© Tasos Zembylas, 1998

 Conditions of Artistic Practice

„Wir wollen etwas verstehen, was schon offen vor unsern Augen liegt. Denn das scheinen wir, in irgendeinem Sinne, nicht zu verstehen.“
(Wittgenstein: Philosophische Untersuchungen. § 89)

Introduction

The starting point of my inquiry is the following question: When, where and how can an object or action be considered a ‘work of art’? The same question can also be posed for related terms such as the term of ‘artist’, and ‘artistic value’. My aim is to create a model that describes the process of the formation of the concept of art. [1] The question ‘what is art?’ is not a theoretical or a scientific question but rather a matter of the cultural and political praxis of a society. The concept of art and other related concepts are generated by the interaction of production, presentation (display), conveying understanding and reception of art. Beyond this interaction various institutional authorities (for instance the state, the market etc.) inter­fere in the process of the formation of the concept of art.

Inquiry

Since the beginning of this century, modern artists have insisted on the fact that every particular object can be observed as a work of art (Marcel Duchamp). This view is shared also by scholars like Erwin Panofsky, who insisted that it is impossible to determine when an artefact can be considered a work of art. The origin, or to be more precise, the process of generating the aesthetical significance can only be reflected by individuals who participate in a specific cultural space, in which this process occurs (Ludwig Wittgenstein). The expe­rience of interculturality, in other words, the belief of the cultural relativity of each view, amount to certain insights even if these insights give no real answer to the question, what is art. As I have already mentioned, I would prefer to modify this question: I don’t ask ‘what art is’, but ‘what a work of art is’. And I will replace the interrogative pronoun ‘what’ by the pronouns ‘where’ and ‘when’. Therefore, we have to reflect upon the formation of the concept of art.

The concept of art, is an ‘essentially contested concept’ (William Gallie). ‘Art’, as a property of objects is often used in an evaluative sense (Richard Wollheim) but ‘art’ is not only a metaphor. It constitutes facts. The property of an object to have an artistic value and to be a work of art implies very notable consequences in the space of ordinary life. We use the terms ‘art’, ‘work of art’, ‘artist’ and so on in domains where these terms play a significant role. Another problem related to the definition of the concept of art arises when we consider the various practices and functions of this concept. The fact that the location and the context, where a work of art (an object, an action etc.) is shown, is so variable, indicates that art is a multifunctional phenomenon in contemporary society. Works of art fulfill various functions, because they exist in a global system of collective and individual needs and desires.

Outlines of a Social Model

In order to describe the process of the formation of the concept of art, I had to develop a model of the society and of its fields of cultural activities. The limits of the model I’m going to present to you reflect the limits of my own experience of art and culture relating mainly to western culture. Before the beginning of the so-called ‘very advanced’ civilizations, art was characterized not so much as ‘aesthetical entities’ but rather by objects and acts that were incorporated in ceremonial rites. The meaning and the function of archaic art - provided that we can call it ‘art’ at all - was quite strictly determined by the religious rituals and the mythic world view (Ernst Cassirer). In the western cultures, in particular in the wake of the establish­ment of a civil society in the 18th century, art (production and reception) was less controlled by the clerical institutions (i.e. inquisition), but became increasingly informed, administered, fitted and imbued with meaning by the spheres of market and politics.

As I have already mentioned, there are several factors, social authorities and institutions, which exercise an influence on the formation of the concept of art. The main social autho­rities are:

·      the legal system

·      the art market

·      the conditions of professionalism and artistic practice

·      the art criticism

·      the museums.

The intensity of the influence of each social authority is variable. I can find neither a metho­dological nor an empirical reason to establish a hierarchical rank between those various institutional authorities. None of the authorities can be adequately studied isolated from the others. All authorities and institutions are polymorphic bodies, in other words, they change their form, appearance and effects, so that it is impossible to reduce them to a fixed formula, in order to describe them. This implies two things: Firstly, the formation of the concept of art is not a linear causal process and secondly the concept of art is contingent. [2]

Some Remarks on my Theoretical Frame

The standard modern theories of art, let’s assume from Immanuel Kant to Theodor Adorno, did not succeed in incorporating the various concepts of art, which becomes evident since the development of the so called radical avant-garde and postmodernism. We can thus say that some artists, as far as their aesthetical theories are concerned, have produced ‘anoma­lies’ for the standard theories of art. Therefore, philosophers take the opportunity to revise and modify the older theories so that they can integrate and legitimize new production in art. Their approach to art remains usually normative, as they try to formulate some criteria or theories of reference for the concept of art.

