ABSTRACT
Referring to the foundations of the functioning of an art system leads us back to a broader meaning of the term ‘functioning’ than used in the second part, in which particularly the functioning of aesthetic utterances, or art as such, was under discussion. The title of the first matrix in the introductory chapter was ‘Fields and relationships to be studied concerning the functioning of an art world on the societal level’. The same matrix might also be called ‘87 ways to study the functioning of an art world’, which means that possible outcomes of the various processes can be studied not only on the level of the effects but throughout the whole system, its internal functioning – the way it works, so to speak – as well. In the first place sets of structural (historically developed and more or less durable) patterns can be identified. They play a conditioning role because they determine the nature of the processes, apart from the extent to which these are intrinsically determined by the typical and historically developed character of the aesthetic languages at stake.
