A model of art production, distribution & consumption (1983)
artdesigncafé | Creative Business & Entrepreneurship | Published 27 December 2011
This article was previously published with the title "The value of a general model of the production, distribution and consumption of artistic signs for the discipline of art history" in Block, (9), 1983, pp. 73-6.
At the outset I would like to make a plea for clarity and consistency in the use of terminology. In my view it is unfortunate that the expressions “art history” and “the history of art” are used interchangeably by so many scholars. Art history is something different from the history of art. Art history is the name of an intellectual, theoretical discipline whose object of study is the history of art. Although the phrase “the history of art” indicates that there is a single, homogeneous object of study, in practice art history never supplies us with a single, complete, homogeneous account upon which we can all agree. There are always multiple histories, various histories of art. These histories are the output, the products of the discipline art history. They are physically embodied in various languages, media and forms of presentation; for example lectures with slides, diagrams, articles, books, radio and television programmes.
A whole talk could be devoted to the problems involved in specifying the object of study of art history. Suffice to say, art history is not merely concerned with studying artworks styles, genres, artists, patrons, the concept of art, taste, etc; these would be the objects of study of an artologist. The object of study of art history is the history of all these things. In short, art history is a branch of the intellectual discipline history. It is time art historians started to pay some attention to the problems of history writing and developments within history, especially those on the continent (e.g. the work of Braudel).
Another talk could be devoted to the idea that art history generates a particular kind of discourse, and to the problems caused by its representation of the object of study in particular languages and media. I leave these topics for another time. Today my aim is to focus upon the production, distribution and consumption of artistic signs model and to evaluate its usefulness for art historians. Before looking at the constituents of the model, I want to make some general, preliminary remarks concerning the model and the reciprocal relationship between production and consumption.
The bulk of art historical literature consists of “partial” studies in the sense that there are studies of artists, works of art, patrons, dealers, styles, periods, national schools etc, etc, but what is lacking is a general account of how all these particular studies inter-relate and, taken together, constitute a coherent totality. The diagram entitled “A general model of the production, distribution and consumption of artistic signs” is intended to display, schematically, the system as a whole, and to show the logical relationships and connections between its various elements.
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