122
Signs signify the order of signs. Only much later could one ac-
opens itself toward the nonactual. This includes symbolic art,
pands its realm toward immanence. As always with evolutionary steps, it is difficult to see why this happens and where it is going. This became plausible in portrait painting, for example, which was meant to preserve the memory of the person portrayed. The early modern apotheosis of na- ture may have fostered the notion that the entire world was worthy of du- plication. Compared to the symbol, the sign supported creative freedom, since it remains external to the signified. Unlike symbols, signs may be used ironically within the limits of intelligible contexts; they can be used
123 in a laudatory sense when one intends to blame someone and vice versa.
Unlike the symbol, the sign liberates the facts signified for the tasks of sci- entific analysis and explanation. As a result, science and art could now be- gin separate careers in one and the same world. As a kind of compensatory measure, art required an additional component to be meaningful: a work of art must be well made; it must be skillfully crafted. In order to justify its referential access to the external world, art depended more than ever on system-internal criteria, and this provoked an effort of reflection that would eventually transform itself into a theoretical aesthetics.
But the freedom of artistic creativity still remained restricted. Between sign and signified there is no natural relationship of the kind one observes, for example, when the changing colors of the leaves and fluctuating air temperatures indicate the approach of winter. This is why the signifying relation needed another guarantee, which resided in the artworks resem- blance to what it signifies--in the imitation of nature. To put it differ- ently, an artwork could be understood or "consumed" with pleasure only if it allows recognition (or, in information-theoretical terms, if it provides a sufficient number of redundancies). This requirement, along with the concept of imitation, is coupled to hetero-reference. The work of art must bear sufficient resemblance to phenomena familiar from a realm of expe- rience outside of art. The essence of things guarantees their representabil- ity, as it were, from within, and this is why art is capable of signifying this
but it ex-
174 The Function of Art and the Differentiation of the Art System 124
essence. Already in the era of courtly art, compromises were inevitable. Representations of the sovereign and his family in portraits, on tomb- stones, or in texts had to bear a certain resemblance to their objects, and
125
yet one could not exclusively focus on how they looked in reality. Such
deviations had to be justified within the doctrine of imitation. Once one
produces for an art market, this requirement loses significance. The eigh-
teenth century defined artistic license in ways that permitted, indeed de-
manded, an imitation of nature while rejecting the imitation of art--the
mere copying of other works--in the name of originality, innovation, and
126
This rule was directed against the notion of a self-imitation of
progress.
art--an imitation that sought to emulate classical perfection--which had
127
earlier served to justify artistic claims to autonomy.
So long as the semantics of the sign dominated notions about art, a bal-
ancing mechanism was needed to compensate for the increasing ambigu- ity of the signifying relation. We find this mechanism in the theory of taste. But with the idea of taste art opened itself up once again to social reference. The displacement of social reference by, and in the name of, au- tonomy triggered an effort of reflection that replaced the sign relation with the distinction between the universal and the particular and defined art as the appearance of the universal in the particular--art, in other words, was once again defined as symbol, albeit in a nonreligious sense.
In a parallel development, eighteenth-century narrative no longer rep-
resents exemplary cases but seeks instead to activate the reader's self-
experience. Excessive amounts of detail (in Richardson's Pamela, for ex-
ample) suggest proximity to real life while displacing the exemplary into
motivational structures that remain below the level of consciousness. The
relationship of such works to reality is beyond doubt. The sign stands in
for something that really exists. And yet, the premise of a common world
is no longer self-evident. Displaced into the realm of latent motives, it re-
quires a shift in level to become visible, a move toward second-order ob-
servation. The reader can see what the hero cannot see. The sign, now
fully secularized, takes over the symbolizing function of rendering visible
what is invisible. In the meantime, one's understanding of the symbol has
128
changed as well.
world and for this world, and the mystery the symbol sought to appre- hend has been displaced to the mode of functioning that characterizes the subjective faculties in their dealings with the world. This shift provided the starting point for the nineteenth-century resurrection of the symbol.
The entire artistic production is now staged within the
The Function of Art and the Differentiation of the Art System 175
The structure of the sign remains dualistic, like that of the symbol (which is considered to be a special kind of sign). The form of the sign is a difference. But what is the unity of this difference? This question does not arise so long as the problem is posed in terms of a distinction between real objects diat one observes as either art or nature. After all, landscape paintings coexist with landscapes and narratives with event sequences in reality. The difference between art and reality is bridged via the demand for resemblance--it must be possible to recognize one in the other. This presupposes, of course, that the signified itself is not a sign, and this as- sumption limits the complexity that is possible under these circumstances. But what are we to make of the fact that the world is now divided into two kinds of reality--a world of singular events and a world of statistics (or of inductive inferences), a reality out there and a fictional reality? And what happens when this difference is radicalized, when resemblances are deconstructed, when it becomes doubtful whether there is a bridge be- tween these two worlds, and when one is eventually forced to admit with Saussure that "the sign is arbitrary"? Has trust in the sign and its relation to a primary reality become no more than a "habit" of the sort Hume saw in induction or John Austin in legal norms? Is it, as Kant suggested, merely a reflex of the pressure to act, of the need to engage oneself before one's cognitive possibilities are exhausted? Do signs always refer only to other signs--even if their relationship to reality seems "immediate" and
129
thus unquestionably and uncritically plausible? Or is it in the end noth-
ing but the inevitability of a cut, of "writing" (Derrida), the need to draw a boundary without which no observer can observe?
