How to Study Art Worlds

Front matter

Hans van Maanen

HOW TO STUDY ART WORLDS

On the Societal Functioning of Aesthetic Values

PART ONE [HEART WORLD AS A SYSTEM The Institutional Theory of George Dickie 17

The Institutionalist Pragmatism of Howard S. Becker and Paul DiMaggio 31

Pierre Bourdieu’s Grand Theory of the Artistic Field 53

From Theory to the Methodology of Singularity: Bruno Latour and Nathalie Heinich 83

Niklas Luhmann’s System of Artistic Communications 105

How Art Worlds Help the Arts to Function 125

PART TWO ON VALUES AND FUNCTIONS OF THE ARTS What Philosophers Say that the Arts Do 149

6 TABLE OF CONTENTS

PART THREE How To Stupy Art WorLpDs Introduction 205 8 Foundations for the Functioning of Art Systems 207 9 How Distribution Conditions the Functioning of Art 241

Epilogue: For a Second Life of Artistic Experiences 291

Introduction

From 1960 onwards, first art philosophy and then art sociology gave birth to a stream of theories describing and analyzing the dynamics of the world of arts. This was in reaction to the difficulties encountered when attempting to understand artworks as artefacts with particular distinctive features that are produced by the unique activity of artists. While each of the scholars who contributed to this approach emphasized the importance of the relationship between the production of art and the reception of it, they mainly studied the domain of production; very little attention was paid to the domains of distribution and reception in these attempts to understand how the arts function in society.

On the basis of a critical overview of the art world, as well as field, network, and system theories, this study attempts to bring together the thinking on the organizational side of the world of arts and an understanding of the functions art fulfils in a culture; to put it more precisely: to find out how the organization of the art worlds serves the functioning of arts in society.

It is not at all superfluous to rethink the relationship between theoretical approaches and how the art worlds function in a practical way. On the contrary, in both areas one can notice a tendency to avoid making distinctions between various types of art; instead, a more general idea of art or even culture is favoured. As a consequence, the value of art can be formulated only on a very general level, whereas in practice very different types of art function in very different ways for very different groups of users. Hence, this book has two aims: first, to provide art world practitioners with a theory regarding what the arts can do — both within local communities as well as in society at large — in order to support the strengthening of the societal power of the different forms of art and, second, to supply theoreticians with information regarding the organizational consequences of theories for making the arts function in society.

In 1964, Arthur Danto introduced his notion of ‘the Art world’ as an answer to the changes in aesthetic production in the 1950s and 1960s. He described the difficulties when giving meaning to the products of these changes, called artworks, which, however, look like everyday objects. He argued in his famous article in the Journal of Philosophy that ‘to see something as art requires something the eye cannot descry — an atmosphere of artistic theory, a knowledge of the history of art: an art world’ (Danto 1964: 577). The art world is considered a world in which artists, museums, collectors and others create and discuss developments in art; it is a context in which a work can be seen as an artwork.

Since this 1964 article, the term ‘art world’ has established its place in philosophical and sociological thinking on art, first in the institutional approach of George Dickie and the interactional approach of Howard S. Becker in the English-speaking world, and then on the European continent as well, particularly under the substantial influence of Pierre Bourdieu. Bourdieu, however, strongly preferred the term ‘field’ instead of ‘world’ and attacked Becker for his ‘pure descriptive, even enumerative’ understanding of the latter term.’ The main ways of thinking based on the art world concept during the last three decades of the twentieth century will be discussed in the first part of this book by following the most influential authors on this subject: George Dickey, Howard S. Becker, Paul Dimaggio, Pierre Bourdieu, Niklas Luhmann, Bruno Latour and Nathalie Heinich. A glance at the table of contents will make clear how institutional approaches changed over time: from Danto’s and Dickie’s efforts to understand art in a historical and institutional context, via Bourdieu’s attempt to develop a complete theory on the dynamics of the artistic (and other) fields to the de-structuralization and ‘rhizomization’ in the particularly French reaction to Bourdieu. Luhmann, finally, developed a meta-theory of how social systems operate and relate to each other, not considering actors, individuals or organizations as the basic elements of such systems anymore, but communications; communications in the sense of utterances, including artworks. It can be questioned, by the way, whether the last two approaches can be called institutional any longer.

