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 See also the initially unpublished chapter "Das Schema der Massenkultur," ibid.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