We do not raise these questions in order to provide answers. We take them only to indicate trends. In the second half of the twentieth century, die art system has found itself in a society that can raise such questions-- in a manner far removed from the old debate about universals, which was concerned only with the primacy of one side or the other. In his transcen- dental critique of the empirical world relation, Kant, for example, goes be- yond the notion that aesthetics should concern itself with a factually cor- rect use of signs. Earlier we mentioned Kant's reformulation of the concept of the symbol. The authority of aesthetic judgment is now referred to as "Spirit" (in contrast to reason), and its criteria are called "aesthetic Ideas"
130
(as opposed to Ideas of reason).
bolize a hinter-world but to "stimulate the mind,"
theoretically in rather vague terms. Subsequent developments went well
Their function, however, is not to sym-
131
which Kant describes
176 The Function of Art and the Differentiation of the Art System
beyond this conceptualization, not least by radicalizing the problem of the relationship between self-reference and hetero-reference.
This is why romanticism can speak of the symbol as well as of allegory --with a certain preference for the symbol. Romanticism is no longer concerned with an analogy of being, nor with a naturally secured (possi- bly erroneous) use of signs. Romanticism already reacts to the excesses and insecurities of communication that result from the differentiation of the art system. Its problem is intersubjectivity, a problem that lies at the heart of the subject's self-relation. This relation, and nothing else, is reflected in
132
romanticism's relationship to nature.
century, a symbolism emerged from such notions that tended to present itself as self-sufficient.
In a society that cultivates a doctrine of the sign without reference in the
epistemology of a "radical constructivism" and in semiology (including the
theory of language), art can no longer justify its choice of forms by hetero-
reference, not even by "abstracting" from hetero-reference. German Ideal-
ism took measures to animate art via reflection from the idea of beauty,
which was a step toward a self-referential grounding of art, even though it
did not yet concern art in general but only its core, poetry. The artworks
symbolism now referred to the difference between itself and an Idea that is
unattainable and expresses itself in the sensible realm through this differ-
ence and in the agony over it. The formula of "Spirit" anticipates the notion
133
of "autopoiesis"
must therefore be sought in the art of formal combination, in the work's ability to sustain an internal balance under extenuated circumstances, in the manner in which it creates distinctions that fit other distinctions.
Under such radically altered circumstances, the concept of the symbol acquires a new meaning. Despite repeated attempts to enter into an un- holy alliance with religion--which profits from such "revivals"--one be- gins to formulate, in more current terms, the problem of difference that lies at the heart of the symbol. This problem concerns the difference be- tween signifier (signifiant) and signified (signifie). Following Peirce or Saussure, one adopts either a pragmatic or a structuralist perspective and analyzes the difference between signifier and signified. To the extent that this difference can be bridged neither operatively nor via the resemblance of images, the sign {signe) becomes the unity of signifier {signifiant) and signified (signifie). But what is the "sign" itself? Is it a difference or a unity? Is it merely a condition that allows us to take the next step? A passing mo-
In the course of the nineteenth
but lacks sufficient informational content. A solution
The Function of Art and the Differentiation of the Art System IJJ
134
ment in an ongoing process? If so, then how does one copy the signified,
unity out of the unity of difference (in contrast to copying it into this
135
unity in the form of a reentry)?
So long as signs still referred, one could imagine "differences between
levels"--for example, between syntax and semantics. The classical struc- ture of narrative facilitated such a separation and combination of levels, namely, between the narration and the narrated plot. One could project into this difference what the work left invisible. One could use the dis- tinction between levels to render invisible the unity of this distinction (that is, the world). By collapsing these levels and by creating deliberate confusion of the sort we find in Tristram Shandy, one could show that this was indeed the case. The dark profundity of the world was no longer sym- bolized in the old sense; it vanished in the difference between levels and could be represented only by collapsing these levels, that is, by paradox. The distinction between levels remained intact, albeit subject to subver- sion, and it accomplished precisely what we expect from art, namely, that it make the world visible by making it invisible. Yet this solution remained tied to the distinguishability of levels as well as to the reference of signs and their related arrangements. But where does one stand when the dif- ference between the separation and subversion of levels becomes too ob- viously a part of the normal artistic repertoire (when the narrator appears in his story because he is not supposed to do so)?
Once this difference becomes the object of reflection, the concept of the symbol again suggests itself. The symbol is a sign that reflects upon the signifying function; it appropriates the place of paradox and secures the operation of signification. If we look ahead toward this solution, then we understand why the nineteenth century once again favored the concept of the symbol. The return of the symbol in romanticism was not an invoca-
136
tion of God--in the meantime, God had become a topic of religion. Rather, it evoked (unattainable) unity in such a way as to render the use
137
of the symbol self-destructive.
nation of forms that rules over its own distinctions, and in so doing refers to something it cannot signify. What it attempts to symbolize is, in the fi- nal analysis, the reentry of the form into the form. The symbol not only stands for what it excludes but also signifies the impossibility of signifying the excluded, even though there is more room, internally, to choose one's distinctions. In this sense, the symbol stands once again for the observa- tion of an unobservable world.