Although the specific values of these approaches will be discussed thoroughly here, this book seeks to find agreements between ways of thinking and opportunities to connect various points of view, rather than to detail the differences between the approaches discerned. Because of this none of the authors will be studied extensively; only those parts of their work that are concerned with how organizational relations in an art world, field, or system might influence the functioning of the arts in society will be discussed. Sometimes it was necessary to give some background to make the ways of thinking understandable; additionally, I’ve attempted to return to these authors’ key insights and to avoid the (often more than interesting but too specific) details that didn't serve the aim of this book.

Nowadays, it is safe to say that the core of the original notion of an ‘art world’ as meant by Danto — the necessity of understanding an historical-theoretical context for a work in order to consider it art — has very quickly been banished to the margins of the Anglo-Saxon discussion in order to make room for an institutional attack on the old functionalist idea that works can be identified as artworks because of their specific values and functions. Whereas during the 1970s and 1980s, Monroe C. Beardsley had to defend this latter approach as best he could on the American side of the Atlantic, in Europe functionalists were supported historically by a long philosophical tradition of seeking out the distinctive features of art. In his Definitions of Art (1991), Stephen Davies investigated this discussion thoroughly for the Anglo-Saxon part of the world, but in spite of his deep respect for the possibility of specific values and functions in art, he finally drew the conclusion that

Something’s being a work of art is a matter of its having a particular status. This status is conferred by a member of the Art world, usually an artist, who has the authority to confer the status in question by virtue of occupying a role within the Art world to which that authority attaches. (Davies 1991: 218)

In this description, Davies relied heavily on Dickies’ definitions — which have, as institutional definitions do, a circular quality — and didn’t succeed in establishing specific values and functions of art, no matter how important they were in terms of his own viewpoint.

Maybe Davies was right to prefer the institutional definition to the functional one; for his point of view was that the institutional approach is a more general and neutral one than the historically or culturally standardized functional definitions of art. In this sense, the institutional approach is value free; but it is precisely this freedom of value which constitutes the weakness of institutionalism, because it blocks all thinking about the value the arts contribute to society and the functions they are able to serve.

After having studied the different approaches and the key terms used, it can finally be concluded that what is usually called a functional or functionalist approach especially concerns not the functions of art, but its values. The very early description by Beardsley, a functionalist pur sang, already makes this fully clear: ‘Aesthetic objects differ from ... directly utilitarian objects in that their immediate function is only to provide a certain kind of experience that can be enjoyed in itself’ (1958, 572) — the point is the aesthetic experience. This description gives rise to the question of whether it is necessary to consider art principally as a non-functional phenomenon. It seems to be more useful, however, to separate the production of aesthetic values from the intrinsic and extrinsic functions to be fulfilled through the realization of these values by users.

I0 INTRODUCTION

The thinking concerning the values and functions of the arts as developed in the field of philosophy is discussed in part two of this book. This is an intermediary section that bridges the gap between institutional approaches to art on the one hand and questions of how the arts acquire meaning and significance in a culture from an organizational perspective, on the other. This philosophical expedition can not and will not be exhaustive; instead, I try to categorize contemporary ideas on the characteristics of aesthetic experience which can then be used to study the functioning of art in society. Important questions to be discussed will include the roles of perception, imagination and understanding, the importance of a disinterested and an interested perception, as well as the difference between the terms ‘aesthetic’ and artistic’?

