Hans Zitko

Ästhetischer und kunstwissenschaftlicher Gegenstand (The Object of Aesthetics and Art History)
Mediale und systemische Konstellationen
VOLUME 191

A Study of the Art World’s Medium-Related and Systemic Constellations

When audiences engage with works and objects of art, four primary factors come into play: perceptions are conditioned by certain bodies of knowledge, pertinent conditions of presentation, and, not least importantly, the medium of money. Together, these three constitute a framework that allows a work with its specific qualities to become manifest in the first place. They as well as the object under consideration itself, which is the fourth factor in this scene, are in continual interaction.

Historically, that interaction has been subject to not inconsiderable changes. In the course of the development toward modernism, all factors have come under growing pressure to demonstrate their legitimacy, prompting a series of novel mechanisms designed to legitimate and stabilize the system’s dynamic. One effect of this dynamic of particular relevance for art is the forced upward revaluation of ethical motives in the making of and engagement with art, which goes hand in hand with certain abrupt shifts within the ethical discourses themselves. Hans Zitko outlines a structural model of the art world and retraces the historical evolution whose endpoint, for the time being, is today’s art world.

Hans Zitko (b. Hamburg, 1951) is a freelance writer whose work focuses on the fields of aesthetics, the sociology of art, religious studies, the theory of perception, and the history of visual art and film. Until 2018, he lectured on the theory of perception and advised doctoral students as a visiting professor at the University of Art and Design (HfG) in Offenbach am Main.