An Autopoietic Sociology of Art

The paper attempts to situate Die Kunst der Gesellschaft , Luhmann’s book on the sociology of art in the context of his theoretical strategies aiming at the construction of a highly abstract, universal theory of the systems of societal communication. Autopoiesis is not simply a basic property of self-enclosed social systems but also that of their theoretical representation, which first produces the elements that then, as if by themselves, produce the system in question. Th e basic tenet of Luhmann’s sociology of art is that art as a social system is not constituted by artists, their works and their audience, but by improbable, unexpected communicative events. Luhmann’s re-descriptions of otherwise well researched art historical facts and processes in his own theoretically charged language are found to have great heuristic value and explanatory potential.