The romantic symbol indicates a combi-
178 The Function of Art and the Differentiation of the Art System
One now experiments with intricately nested distinctions in the hope of eliciting "synergetic" effects and tolerates the free choice of form com- binations, even though they are subsequently subordinated to the idea of harmony. It is currently difficult to decide whether experiments of this sort yield a higher degree of complexity or whether they eliminate much of what was previously possible in art. After such bursts of complexity, evolution tends to start all over again on a smaller scale, exploring new possibilities on a relatively simple basis without any evolutionary guaran- tee of success. The current reduction of art to form, its minimalism and radical simplicity, cannot satisfy in the long run. Sooner or later, one might once again demand a maximum amount of complexity from the individual work.
VIII
Hardly any other functional system can compare with art when it comes
to integrating the most heterogeneous modes of operation into an au-
topoietic functional nexus. This is due to the variety of its material basis--
in the visual arts, textual art, and music, for example. The assumption of a
primordial unity of art that later dissolved into different forms is pure spec-
138
ulation.
the difference between genres and never thinks of art in the singular, that is, in terms of an overarching unity. From the Middle Ages to the Renais- sance, one employed the same symbolism in different genres so as to invoke
139
On the contrary, the history of art suggests that one starts from
a realm that transcends art.
Apart from such explicit references, one finds
covert references to meanings that are secret (and withheld as esoteric),
such as the cosmological-mathematical theory of proportion that (until
Palladio) not only played a role in music and architecture but also served as
a theme of poetry. One recalls the much quoted formula utpictura poesis
erit (Horace), which provoked the competition between poetry and paint-
140
ing,
of mimesislimitatio. Such correspondences are not all-determining, nor do they concern only the realm we identify as "art" today. They draw on the relationship of art to an external harmony of the world that is partly ex- plicit and partly "esoteric" and that remains imperceptible in the artwork-- a notion that had to be sacrificed after its final climax in the hermeticism of the Renaissance.
None of these tendencies stands in the way of a technical differentiation
as well as the widely accepted definition of some of the arts in terms
The Function of Art and the Differentiation of the Art System 179
of the arts (as craft), but they hold art at this level. Art is considered a "habit" of artists rather than an island of meaning isolated from the exter-
141
nal world.
skeptical resistance, mainly because of manifest differences among the arts, especially when it comes to the question of whether or not literature
142
ought to be considered a part of the art system.
ciplines, academies, and faculties tend to be at stake in this dispute; they cannot tolerate that someone simultaneously studies to become a painter, a sculptor, a musician, a dancer, and an actor.
Yet, we cannot ignore correlations that are no longer legitimized in re-
ligious or cosmological terms but instead are rooted in the art system it-
self. They suggest that the unity of art emerged in the wake of a differen-
tiated art system and is now grounded in differentiation. Historically, the
notion of a unified art system did not emerge until the second half of the
eighteenth century, subsequently altering the referential situation of re-
flection. Only then could one speak of the Beaux-Arts or of the beautiful
in art and describe the product in terms that simultaneously indicate its
143
production.
with the idea that the purpose of art is imitation. Only then did the re-
144
This epochal turnabout in adjoining relationships led to the emergence
of features that justify speaking of modern literature or modern paint-
145
ing,
velopment and to the drive of art to surpass itself--the correlation, for ex- ample, between atonal music, cubist painting, and a textual production that disregards the expectations and the reading pace of the average reader, even deliberately subverts such dependencies. "When the romantics speak of "poetry," they mean something entirely different from what the older poetics had in mind. Though the textual arts might seem to be claiming leadership here, the real issue (as postclassical music and painting demon- strate) is the general problem of fictionality, the exclusive rule of art over the difference between reality and fictionality.
When the history of art is written, caesuras tend to be placed at varying points, especially when they concern artistic genres. In painting, it might be relevant that everyday scenes become worthy of art in the manner of Dutch painting; in eighteenth-century literature, it might be important that the novel emphasizes individuality by presenting "round" charac- ters--a tendency that provokes the romantic flirtation with the double.
Even today, the notion of a unified art system meets with
The project of integrating morality was sacrificed, together
flection theory of the art system establish itself as an "aesthetics. "
or call attention to correlations owing to the speed of artistic de-
Academic honors, dis-
18 o The Function of Art and the Differentiation of the Art System
Certainly such developments assimilate tendencies indicative of large-scale sociostructural changes. What is at stake here is the subversion of tradi- tional social distinctions of rank or the hierarchical order of households, client relationships, and regions. But this does not sufficiently account for the fact that eventually everything can be painted and narrated. The ten- dency of the work of art to become unique while its thematic meaning can be generalized presupposes the differentiation of an art system. And this system--which is both unique and thematically open, concrete in its oper- ations and yet undetermined--is copied into every single work of art. Once the system accomplishes this task via reproducing its boundaries, which happens with each individual work (with every art-specific opera- tion), it no longer matters to the system's reproduction how the observa- tion materializes itself. Material possibilities might still be distinguishable and might yield more or less evident opportunities for the realization of art. But if distinct systems differentiate themselves in literature, music, and the visual arts, then they can do so only as subsystems of the art system.