After the first two parts, the third will show the main processes according to which art worlds operate and which allow art to function in society. Together with the more or less stable, historically shaped and changing patterns to which they are related, these processes form the basis for ways of production, distribution and reception of art, and even partially of the contextualization of the effects of aesthetic experiences. And, as an important consequence of this, one can expect that differences on the level of these patterns and processes will cause differences in the functioning of art in a society. With this in mind, one of the motivations for writing this book is to find ways of thinking which might allow one to discover whether (and if so, how) the functioning of art in different countries might well be based on the differences in the organisation of production, distribution or reception.

The functioning of art worlds

In art theory a kind of overlap or entanglement exists between the terms value, function and functioning (e.g. Kieran 2002 and Davies 1991). In this study, value of art will be used to describe the capacity of artworks to generate aesthetic experience in the act of reception. Through this description it will become clear that the value of art is, on the one hand, considered to be an objective category in the sense that an artwork holds within itself the very conditions for a possible aesthetic experience and that all artworks have this value in common; while, on the other hand, it has an aesthetic value which has to be seen as a subjective category, in the sense that the value of a work exists in its being felt as an experience by art consumers and, consequently, as something specific in a personal or in a group-bound way. Whereas the value of art lies in its capacity to generate aesthetic experiences, the value of an artwork can be found in the way in which this particular work is able to generate aesthetic experiences. As already noted,

INTRODUCTION II this concept will be worked out in the second part of this book, but, provisionally, Althusser's description offers a good starting point:

The real difference between art and science lies in the specific form in which they, in a totally different way, provide us with the same object: art in the form of ‘seeing’, ‘perceiving’ or ‘feeling’, science in the form of knowledge... (Althusser 1966)

In the same text, Althusser offers the reader an even more subtle description: ‘the special character of art is that it makes us perceive something ... that alludes to reality. Although the specific value of art appears here to be very close to the specific function, the first can be identified as generating an aesthetic experience by forcing the perception domain to produce new schemata, in order to sharpen perceptive capacity or to strengthen imaginative power, which can be seen as aesthetic functions.

Once one begins to wonder why the production of aesthetic value is of any importance, or once one begins to read the phrases which governments use to legitimize their financial support for the arts, the thinking on the functions of art starts. In short, the difference between value and function is that the first serves the second.

The term functioning brings us back to the main topic of this book. This is a complex notion because it can refer to art as such, as well as to the art world. The former will be seen here as a part of the latter. In addition, not only can the operation of the system (in structures and processes) be meant when using the word functioning in the context of art or the art world, but also the various outcomes of the operation in terms of types of artworks and the use made of them by people or groups of people. Counting four different domains in, or directly linked with, an art world (domains of production, distribution, reception and context) and three levels at which these domains can be studied (individual, institutional and societal), the question of how an art world functions can be approached in at least 87 ways. Figure 0.1 shows a third of these ways, those related to the societal level: twelve different fields which can be studied, as well as seventeen different relationships between domains or fields.

Organizational structures, processes and outcomes are actually three moments in the operation of a system. ? In order to allow for a detailed study of the operation of art worlds, not only the three operational moments, but also the four subsystems or domains will be defined.* In addition to the subsystems, which together constitute the core of the art world system, that is, production, distribution and reception, a fourth domain has been included in the model, the domain of contextualization. This can be regarded as an adjunct domain, by means of

I2 INTRODUCTION which links with other systems can be studied. On the one hand, contextual systems (politics, education, economy) can be of significance for the operation of the art world; on the other hand, the results of the operation of the art world can have an impact on those very contextual systems. These processes can be defined as processes by which the assimilation of the outcomes of one system is organized in another system. It should be clear from the diagram that all the various fields and domains are functionally connected by arrows which symbolize the interdependent relationships between them: venues welcome certain types of performances; types of events produce’ a need in the minds of possible audiences; the educational world values certain artists; and, first and foremost, structures make processes possible and types of processes generate types of artworks, be they theatre productions, sculptures, songs, comic strips, or poems.