It is evident that theories intend to legitimize a special point of view and a specific cultural practice. So we could interpret the aesthetical discourse as a substitute for the struggle between various social fractions for cultural hegemony (Pierre Bourdieu). This might be right, but I do not think that my original question about the meaning of the concept of art can be reduced to an analysis of the social power and the antagonism between some groups within the whole social system. Of course, the concept of art is a political concept [3] and as far as people formulate claims of art within the frames of professionalism and try to legitimize their claims through a theory, the work of art remains in a dependent relationship to the political and social institutions of the art world. But, apart from this fact, I also consider a work of art to be an expression of the will of articulation that generally characterizes human beings. This term, the ‘will of articulation’, should not be understood as a metaphysical concept. I use this word in a more open sense to express an everyday experience. I would like to make reference to Ernst Cassirer’s characterization of human beings as ‘animal symbolicum’. In a similar vein art is a cultural phenomenon linked to the terms of ‘Tätigkeit’ (activity) and ‘Lebensform’ (form of life), as used by Ludwig Wittgenstein and Nelson Goodman.

Description of the Authorities and Institutions of the Art World

The first authority is the legal system. In the legal body you find some direct or indirect requirements about concepts linked to art, for instance about the concept of ‘artist’, ‘work of art’, ‘artistic freedom’, but also about notions that may concern art as the notion of ‘original’, ‘obscenity’, ‘public decency’, ‘justified public nuisance’. [4] In the Civil Law you find several defi­nitions of general personal rights of the artists, (for instance of the moral rights as the right of his/her name, his/her honour), and regulations governing their relations to other participants of the art world. The Copyright makes a distinction between works of art, works of applied art and industrial products for those domains in which this distinction regulates the various interests in the liberal market. Even the number of reproductions is decisive for the definition of the legal sense of the term ‘an original work of art’. The penal code, the administration- and public right regulate the relationship of artists to the public in general and to the state (for instance the regulation of taxes, of social insurance and of the freedom of artistic expression) in a more specific sense.

Art, in Western European societies, approximately since the middle of the 19th century, has shifted from the care of the church and the state to the private sphere of economics. In other words, art has become privatized. Since the beginning of our century the state has begun to keep itself in the background in the discourse of art. Therefore, in most European constitu­tions censorship was soon prohibited. In spite of constitutional laws that protect artistic expression, censorship has not yet been eliminated. I would like to remind you that in the USA direct censorship was imposed, especially during the MaCarthy era and throughout the whole Cold War period. In the  European legal system there are several paragraphs of the penal code that can supersede the constitutional guaranty of the freedom of art and prohibit an art exhibition. [5] It is quite evident that the background-values of these legal prohibitions as well as the subsidies provided by the state for specific parts of the art (production and theory) reflect specific political interests. Meanwhile times have changed. The persecution of unwilling artists happens mostly very discreet, for instance by drawing the artist into long time and expensive trials, or by withholding subsidies from public or private funds.

Of course, the demand for freedom of artistic expression always implies a great moral problem for any liberal and pluralistic society. It seems to me to be clear that freedom of expression cannot be without any limitations, because it is obvious that particular expres­sions may contravene and oppress the basic rights of other individuals or groups. But to establish the necessity of protecting the various individual rights - this problem usually appears, when an artist attacks a politician and the politician claims in court the protection of his honour or privacy - is a very intricate and context-dependent matter.

The last sphere of influence of the legal system and government policy has to do with the economical situation of artists. By this, I refer to the income-tax system, the social insurance, to the public art-funds and to the market policy of the government, in other words, how the government supports the expansion of the art market. Censorship, as I have mentioned before, is not necessary as long as the state and the public can control and regulate the art world throughout the economic sector.

The second authority of the formation of the concept of art is the art market. For me it was fascinating to recognize that the plurality of style in modern art - let’s say since 1900 - is not immanent to modern aesthetic development, as some formalists once thought. The plurality of style stems neither from ‘the postmodernist mind’, as Jean-François Lyotard argues. The patterns of thinking of most art scholars and theorists turn out to be very distant from real artistic practice. The plurality of style has sprung up together with the expansion and liberation of the art market. Pluralistic production correlates with plural consumption.

