The institution of art

Abstract

The final chapter of the essay turns to consider some of the institutional and conceptual implications of the aesthetic exception. It does this through a critical engagement with Alain Badiou, Peter Bürger, and Pierre Bourdieu. The chapter reveals two things: first that there is a distinction between the aesthetic exception (grasped as art’s dispositif) and the institution of art; but second that as a general logic, the aesthetic exception can only be operative in practical institutional configurations, in which specific validity conditions are imposed (such as are found in galleries, museums, theatres, etc.). Where the aesthetic exception as a logic is ‘open’ (particularly after the avant-garde) to any novelty in art, the institutional site is ‘closed’. However, art practices are nonetheless paradoxically bound by the aesthetic exception, which constantly exposes the institutional validation of art to the aporia that there is no longer any ‘criterion’ for the identification of the proper work of art. This means the aesthetic validity regime is permanently suspended, with the consequence that every work of art is (however tacitly stated) an ‘agonistic’ attempt to define ‘art’ for the broader community of sense.