Such a view offers the advantage of allowing us to trace how different genres alternately take the lead in the differentiation of the art system. It makes sense to assume that text-art (poetry) takes the initiative in differ- entiating itself against the truth claims of early modern science (even though mannerist painting, with its formal distortions, makes the same point--that it doesn't care about truth in the ordinary sense). The literary front vis-a-vis scientific texts is the realm where expectations concerning truth are most likely to arise and where they must be rejected in the in-
146
terest of a domain of utterances unique to art.
music and painting apparently led the battle against the narrowing of what was artistically admissible, introducing the notion that binding tra- ditions (as opposed to a mere history of forms) must be rejected--for ex- ample, tonality in music or figurative verisimilitude in painting. If hy- potheses of this sort can prove themselves, then one might attribute a supportive role to the diversity of genres in the evolutionary process of the art system's differentiation. As in the differentiation of states in early mod- ern Europe, a segmental differentiation of the art system provides the op- portunity to experiment with ideas that can lead further. There is no need to burden the system as a whole with transitions and possible failures; one can begin in areas where success is most likely. The move toward sovereign states throughout Europe does not happen everywhere at the same time. The modern empirico-mathematical method does not revolutionize the
Conversely, around 1900
The Function of Art and the Differentiation of the Art System 181
entirety of human knowledge in an instant. Some genres dissolve their ties to imitation sooner than others. But at the same time, the unity of the re- spective functional system proves and reproduces itself in such avant- garde advances: less forthcoming segments are seized by processes of dif- fusion and are encouraged to experiment with possibilities of their own.
For a segmental differentiation of the art system, generic differences of- fer a natural starting point that requires little by way of presupposition--in this, the differentiation of art resembles the process by which politics es- tablishes territorial differences or science creates divisions between object realms. However, one can speak of segmental differentiation only if one can take a segmentally differentiated system for granted. External and internal differentiations condition one another. Moreover, one needs to give up the idea--which developed in conjunction with aristocratic notions about ed- ucation--that there exists a hierarchical relationship between artistic gen- res: for example, between forms pertaining stricdy to the crafts, on the one
147
hand, and higher forms, such as (Latin) poetry, on the other.
the functional differentiation of the art system, the internal relationship among genres shifts from a hierarchical order--corresponding to social co- ordinates--to concerns with equality and difference. The move toward in- ternal segmentation permits the system to block structural correspondences with its environment and paves the way for a functional differentiation of art. It eventually leads to a condition of society in which the differentiation of politics along the lines of separate states no longer finds support in the differentiation of other social systems, such as the differentiation of genres in art, of disciplines in science, or of markets in the economy. As a result, each system can test its own differentiation only internally rather than in view of corresponding divisions in the environment. When such an order of breaks in symmetry has established itself, it is no longer possible to think of the world in cosmological terms as "dividing itself. " This shift generates the conditions for a poly-contextural semantics, with which each func- tional system must now come to terms on its own.
IX
Art has very few direct effects on other functional systems, and this is why society rarely responds to the differentiation and autonomy of the art system.
It tends to attract attention when certain functional systems fail to recognize or accept their own specificity and therefore consider develop-
Along with
18 2 The Function of Art and the Differentiation of the Art System
ments within the art system to be an encroachment or mistake that needs to be corrected. A notorious case is the reaction of the Catholic Church in the wake of the Counter Reformation or, more accurately, in the wake of
148
the Council of Trent.
twentieth-century totalitarian regimes, especially in the Soviet Union and in Germany under National Socialism.
I In the Middle Ages, the topics of art were predominantly religious in nature, focusing on biblical scenes or the legends of saints. Such themes could be presupposed to be familiar. The primary task of the visual arts
49
was to instruct the people, to preserve and refresh their memory. * The
same holds for sacred scenes staged by the church--the birth of Jesus, Gethsemane, his crucifixion and resurrection. Those who knew and rec- ognized a scene could supply their own details, but occasionally these de- tails needed to be refreshed by images. This required an unambiguous production that individualized the figures and their surroundings only to
150
Other examples are the political reactions of
a minimal degree and left out confusing details.
or experiments with aesthetic effects were bound to disrupt the predomi- nandy religious purpose of these images. (The same might be said about courtly poetry--the lyric and the heroic epic--which continued to be re- cited even after written versions were available. ) As early as the fifteenth century, the beginnings of the differentiation of the art system and the in- creasing personalization of artists in terms of their names, their reputa- tions, and their views about art gave rise to problems that, in the system of patronage, were addressed case by case.
We can observe similar changes in the realm of text-art. In the Middle Ages, debates about artistic topics or controversial issues in rhetoric and po- etics were strictly internal religious disputes, for the simple reason that cler- ics were the ones who could read and write. Christianity had to defend it- self--with an eye toward popular belief in magic and miracles--against the claims to credibility of ancient mythologies, at least insofar as these my-
thologies were known. All of this changed with the rediscovery of antiquity.
One began to recognize that a perfection worthy of imitation had existed
before in this world. Other factors that contributed to this change were the
invention of print and the subsequent anonymity of the reading public, as
well as the Renaissance penchant for literary debates about topics such as
the proper understanding of Aristode's poetics. The controversy about the
m
poetic status of meraviglia no longer posed a threat to religious belief.