The economic principles governing the treatment of works of art as commodities are:

-     Firstly, art is to be kept in short supply in order to constitute exclusivity; this implies that the objects of art should have the status of ‘originals’, in the legal sense of the word. [6]

-     Secondly, an object of art should be the result of individual action and decision. In other words, the object of art should be ‘intellectual property’ in the legal sense of this term. [7]

The relationship between art production and market can focus on two different perspectives. The first perspective is the view of the national economy - for example the question what the art world is contributing to the economical growth of a country. The second perspective is the microeconomical one. It is quite evident that the present forms of the art market - the direct selling from the studio of the artist, the selling through an art dealer, or the selling through an auction-house - and the specific mechanism of each form of market create an inter­relationship between the development of the price of art and the development of public awareness and recognition of a particular object of art. The art market is mainly based on the belief that speculations which cause discrepancies between the process of consolidation of the price and the attention of the public and recognition are short-lived. This belief implies the expectation that if an object is aesthetically ‘good’, then it will certainly get a corresponding monetary value of course provided that it is also well promoted.

Another important function of the art market within contemporary society is that it creates the general notion of ‘public’ and ‘public attention’ (Jürgen Habermas). In the art market exists a very tough selection among thousands of young people trying to become professional artists. In other words, the policy of the art market intends to regulate the access to the public’s attention. The actual process of aestheticizing begins throughout the art market, because the aesthetical presentation  and conveying understanding of new works of art are governed by the rules of the market. As I have already mentioned, these rules permit to transform an object to a ‘hot good’ for the leisured class (Thorstein Veblen).

The third sphere governing the formation of the concept of art is concerned with the conditions of the professionalism of artists. The general conditions of the profession are on the one hand dependent upon the structure of the art market and, on the other hand, upon the expectations of the recipients (i.e. cultural habits). By the term ‘professional artist’ I refer to those persons who try to exhibit their works in order to get recognition, that is usually expressed as monetary reward, or as admiration, which means social prestige. All professio­nal artists are involved in the art world [8] , relating in a concrete economical and legal way to others. I assume that professional artists participate in a virtual and interactive community we normally refer to as the artistic community. It would be interesting to explore how artists deal in the institutions of art. By understanding their strategies of their behaviour we can get an idea how artistic practice influences their production and creative work. The classic distinction between those artists who tune their life and work to the expectation of the recipients, and those who use no other rules than their own self-made principles, is actually based on the mythical design of the autonomous artist. Since the end of the 19th century the ‘autonomous artist’ has been stylized as the cultural hero of the liberal bourgeois society. In ordinary life we usually meet a mixed type of these two ideal versions.

Sociologists have developed two different models of action theory: the model of the ‘homo sociologicus’ and the model of the ‘homo oeconomicus’. Most artists react to some expecta­tions of the recipients as a ‘homo sociologicus’ - this means that artists react following established values. Here I give you an example: As long as the recipients of modern art expect that so-called ‘good’ artists are those who break the academic aesthetic standards, artists endeavour to satisfy this expectation. We can observe this pattern of behaviour since the Romanticism. Of course, in other situations, especially in the art market, artists react as a ‘homo oeconomicus’, which means that the artists react egoistically, following the rules of maximization. But this reaction, according to the model of ‘homo oeconomicus’, may leave some recipients unsatisfied. This doesn’t matter as long as the general advantage of the artists increases. I would like to mention that the artist’s performance and self-representation is a very important marketing instrument. The self-stylization and dramatization are used to influence others and to win sympathy.

The art market has probably the greatest effect on the artistic profession of all other institutions. The expansion of the art market in the European and North American countries over the past forty years has contributed to works of art becoming increasingly treated as commodities and objects of financial speculation. The artists have already changed their attitude and have become more conscious of the power of the market. So, we generally can say that the artists have given up their role as bohemians and have become more pragma­tic. They have understood that they must make the necessary effort to cope with the demands of art dealers. These demands imply greater and more effective productivity, relia­bility by agreements with art dealers or clients, clever and sophisticated self-promotion and some rhetorical competence in aesthetic matters. The recent transformation of the art market and of the conditions of artistic practice, have forced the artist to work harder than in the years before. Harald Szeeman, one of the most prominent exhibition makers, has said: ‘Before World War II an exhibition in a museum was considered to be the crowning of an artistic oeuvre. But for the past 40 years anyone who has some artistic talent and energy can get an exhibition’. [9] This statement is not an exaggeration. You can look at the exhibitional activity of young fully professional artists and you will notice that almost all of them have already had several exhibitions in museums, before they turn thirty. You may also be astonished to see their prices skyrocketing, especially in the case of American artists. The number of private and public museums has also increased. Between 1970 and 1990 the number of museums in West Germany has been doubled.

