| ASPECT |
PRE-INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY |
INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY |
POST-INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY |
| Place of analysis/point of view |
Europe Western |
| Dominant form/way |
 |
| Kind of customers |
Work is produced for religious/regal customers |
Work is produced to be sold to potential middle-class buyers. |
Work is produced to be sold to potential middle-class buyers and to public offices for social/cultural promotion. |
| Fruition characteristics |
Spectator goes beyond the surface. Frame is fundamental, it is a window over another reality. The look goes beyond the surface and it goes over a different reality from the observer’s one. |
Spectator scans the work’s surface. Where the frame is present, it is on the same nearness/distance level of what it contains . |
Spectator observes the work’s surface and its contour (possible participation). Frame is not present, the work is in relationship with its context and shares the same linguistic code. The look ties up work’s inside and outside in a continuum. |
| Operating paradigm |
|
Collocation |
Work has frame/pedestal |
Work with or without frame or pedestal. |
Work without frame or pedestal. Installation, intervention or event.
|
Technique |
Veiling/polish |
Direct/incomplete painting |
Brush stroke/modelling is projectedand connected to the specific characteristics of the work. |
Brush stroke/modelling |
Brush stroke/modelling disappears in the total organization of the represented reality |
Brush stroke/modelling is broken, it remains visible and has a central role in the organization of the image. |
| Social function |
Maintenance of the social system |
Maintenance/adaptation of the social system |
| Work function for the customer/buyer |
Status symbol’s exhibition and/or indoctrination |
Status symbol’s exhibition and propaganda and/or increase of the intrinsic/extrinsic power of the users |
| Work function for the user |
Messianic revelation |
Empatic comprehension of being or its philosophical research |
Projected action in a limited semantic and space/temporal horizon |
| Critical points |
Inadequacyof shapes to the divine contents |
Conflict between work’s emancipator function and its institutional use |
Risk of communicative inconsistenceand inefficacy compared with others cultural agents |
POLITIC