Under the umbrella of system-internal criteria, one could still follow Tasso
Attempts at innovation
The Function of Art and the Differentiation of the Art System 183
and debate whether the poetic rule of verisimilitudo could tolerate pagan mythologies, or whether it required restricting oneself to the (unquestion- able) Christian tradition. Bishop Minturno wrote his response to the prob-
152
lem of a poetics during his participation in the Council of Trent,
shows that he was perfecdy capable of distinguishing between religion and poetry. Religion condemned "enthusiasm" as self-deceptive about divine inspiration and as a cause of conflict, whereas in the literature about litera- ture, a positive attitude prevailed without fear of possible religious conflicts
153
(at most, one invoked the muses).
be replaced by concern about possible interferences between the systems of religion and art, especially with regard to the seductive tricks that painting and music play on the senses.
The church did not respond in a focused political fashion until the sec- ond half of the sixteenth century. Religious upheavals and schisms within the church had focused its attention on confessional differences and thus on the problem of education. "True belief" had to be consolidated and subjected to organizational surveillance. In the Catholic domain, such ef- forts were backed primarily by the Jesuit order. One could decide to resist the pressure to innovation exerted by the art system. By the sixteenth cen- tury, however, the differentiation of the art system had become irre- versible. Despite the religious critique of the invention of new images, a return to the old cult image as the predominant form was out of the ques- tion; one had to accept die fact that art was not a religious phenomenon. This realization raised the question of the appropriate art for religious ser- vice; the answers varied, depending on whether they came from the
154
Protestant or the Catholic side.
The idiosyncratic willfulness of art was
not yet described in terms of autonomy. The debates, in which the church
intervened, were still carried out at a programmatic level. Even in the lit-
erature about art, one finds opposition to the liberties taken by Michelan-
gelo and to mannerism, which was emerging then. The interventions of
the church, however, went far beyond that. They insisted on a rigid
morality and demanded that art follow the themes of a history prescribed
155
by the church.
accordingly. The kind of music permitted in churches was strictly con- trolled so as to preclude any pleasurable stimulation of the senses. In ad- dition, one distinguished sharply between sacred and profane art--pre-
sumably in reaction to a development that had become irresistible and
156
Inner-theological disputes tended to
What artists called invenzione zrA disegnowas restricted
was applauded with too much enthusiasm.
As a result, the kind of sa-
which
184 The Function of Art and the Differentiation of the Art System
cred art that remained committed to devotion was excluded from the his- torical and stylistic dynamic of the art system.
This antagonism was bound not to last. Very soon, religion and art dis- covered a common interest--at least in Catholicism--in creating an affec- tive basis for experience and action. This project relieved the burden of reaching agreement about details in the depiction of figures, so long as the boundaries of proper conduct (decorum) were observed. Maintaining deco- rum is the seventeenth-century formula for restricting--without religious grounding--the whims of illusion, the willfulness of art, and also the arbi- trariness of the market. Decorum could once more assert the divisions of segmentation. But toward the mid-seventeenth century, the notion of deco- rum dissolved, to be recast in the form of die contract, which was the only way to protect the social order against the danger that people might change their "person" and turn out to be other than what they appeared. What re- mained oiimitatio in the old sense now referred to human emotions and to the impression created by the unusual despite its recognizability.
What we retrospectively describe as "baroque" is in many respects a combination of church directives and a sense of art aiming toward auton-
157
omy, toward form.
stasy, and heroism, which could be exploited equally well for religious and artistic purposes, paved the way for a rapprochement. Church-political measures that sought to influence the artist via legal and organizational constraints, supervision, and force led to artworks that, in retrospect, were nevertheless classified in art-historical terms as expressing an artistic style. Even in the more restricted domain of church painting, one finds a degree
158
of technical expertise likely to raise doubts about its religious inspiration. The state-political interventions of the twentietli century did not repeat these measures. Political attacks on modern art confronted an entirely dif- ferent situation. The autonomy of art had been historically established; it was now part of a history that lives through art, either by continuing the tradition or, more typically, by turning its back on it, by overthrowing tra- dition in search of new beginnings. In order to forestall the internal dy- namics of art, one can resort to political force and permit only politically correct productions that no longer impress the art system. Society has set- tled for autonomous functional systems, however. In the meantime, the art system has discovered an antidote to infringements by religion, poli- tics, or industrial mass production: namely, the distinction between art
and kitsch.
Secondary motives such as eroticism, asceticism, ec-
? 5 Self-Organization:
Coding and Programming
I
We speak of self-organization whenever an operatively closed system uses its own operations to build structures that it can either reuse and change later on, or else dismiss and forget. Computers depend on exter- nal programming, although computer-generated programs may be devel- oped eventually. By contrast, autopoietic systems produce their own struc- tures and are capable of specifying their operations via these structures (structural determination). This mode of operation does not exclude causal environmental influences. Some of Munch's paintings bear traces of water damage because they were left outdoors. While some people might consider this beautiful, no one would argue that the rain completed the painting. Nor would anyone try to prove the appropriateness of the rain's decisions with regard to the altered formal structure of the painting. Rather, the impression is that a painting was not and could not have been painted in this manner.