Figure 0.1 Fields and relationships to be studied concerning the functioning of an art world on the societal level DOMAINS of Production Distribution Reception Context

OPERATION > y j y

Organizat. Types and <> Types and <—> Structure <—-~ Position of the structures numbers of >> numbers > andneeds of > arts amongst producing of venues potential user others systems institutions and their populations and their relationships mutual relationships Processes Ways of Ways of Types of Functioning of conceiving programming, participation art experiences and making offering and and reception in other social aesthetic marketing aesthetic systems works aesthetic works Outcomes Typesand < Typesand < Typesand ~ (New) collective numbers of numbers of numbers of perceptions of aesthetic aesthetic aesthetic the world works experience experiences of situations social groups

(art events)

INTRODUCTION I3

This schema is not only helpful in identifying fields and relationships systematically and in making the functioning of parts of an art world understandable, it can also be read as a model of a process that starts with the making of artworks and, via the columns of distribution (which make them available in events) and reception (in which the events are experienced), ends up with the use made of them to produce new mental schemata in order to perceive the world. In this way the functioning of an art world can be considered a process that leads to an end, whereas the structures, processes and outcomes of the fields and the operation of the relationships can be considered as various stages in this overall process.’ It is in this sense that the functioning of the art world will be studied in the present book.

Because of this choice and in spite of the fact that all parts of the model are equal, some columns and rows can be indicated as being more crucial than others, as is shown in figure 0.2 by bold print.

The first row, called organizational structures, is really just a basis for the art world, although it is often understood as the art world system itself, and these structures condition the types of processes and their outcomes throughout the various domains. Within that row most authors on art worlds restrict themselves to the structure of the production field and the financial relationship with the political world.*

Figure 0.2 Two axes which strongly condition the functioning of an art world, in this case on the individual level

DOMAINS of Production Distribution Reception Context OPERATION > Y i y Organizat. Personnel > Personnel m Perception and >Total mindset Structures and mutual and mutual communication| user(s) relations. relations. schemata of Working Working user(s) conditions conditions. | Space | Î Processes Conceiving Programming Perceiving Use of aesthetic Elaborating Displaying Imagining experience in Rehearsing, Offering Experiencing other mental etc. Marketing Communicating | domains Outcomes Anaesthetic «+ Event as an <+ Aesthetic < (New) mental product aesthetic service experience schemes to perceive the world

The domain most underexposed is undoubtedly that of distribution. In many cases this domain is understood as an extension of art production, whether in the form of exhibitions or performances. But even in that particular case the fact is that audiences meet an extensive aesthetic service, with the original artwork at its core, but it is this service as a whole that will attract people, make an aesthetic experience possible for them and carve out a place in their lives. So, the column of distribution, in which the aesthetic production is transformed and made available in events, is very central to the functioning of an art world, in that it brings production and reception together and organizes the aesthetic experience in specific ways.

It is hoped that this line drawn from institutional thinking on the arts, via an effort to discern various values of the arts, towards the organizational patterns and processes in art worlds, will help scholars in this field, as well as practitioners and even politicians, to understand how art world systems can support the functioning of the arts in society; or, in other words to shape conditions for the societal realization of their values.

I Bourdieu 1996: 205

2 Provisionally, the term ‘aesthetic’ will be used for all types of experiences stemming from artworks. In the second part, a distinction between aesthetic and artistic experiences will be discussed further.

3 Ihave introduced this way of systematizing the study of the functioning of art worlds in two earlier publications on theatre: Van Maanen 1998 and 1999.

4 In this respect, the model differs from the models in Van Maanen 1998, in which the domains of distribution and reception were amalgamated in one domain called consumption. In the model presented here, the term reception has been preferred over the term consumption, in order to emphasize that, in perceiving, art audiences carry out their own production process. The fourth domain is now called ‘contextualization’ to emphasize the mutual movement of diffusion.

5 This is based on the choice of whether to consider the (societal) use made of art as the first function of an art world, rather than the development of art as such, which remains, of course, an essential condition.