The fourth authority is the art criticism. Art criticism as well as museums are involved in the process of reception and the formation of taste of the recipients. Art critics, called also ‘les maîtres de bon goût’, used to have quite high criteria for their task in the past. Charles Baudelaire, for instance, believed that art criticism can open up new world-horizons. Walter Benjamin said that, ‘a judgement about art, which is not itself a work of art (...), has no right to exist at all in the realm of fine arts’ (trans. of the author). [10] And Pierre Restany, the ‘thinker’ of ‘Nouveau Réalism’, considered the art critic to be the actual artist. Nowadays the insiders speak already about the ‘fade of the publicist’s power’ (Walter Grasskamp) becau­se the real power of the media reporting is much bigger than the power of art criticism. Art critics are now confronted with a specific situation within the art world, that makes art criticism unnecessary and almost impossible. There are three main reasons for this state of affairs: Firstly, the growth and the diversification of artistic production is so advanced and at the same time so redundant that it is for sure impossible to survey all artistic production and to be able to compare the various artists. Secondly, most of the art dealers are mediating their artist through their own publications. Art collectors are increasingly more oriented towards the recommendations of art dealers than towards the opinion of the art critics. Thirdly most of the art magazines have to rely on advertisements of galleries and other exhibitional institutions in order to cover their budget demand. This indirect financial dependence forces the magazines to keep good relations with all these institutions (clients). Therefore their articles and reports on contemporary exhibitions ought to be somehow affirmative. To summarize the conclusion of all these issues, art critics are now forced to cooperate with the galleries and art dealers so that they take on the role of the promoter and PR-manager of artists.

Once we begin to think about how art criticism relates to language some new issues appear, which question the very epistemological status of art criticism. One of the most central questions concerns the relationship between seeing and language, in other words, the problem of speaking about visual impressions and visual messages. The incommensurability between aisthesis and language, i.e. between pictorial and conceptual thinking, has become a generally accepted view. The early Ludwig Wittgenstein (‘Tractatus’) as well as Martin Heidegger (‘Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes’) have argued in this vein. My view, however, is that this incommensurability between the two forms of articulation, the pictorial and the conceptual language is not absolute. The development of each articulation to the other is in some way interconnected. Artists articulate pictorial ideas not only through their pictorial experiments, but also through their reflections on the level of the theory of art, and its medium is of course the abstract language. ‘Pure seeing’ does not exist (Nelson Good­ man). All visual sensations, though independent, are connected directly to our language-games. [11]

Art criticism produces a confrontation between ordinary language and works of art. Ordinary language can certainly not assume the role of a meta-language for the languages used in the various works of art. Especially particular works of art provoke ordinary language in such a way that it points to the borders of the verbal language. Some works of modern art pretend to be untranslatable, as if they were ‘private languages’, and as if their rules and intentions were not apparent. But a language without codes - a code provides the possibility of decoding - is logically unthinkable. Of course, a language may have no rigid function of reference - for example ‘a rose’ is ‘a rose’, is ‘a rose’ and not a flower. But the absence of a rigid reference is no argument for the existence of a private language. I have no doubt that some language games - I consider works of art to be language games in a very general sense - may move for a limited period of time beyond the borderlines of their potential of being interpreted. But this situation is very short-lived. It is an immanent option that every articulation, every gesture and every language is linked to a community and it can also be connected to a community, or according to Wittgenstein, to a ‘Lebensform’.  

The last field is concerned with the places of art exhibitions and especially the museums of modern art. Many aspects related to art museums - for example their cultural and political significance, the form in which art is presented, in other words the classification and hanging-principles and the conveying understanding of art in the museum - influence the taste and the judgement of the visitors to an exhibition. The visitors to a museum are truly instructed by the architectural structure and the form of the exhibition how they are to decode the aesthetical codes correctly. The adverb ‘correctly’ has a normative sense here, and ‘to be correctly instructed’ means in other words: ‘You must look at the work of art in this and only in this way, in order to get the right idea what it really means’.

At the end of 18th and at the beginning of the 19th century museums took on the role of academies: they began to define the artistic standards, the cultural heroes; in other words their taste (judgment) had a canonical function for the public. By this I want to emphasize that museums practice indirectly social control of the production and reception of aesthetical symbols. Especially during the Cold War-Period western museums had been (mis-)used as ideological weapons against the communist dictatorship because they represented the identification of cultural progress and liberty.

Still nowadays museums and other non-profit exhibitional spaces appear as neutral and open-minded institutions that are basically apolitical and scientifically oriented institutions. Nevertheless every form of classification and display  of works of art includes a symbolic order that reinforce a specific point of view. The reinforcement of a specific point of view is naturally a judgement. The judgement that a museums and an exhibition-maker make is usually well hidden and intransparent. So the museums, pretending to be apolitical, give the impression to have made an abstract and objective judgement. [12] In their role to promote and to show new works of art they actually cover and discover different cultural values and world views. Their self-representation and their prediction to be able to create objective judge­ments about art blocks our view (and understanding) of the contingency of the concept of art.