Self-organization owes its possibilities and its room for play to the dif- ferentiation of the system. Accordingly, art observes itself by means of the distinction between a reality "out there" and a fictional reality. The dou- bling of reality generates a medium of its own, in which the fixation of forms becomes not only possible but necessary, if the medium is to be re- produced. The opportunity and the need to do something go hand in hand. This conceptual model will guide the following analyses.
In functional systems, we call the system's basal structure--a structure that is produced and reproduced by the system's operations--a code. In
185
186 Self-Organization: Coding and Programming
contrast to the concept of code in linguistics, we think here of a binary
schematism that knows only two values and that excludes third values at
1
the level of coding. A code must fulfill the following requirements: (i) it
must correspond to the system's function, which is to say, it must be able to translate the viewpoint of the function into a guiding difference; and (2) it must be complete in the sense of Spencer Brown's definition, "Distinc-
2
tion is perfect continence," rather than distinguishing just anything. The
code must completely cover the functional domain for which the system is responsible. It must therefore (3) be selective with regard to the external world and (4) provide information within the system. (5) The code must be open to supplements (programs) that offer (and modify) criteria to de- termine which of the two code values is to be considered in any given case. (6) All of this is cast into the form of a preferential code, that is, into an asymmetrical form that requires a distinction between a positive and a neg- ative value. The positive value can be used within the system; at the least, it promises a condensed probability of acceptance. The negative value serves as a value of reflection; it determines what kinds of program are most likely to fulfill the promise of meaning implied in the positive code value.
Whether "tertium non datur" holds for the logical analysis of artworks
3
as units is debatable (but this is true for any unity of distinct objects). Ac-
cording to Kristeva, the work of art either does not exist at all, or it is a processing of distinctions--it is either a "zero" or a "double," but not a simple unit that can be negated in a single instance. This formulation may be premature, for one can certainly negate a double or treat it as a basis for excluding third possibilities. The question of how autonomy can be un- derstood in logical terms leads further. Whenever a system (or a work) claims autonomy, it must entail the possibility for negating autonomy; in addition, it must be able to negate this possibility. If the system claims more than autonomy, if it wants to observe and describe itself as au- tonomous, then it must take additional precautions to ensure that its code
4
is accepted rather than rejected. This is because society anticipates a vari-
ety of differently coded functional systems and therefore can operate, as society, only "poly-contexturally. " As we shall see, this condition affects the classical status of the idea of "beauty," which does not distinguish be- tween disjunctional and transjunctional operations. As a result, the differ- ence between "beautiful" (positive) and "ugly" (negative) is grounded in the idea or the value of beauty itself, which implies that the beautiful is simply beautiful.
Self-Organization: Coding and Programming 187
For the time being, we shall deal with straightforward binary coding. According to our understanding, a code is a structure among others--a structure that makes it possible to identify operations as belonging to a certain system but is not necessarily capable of representing, without para- dox, the unity of the system within the system. The question remains whether the art system is aware of a code that permits it to recognize what is or claims to be art and what is not art.
Codes are distinctions, forms that serve as observational devices. They are mobile structures that are applied differently from situation to situa- tion. To speak of a code is not to make a claim about essences. No matter which words we employ to describe the code (we shall return to this point), the code, by virtue of its binary structure and its closure, plays a crucial role in the differentiation of functional systems--just as the yes/no code is indispensable for the emergence of society. The primordial signif- icance of the code has been concealed by an obsession with "hierarchy"-- which advanced civilizations tend to regard as a prerequisite for order-- and by an acceptance of bivalence that has been reduced to the level of mere logic. Even today, the notion of the code still needs clarification.
The function of codes is to symbolize and, at the same time, to inter- rupt the basal circularity of self-implicative autopoietic systems. The clas- sical objection against tautologies, the petitioprincipii, is rendered obsolete by this insight. Within the code, the short-circuit of self-reference is sym- bolized and at the same time treated as a specialized phenomenon. Nega- tion requires a positive operation of "crossing" or "switching," a position that equals a negated negation. The code contains itself and nothing else. At the same time, the differentiation of two values interrupts circularity and creates asymmetries--in short, it generates systems. One needs addi- tional information in order to distinguish between positive and negative values. It is possible, in other words, to condition the system in such a way that it can decide which values are to be selected under what conditions. Such if/then conditionings (which are subject to exception or interpretive
5 constraints) lead to the emergence of self-organizing systems. In abstract
terms, the code is nothing but an invariant disposition for interruption. On the basis of this disposition, which is always given with language, the system can grow and increase its internal complexity in a historically irre- versible manner--initially through chance events and later on the basis of self-organization.
In the process of rendering itself asymmetrical (which exploits rather
188 Self-Organization: Coding and Programming 6
than neutralizes circularity) the system generates time. Time is necessary to cross the boundary between two values. The operation that accom- plishes this crossing takes time. Once the code is established, the implic- itly assumed temporal dimension unfolds into an explicit observational schema. The system needs a memory in order to know its initial condi- tions at any given time. It establishes a bipolar stability that causes the sys- tem to oscillate continuously between both of its values, and that keeps the system's future open by refusing to settle for one of these values. In ob- serving itself, such a system relies on an operatively actualized present that allows it to distinguish between past and future.