6 See e.g. Van Maanen & Wilmer 1998.

PART ONE I The Institutional Theory of George Dickie

LI Introduction

George Dickie (born 1926) devoted 25 years of his active life, from 1964 until 1989, to the promotion and further development of his institutional theory. Ina number of articles and four books published during this period, he defended his approach against what he called instrumental, traditional or romantic theories; all of these, however, were discussed by Stephen Davies as functional theories in his thorough comparison of institutional and functional definitions of art (Davies 1991). Davies's book provides a detailed picture of the fight which took place from 1964 until the mid-1980s between Anglo-Saxon — particularly North American — institutionalists and functionalists; the two primary figures at the core of this struggle were George Dickie and Monroe C. Beardsley.

Beardsley had been searching for the distinctive features of aesthetic experiences since 1958, because he held a strong conviction — which he maintained throughout the years — that the typical character of works of art lies in their capacity to generate aesthetic experience. Reading Dickie means a continuous confrontation with Beardsley, with whom he more or less seems to be fascinated. As should be clear already from the titles of some of his articles, Dickie reacted directly to Beardsley’s efforts. In 1964, he wrote’ The Myth of the Aesthetic Attitude’ (in The American Philosophical Quarterly) and a year later published ‘Beardsley’s Phantom Aesthetic Experience’ (in The Journal of Philosophy). At the same time, his list of books also shows a deep interest in the characteristics and values of artworks. In 1971, Dickie wrote an introduction to aesthetics with chapters entitled “The Theory of Beauty,’ The Theory of Art’ and‘ The Aesthetic Attitude’ Only ten pages of the book were devoted to ‘Art as a Social Institution’ and the introduction to part V,‘The Evaluation of Art’ is called ‘Beardsley’s Theory. Seventeen years later, his Evaluating Art discusses the evaluation theories of seven philosophers, among them Beardsley again, but also Sibley, Goodman and Hume.

Even in Dickies main works, in which he develops his institutional approach, Monroe Beardsley turns up remarkably often; when Dickie starts to write about the aesthetic object in Art and the Aesthetic. An Institutional Analysis (1974), he

In developing my own conception of aesthetic object I will be following the lead of Monroe Beardsley. In so doing, it will be necessary to reject one part of his theory and to develop a network of ideas underlying his theory but not explicitly recognized by him. (Dickie 1974: 147)

And ten years later, when Dickie aimed to improve and complete his institutional theory, he wrote The Art Circle. A Theory of Art (1984); this book was dedicated to none other than...Monroe Beardsley. Stating that there is more about art than the institutional theory can tell, Dickie makes fully clear in one statement how he sees the difference between his approach and Beardsley’s: ‘The theory Beardsley has in mind is a theory of what works of art do, not of what they are’ (1984: 85). A more distinct description of Beardsley’s position as a functionalist is hardly possible: artworks have a specific function and that is to generate aesthetic experience."

That should be enough for the moment about Beardsley. His views will play a part in the second part of this book dealing with the values and functions of art. For now the task is to lay bare Dickie’s institutional theory.’ However, before we begin, the relationship between Dickie and another well-known colleague, Arthur Danto, has to be brought to the fore.

1.2 Dickie and Danto

Arthur Danto was the one who in 1964 introduced the notion ‘Art world’ in his so-often quoted article ‘The Art world’ in The Journal of Philosophy (no. 61: 571- 584). He stated that the new art forms of his time — in which pop art, minimal art and conceptual art presented themselves and won a position — couldn't be seen as art without the introduction of the notion ‘art world. In the article, Danto discusses two problems with which contemporary art confronted him. The first problem arose as soon as an object is considered to be art but looks exactly like a real object. Something is needed to make a distinction between the two objects possible and in order to see the one as reality and the other as a work of art. Here, the famous example of Andy Warhol's Brillo Boxes is presented:

What in the end makes the difference between a Brillo box and a work of art consisting of a Brillo box is a certain theory of art. It is the theory of art that takes it up into the world of art, and keeps it from collapsing into the real object it is. (2003 [1964]: 41)

With the help of Shakespeare, Danto begins to unveil a possible art theory by adding: ‘Brillo boxes may reveal us to ourselves as well anything might: as a mirror held up to nature, they might serve to catch the conscience of our kings’ (2003[1964]: 44). Apart from the functional implications of this view and leaving aside the interesting question of who it was Danto considered to be the kings of his time, the essence of this statement is that Brillo boxes as artworks have something to say, something to express themselves and are not purely a repetition of real Brillo boxes. There is a certain space between Brillo boxes as artworks and Brillo boxes as reality, and this space is filled by the artwork through its saying something about reality.

The second difficulty Danto felt himself presented with was that pure abstract forms of art do not represent anything. He gives the example of a work consisting of an entirely white field crossed by a black line and entitled ‘No. 7° How can this object, not referring to anything, be seen as an artwork? The answer, writes Danto, lies in the fact that this artist has returned to the physicality of paint through an atmosphere compounded of artistic theories and the history of recent and remoter painting. (...) and as a consequence of this his work belongs in this atmosphere and is part of this history. (2003[1964]: 40)

And following this path Danto comes to his founding statement: ‘To see something as art requires something the eye cannot descry — an atmosphere of artistic theory, a knowledge of the history of art: an art world’ (ibid.).

The developments in art production in the 1950s and 1960s that brought Arthur Danto to his concept of the art world also served as the basis for the origin of the institutional theory, although Dickie stresses that his approach did not arise from Danto’s intervention. As will be shown in the next sections, Dickie is quite critical of Danto’s argumentations and Danto, for his part, thinks that Dickie studies the art world too much as an institution, much more than necessary to solve the problems Danto has identified (Danto 1986). In point of fact, Danto deliberately aimed to shift the attention of art historians, critics and other professionals from the traditional idea that artworks have intrinsic and typical features which make them art, to the view that works become art on the basis of their position in the (historical) context, in other words because of their position in an art world.

In The Art Circle, Dickie devotes an entire chapter to Danto’s efforts to get a grip on contemporary art (1984: 17-27). In the first place, Danto’s claim that an art theory is a requisite for the presence of artworks is attacked wrongly, I think, because Dickie is wondering whether Danto thinks ‘that one must be consciously aware of an art theory and be able to state what the theory is in order to create a work of art’ (1984: 19). Here Dickie shows a certain unwillingness to follow Danto, not taking seriously his example about the painters of Lascaux, who in Danto’s view couldn't be artists because a concept of art most likely was lacking then. Dickie misinterprets this approach:

I take Danto to be implying that the painters of Lascaux or any other persons must either be aestheticians and consciously hold an art theory or have an art theory told to them by an aesthetician so that they can consciously hold the theory in order to create works of art. (1984: 20)

Because the paintings of Lascaux were produced ‘a very long time before anyone consciously formulated any art theory, Dickie states that Danto’s claim must be false, turning around Danto’s argument that something can only be understood (not necessarily made) as art with the help of an art theory.

In my opinion, Danto is right not only for his own time, but also for the periods before. His concern was that objects or works could only be seen as art if a conscious distinction between art and non-art was available. Over the centuries, mimesis, expression and formalist theories in all their varieties served the consciousness of this distinction, but, as stated above, in the middle of the twentieth century, Danto was confronted — as were Dickie and Beardsley — with works that couldn't be seen as art on the basis of traditional distinctions. The Brillo Boxes by Warhol, or John Cage's 4°33” (as well as the ready-mades Duchamp had already produced at the beginning of the century) called for a revision of art theories, in such a way that the context of works would explicitly be taken into consideration.

Dickie’s institutional theory is a radical attempt to do this, although it overshoots Danto’s mark and in the end would appear to be quite limited in its capacity to help distinguish art from reality.