Where Are You, Virgil, When We Need You?

In systems theory, culture evolves through the interaction among (1) creative individuals; (2) the field (the cultural gatekeepers, such as prominent critics, curators, dealers, and investors; collectively, they judge artistic products and entrench their views through mass media venues); and (3) the domain (the set of explicit and implicit rules, applied to both content and form, that guide vanguard artists). The artist assimilates the domain and produces variations that tap its inherent possibilities; the field judges whether a given variation should be accepted as creative or rejected as deviant and ignored. The field, presented with constant variations, will gradually change its criteria, with consequent expansion of the domain. This provides artists with a perpetually renewed symbol system to work within. The cycle of artistic variation, field judgment, and domain modification enacts cultural evolution. Periodically, the domain runs dry and/or overflows with extravagant variations; subsequently, conflicts simmering within the field come to a boiling point. This begets tumultuous upheaval and drastic ideological change—or a paradigm shift. Postmodern culture offers impoverished and constricted opportunities for creative expression.

The domain will probably open up to other symbol systems, ideally through collaboration between artists and experts in visual representation in a variety of disciplines.