The motto of Paul Eluard that ‘everything is comparable with all other things’ does not mean that an error or a misrepresentation of the meaning of an artefact can not exist. On the one hand, the openness and the endlessness of the interpretation of an artefact is caused by what Ernst Cassirer called ‘mythical thinking’ (cf. also Umberto Eco: ‘Opera aperta’). On the other hand, a misinterpretation can occur by a specific sort of presentation  that reduces the original openness of the work of art. Indeed most museums tend to show artefacts only in a specific way and manner. Therefore, we can detect misrepresentation of the meaning of a work of art [13] : whenever a particular world view is forced it blends out all other world views.

If we take all these considerations seriously, we must accept that aesthetical perception has a bearing on the methods of seeing that exhibitions reinforce. Every method of seeing implies several aesthetic norms. And aesthetic norms are norms of behaviour, i.e. they intro­duce a cultural practice, a ‘Lebensform’. The asymmetrical relations between the institutions of the art world and the recipients have already been implanted onto the structure of our habitual way of looking at objects of art.

Post-Remarks

Let me finally mention two problems of sociology of art: the problem of causality and the problem of the description of complexity.

Sociology of art is based on a fundamental assumption: art and society are interrelated. This implies the idea that works of art are not isolated monads; on the contrary they are within a semantic set. Anyway, we have to be sceptical about this assumption because it is linked to traditional metaphysics. (See for instance the Reflecting-Theory (Widerspiegelungstheorie) of G. H. Hegel or K. Marx.) If someone claims that the relation between art and society is basi­cally a causal connection in sensu stricti (Georg Lúkacs), then I have to deny this assertion. If we claim any interrelationship we have to be clear that this is only a hypothesis and not an objective truth. This hypothesis should be used not because it might have some evidence (cf. David Hume’s critique of causality) but only if it has some operational function within our theoretical construction.

The concept of art is not just an essentially contested concept, it is also a very complex concept. Its complexity is due to the fact that ‘art’ does not denote only objects, actions or concepts. It is rather the result of an interaction between the spheres of production, media­tion and reception. In this sense art as a ‘fait social’ is interrelated to other social domains (politics, economics etc.). The main question rising from this insight is: how can we describe this complexity. Anyone who has read Theodor Adorno’s ‘Aesthetical Theory’, might have an idea of what I am talking about. Adorno attempted through a very sophisticated stylistic and the dialectical method to cope with this complexity. Pierre Bourdieu too uses an elabo­rate style although he uses no dialectics. I would like to propose that sociologist should generally try to avoid long-winded theoretization and make more efforts to give a comprehensive view of such complex phenomena. This might be easier when they choose good examples to exemplify their ideas. Moreover, it is important to have a problem-oriented approach to the contemporary cultural field.

© Tasos Zembylas 1997

SPHERE - AUTHORITY	OPERATIV FUNCTION
Legal System	·      Definition of concepts like ‘artist’ ‘work of art’ ‘obscenity’ ‘artistic freedom’ etc. Distinction between ‘works of art’ and ‘ordinary objects’ ·      The state as a patron of the arts: Support (or sanctioning) of parti­cular trends in art ·      Financial and political measures in order to support the art market and to improve the economical situation of the artists (income-tax system, social insurrence, public art-funds etc.)
Art Market	·      Aestheticizing of objects of art and exertion of influence on the monetary and ideal (semantical) evaluation of works of art ·      Development of a specific public and exertion of influence on the production and reception of art through independent mediation
Conditions of Professionality	·      Formation of the artistic-community. Influence of mythes in the construction of artists’ identities ·      Reglementation of the socio-economical state of the artists ·      The institutions of artistic education garantee the link with the tradi­tion.
Art Criticism	·      Development of theoretical issues and aesthetical criteria; formula­tion of judgements; conveying understanding of arts ·      Art critics are involved in the process of commercial exploitation and legitimisation of the monetary evaluation of works of art ·      Growing relevance of the mediation of art through the media and galleries, which implies a decreasing of the relevance of the tradi­tional form of art criticism
Exhibitional Spaces (Museums etc.)	·      Continuation of the process of aestheticizing of objects of art ·      Make contribution to acceptability of contemporary art (especially of the production of the avant-garde and othe subcultural groups) ·      Conservation and construction of a scientific discourse around the legitimised works of arts
History - Tradition	·      History and tradition have not a specific operational function; they represent a frame, that determines the habitus (cultural praxis, patterns of seeing and interpretation) of the participants of the art worlds (artists, mediators, recipients etc.)

 

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