It is inconceivable that an art system could emerge without coding. Moreover, the code allows the specificity of a system--in this case, the art system--to be indicated by distinguishing its unique code from the codes of other systems. Codes respond to the problem of how to identify oper- ations as belonging to the system and therefore require certain qualities-- this distinguishes codes from other types of distinctions. Above all, codes must be formulated abstractly enough to inform every operation in a given system. The code's reusability must function as the equivalent of the indication of the system's unity, but without obstructing the functioning of the code's mobile structure. The code exists only when it is used to con- strain the recursive anticipation and recapitulation of operations in the same system. Compared to other functional systems, the specificity of the art system resides less in the names of the code values than in that the task of rendering these values asymmetrical (via conditioning and via the gen- eration and use of time) is primarily the responsibility of the artwork it- self, and that intermediate levels--such as rules or concepts of style--are possible, but to a large extent dispensable.
Despite the difficulties in finding convincing names for the code values of art (for example, values analogous to the true/false distinction in sci- ence), distinguishing between problems of coding and problems of refer-
7
ence and their corresponding distinctions is of utmost importance.
lems of reference occur whenever one distinguishes between self-reference and hetero-reference or, in our case, between art and nonart. The unity (form) of the distinction self-reference / hetero-reference supplies the sys- tem with a satisfactory conception of the world, thereby concealing the dif- ference between system and environment that is initially generated in the operation. Problems of coding, by contrast, concern the difference between positive and negative values, which the system uses to indicate which op-
Prob-
Self-Organization: Coding and Programming 189
erations belong to the system. Problems of coding divide the system's self-
reference along the lines of what is acceptable and unacceptable, that is,
they always refer to the system itself. So far as the environment is con-
cerned, acceptance is not an option. The environment is the way it is, or,
put differently, the system has no freedom in the environment. Distinc-
tions of reference and distinctions of coding--we are always dealing with
distinctions! --are positioned orthogonally in relation to one another. This
is why reference to the environment cannot function as the negative value
8
ofthecode. Distinguishingaworkofartfromsomethingelsecanonlyde-
marcate an observational space and signal that within this space observa- tional relations of a special kind hold, even though it may appear as if the environment is admitted into the system--in the form of a bathtub, for ex- ample, or as a noise audible when the music stops playing, or as an almost normal newspaper advertisement.
The art system must be coded. It must be able to presuppose a code of its own that cannot be surpassed within the system; otherwise it would be un- able to differentiate artworks as a special observational domain. This is true even if the art system's self-description were to orient itself, in a more tradi- tional fashion, toward "principles. " It would still have to decide whether a given work is or is not in agreement with these principles. If everything is acceptable, then it becomes impossible to distinguish art from nonart. Without this distinction, there is no way to dismantle the distinction itself. In order to create possibilities for observation, one must begin with a dis- tinction; if these possibilities are to be specific and distinguishable, then one needs to begin with a specific difference.
The differentiation of the art system manifests itself in the indepen- dence and distinctness of its coding. This is evident in the relationship be- tween aesthetics and morality, in contrast to the moral obligation of art
9
that still held for Gottsched. Sexual morality provides a poor testing
ground in this regard, because morality, in this domain, is in a state of flux (despite criticism from the French side). The extensive theodicy debates in the wake of Leibniz and Voltaire's Candide were more likely to show how badly moral justifications were in need of reform (a problem to which Adam Smith, Kant, and Bentham responded accordingly) rather than in- dicate a conflict between the codes of art and morality. But the problem is
10
also considered more as a matter of principle.
necessarily have to agree with the morally good, and it cannot draw sup- port from such agreement if it doesn't convince as art. Yet there is no such
The "beautiful" does not
190 Self-Organization: Coding and Programming
thing as a crosswise identification of codes, as if the beautiful would have
to prove itself above all in the realm of moral perversities (such as incest).
The distinctions are positioned in an orthogonal relation to each other;
they are indifferent to one another. But since one sought to distance one-
self from a tradition that thought about this problem differently, the for-
mulations expressing this trend tend to be uncertain and ambiguous.
Friedrich Schlegel, for example, writes, "Isn't it true that a certain [! N. L. ]
aesthetic malice is an essential component of a balanced education? " And
he later rejects "the aesthetician's fashionable contempt--a contempt that
distinguishes nothing--of everything that is, or claims to be, morally
11
good. "
The problem is how to deal with the plural coding (or poly-con-
texturality) of modern society while still insisting on the unity of the (hu-
man) subject and on a bivalent logic. A possible solution is to recognize
and communicate codings as paradoxes, in aesthetics via irony, in moral-
12
ity, directly.
Demarcations of this kind are of little help when it comes to determin-
ing die values of codes. In traditional aesthetics, the code values of art
13
were labeled beautiful and ugly. Nevertheless, aesthetics tolerated the
artistic depiction of ugliness. As early as the Renaissance, storms, fires, and so forth were much admired topics of painting (later on, they would be called "sublime"), and in order to paint such things, one drew on the very principles one followed when drawing beautiful objects (without altering the technique of perspective, for instance). In Herder's words, ugliness
14
played the role of an "ancillary idea. "
in a double sense (and, in this regard, paradoxically): it was opposed to ugliness and it implied a general judgment about the relationship between the beautiful and the ugly, or, put differently, beauty was applied both at the figural level and at the level of the artworks unity.
