Knowledge Organization in the Domain of Art Studies – History, Transition and Conceptual Changes

Abstract

The article is an analysis of some aspects of knowledge organization in the domain of the arts, especially visual art. The analysis indicates that different socially and historically embedded discourses on art, including pre-paradigmatic studies and scholarly paradigms, pervade knowledge organization in the art institution at three levels, respectively: 1. Art exhibitions, 2. Primary and tertiary document types (printed, audio-visual, and multimedia documents), and 3. Classification systems, bibliographies, and thesauri. The article presents three paradigms in art scholarship (iconographic, stylistic and materialistic) and analyzes in which way, and to what extent, these paradigms are integrated in the taxonomies of the LCC, DDC, UDC, and Soviet BBK classification systems. The paper also addresses the relationship among paradigms, principles for exhibiting works of art, ways of conceptualising and organizing the content in documents on art history, and LIS knowledge organization systems. It is concluded that the UDC, in particular, is well suited for representation of knowledge produced in the contexts of pre-paradigmatic, iconological, and stylistic studies. But documents by the so-called New art scholars drawing on interdisciplinary studies and representing new approaches and paradigms break with the taxonomies on art in the classical hierarchical, universal classification systems. A step towards a solution of problems caused by this break is a polyhierarchical thesaurus such as the Art & Architecture Thesaurus.