ABSTRACT
In 1916 sociologist Georg Simmel published the book, Rembrandt: An essay in the philosophy of art. His intention was not to write a ‘normal’ sociology of art that might seek to contextualize Rembrandt and his work – socially, culturally, historically, and so on – on the basis that they might be understood ‘only in connection with social processes’ which were responsible for determining ‘when art exists’. 1 Sociological contextualization tended to become a formal technique that removed from sight specific individual things and obviated their particularity whereas the correct philosophy must be to recognize the art-work as a thing-in-itself, an object in its own right. Simmel’s analysis of Rembrandt would offer a complex in which might be retained the individual meanings that the artist sought to invest in the universal form of human aesthetic expression.