This is why one was not in a position to distinguish between coding and programming. The level at which art represents objects was not dis- tinguished sharply enough from the level of coding, even though the rep- resentation of ugliness, evil, and deformity was justified as a contrast, that
15
is, in view of the other side of the difference beautiful/ugly.
that, the principle of imitation suggested that art ought to represent both
16
kinds of objects.
so on, one was thinking of the nexus between the parts of a whole rather
17
than of a manner of operating.
no more than a transgression of the medium's possibilities,
The concept of beauty was applied
And when discussing "appropriateness," "fitness," and
Lessing already considered ugliness to be
18
reserving the
Apart from
Self-Organization: Coding and Programming 191
concept of beauty for the overall judgment of an artwork. Beauty, in other words, was understood to be a viewpoint of judgment rather than an op- tion that emerges along with the process of artistic production. This is how the contrastive formula beautiful/ugly is still applied in romanticism, despite the trend toward explaining ugliness, the negative side of this dis- tinction, in terms of a "crude" taste or a corrupted moral sense, or in sim-
19
ilarly disapproving ways.
It has become increasingly difficult to insist on the labels beautiful/ugly
for the positive and negative code values of art over the persistent protest
20
of the system.
only to artworks but to other objects as well--for example, to people. order to maintain this parallelism, the beautiful/ugly distinction must be restricted to the figurative level and therefore fails to account for opera- tions of observation (such as producing and observing an artwork), which, as operations, are neither beautiful nor ugly. The problem seems to be that this distinction refers the criteria for judging artworks to descriptively com- prehensiblefeatures of individual works, or, conversely, that it infers from such features criteria that can be generalized. Under such conditions, it is impossible to separate the levels of coding and programming in a manner characteristic of the functional systems of modern society and their "posi- tive" programs.
One therefore wonders whether the values "beautiful" and "ugly" were ever meant to serve as code values to begin with, in the sense of indicating a relationship of exchange mediated by negation. Be this as it may, the tra- dition was unaware of the distinction between function and coding as a way of distinguishing between different forms of specifying a given system. In the idea of beauty, both aspects converged, and even in the early twen- tieth century one still tended to define distinct arrangements of social life in terms of a priori values. One sought to describe social differentiation by differentiating between such values rather than exactly specifying a coun- tervail (or an external side of the form). Besides, it remained unclear whether the notion of beauty referred to individual parts (figures) or to the
22
beauty of the work as a whole.
of perfection pertaining either to the work itself or to its representations; beauty singled out the work, it served as a mark of distinction. Works of art simply are beautiful, or else they are not works of art. There was no need to distinguish art from failed attempts at art or from nonart. "Ugli- ness" could be integrated in the form of grimaces, dissonance, and so on
The reason might be that these labels are applicable not
The tradition thought of beauty as a form
21
In
192. Self-Organization: Coding and Programming
without distracting from the works beauty--in accordance with a general cosmology, which suggested that a world consisting of perfect and less per- fect beings--of angels and stones, men Wwomen--is more perfect than a world containing only the most advanced forms. While the principle of imitation reigned, it was easy to find a balance so long as art was allowed to represent both beautiful and ugly objects in accordance with the work's
23
internal ornamental structure.
Such a frame of mind suggested a notion
of art as idealization--of both beautiful and ugly objects--whereby
ugliness was tolerated as a means of emphasizing beauty by contrast; ac-
cordingly, one spoke of "the fine arts. " Along these lines, German Idealism
turned the notion of beauty into an Idea or an "Ideal" in which all op-
a notion that was still accepted without question in
Perhaps the notion of an ultimate value (and its identification with the code's positive value) was only a precarious transitional solution--pre- sumably modeled on the religious idea of God. After the search for "ob- jective criteria" of beauty had failed, the objectivity of beauty was con-
26
ceivable only as a tautology, as a circle --and the decision about which
forms convince as beautiful was left to history. In this way, one could hold on to a notion of unity, even though concrete forms rest on distinctions. At the same time, one could avoid conceiving the unity of the difference between positive and negative values as paradox. Hegel was perhaps the last to cast this idea into the form of a philosophical system. Today, any logical analysis would insist on separating positive and ultimate values by a difference in level. In Gotthard Giinther s terminology (which we intro- duced earlier), this means that disjunctive and transjunctive operations and their corresponding values must be kept separate. In this regard, the idea of beauty appears "confused" in retrospect, which suggests that its function as the ultimate value of the system was to conceal a paradox.
Defining the problem away in this manner is unacceptable. Instead, we must give up the notion that the art system's operations are structured tele- ologically, that artistic production strives toward an ultimate end, and that beauty is a criterion for permitting judgments about how a work ought to be made and whether it can please or not. This applies to all cases of bi- nary coding. In die true/untrue code, for example, the value of truth does not simultaneously provide a criterion for truth, as the venerable dictum
verum est iudex sui etfalsi [truth is its own judge and the judge of false- hood] suggested. Rather, the positive/negative structure of code values
posites converge, romanticism.
24 25
Self-Organization: Coding and Programming 193
must be distinguished from the criteria (or programs) that direct the proper choice of one or the other value.