On the ontological autonomy of the artistic event
For some days, I have been revisiting a seemingly naive question I have posed since my youth. If, when we go to the cinema, we watch the film first and then, should it interest us, read about it, why do we assume with contemporary art that we must study it before we are able to observe it? I formulated this after leaving a museum in a state of surprise; not because of the work, but upon becoming conscious that I was acting differently to the majority.
That discomfort is what interests me. Not because the works are to blame for it, but because it reveals something I have spent years attempting to articulate: the difference between art as an event and the social infrastructure surrounding it. My thesis is that they are constantly confused, and that this confusion sustains a specific form of cultural elitism which is unnecessary.
I have just published version 2.3 of a paper titled Art as Structural Surplus: Toward a Relational Ontology Beyond Human Authorship on PhilArchive and Zenodo. The paper maintains a strong thesis: art is neither an intrinsic property of the object nor an exclusive expression of the subject, but a relational event. What ontologically distinguishes that event from any functional reorganisation is what I term structural surplus — a relational difference that reorganises the field of possible configurations of a system without being absorbed by its primary function.
The central consequence of that thesis is what I wish to defend here. Structural surplus operates with ontological independence from recognition. It may erupt without any institution registering it. It may circulate in the market without producing it. The historical actualisation of the surplus as fully recognised art is a distinct matter — important, but subsequent, and not constitutive of the event itself.
My friend, colleague, and associate Adolfo Cortés, while we were testing the thesis, proposed Vivian Maier as an example. For decades in Chicago and New York, she produced a photographic archive that only began to be processed, exhibited, and interpreted after her negatives were discovered by chance at a Chicago storage auction in 2007, two years before her death. If recognition were a necessary condition for an artistic event, we would have to maintain that Maier did not produce art until that moment, when someone finally found her boxes. That conclusion is counter-intuitive and, I maintain, false. Maier was producing art while she was producing it. Public actualisation arrived late. The temporal asymmetry between the production of surplus and the recognition of the field is one of the phenomena my paper is designed to preserve.
I bring this thesis to the present. Data from the Spanish Survey of Cultural Habits and Practices reveals something that should be kept in view: in the 2021-2022 cycle, only 1% of the population attended fairs or auctions, 0.7% purchased art, and 0.4% defined themselves as collectors. Yet, those who do visit museums and exhibitions report medium-to-high satisfaction. There is generalised aesthetic experience. There is a highly concentrated art market. Confusing these two realities is what produces the visitor discomfort with which I opened this text.
The visitor is not failing in their observation. They are reacting to a regime of social validation — price, fair, expert authority, institutional consecration — which presents itself as if it were the nature of art when it is merely its infrastructure. Bourdieu diagnosed this as distinction: taste functions as a marker of social position. Becker demonstrated that no work circulates alone, but through cooperative networks of galleries, critics, curators, and museums. Velthuis has explained how price in contemporary art operates as a hermeneutic argument, not merely an economic one. All of this is real and documented. However, none of these mechanisms is what art is. They are the infrastructure through which art circulates.
Hay que insistir en la doble dirección de la asimetría: el excedente puede irrumpir sin reconocimiento, y el reconocimiento puede ocurrir sin excedente. Buena parte del arte validado por el mercado contemporáneo es reconocimiento sin excedente — sofisticación sensorial absorbida por funciones de espectáculo, distinción o legitimación institucional, sin reorganizar el horizonte de configuraciones posibles del sistema. Y buena parte de lo que efectivamente produce excedente queda invisibilizado por infraestructuras que premian otras cosas. El caso Cattelan, con la banana fijada a la pared en Art Basel Miami 2019, es ejemplar de la primera situación. La pregunta pública que la obra desencadenó no fue “¿qué siento ante esto?” sino “¿qué significa que otros hayan asignado a esto 120.000 dólares?”. Esa pregunta no la formula la obra; la formula el mercado, que se la endosa a la obra y la convierte en su contenido.
In light of this, my thesis carries a practical implication that warrants explicit statement: the spectator’s initial gaze is ontologically legitimate. Empirical psychology regarding aesthetic experience—the Leder model and subsequent research—demonstrates that perceptual and affective responses precede elaborate interpretation. This initial response is not an error that contextualisation must rectify. It constitutes a legitimate entry into the work. Contextualisation may indeed enrich the experience. Yet, it may also bias it, particularly when the dominant context is hierarchical rather than pedagogical.
The consequence is clear. The objective is not to eliminate mediation—which is impossible, as mediation is omnipresent—but to transform its social function. The initial gaze must be decoupled from market signals. Curatorial interest must be distinguished from commercial success. The spectator’s doubt must be normalised. And, as far as my own contribution is concerned, one must rigorously maintain that the ontology of the artistic event is not reduced to the history of its recognition.
The conversation with Adolfo
This is the position I shall bring to the joint paper I am to begin working on with Adolfo Cortés García in the coming weeks. Adolfo will work from a position we believe to be entirely convergent, albeit distinct: the articulation between work and recognition as a co-evolutionary process. A complementary perspective, formulated from a different tradition and with a different emphasis.
I have considered that the most honest method of commencing our collaboration is for each of us to publish our starting position beforehand. This text represents my own, and I invite Adolfo to share his with us. The joint paper will follow, as an exercise in convergence between two clearly formulated positions—not as a fusion that dilutes both for the sake of courtesy, but as a genuine philosophical conversation.
Should anyone wish to intervene in this matter from the fields of sociology, art history, or aesthetic philosophy, this notebook remains open. It serves as a laboratory: the joint paper will be improved by the public nature of the preceding conversation.
Sources
Esteban Ruiz, J. A. (2026). Art as Structural Surplus: Toward a Relational Ontology Beyond Human Authorship (V2.3). PhilArchive https://philpapers.org/rec/ESTAAS-2 and Zenodo https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20020706
Ministry of Culture. Survey of Cultural Habits and Practices in Spain 2021-2022. https://www.cultura.gob.es/servicios-al-ciudadano/estadisticas/cultura/mc/ehc/portada.html
Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Routledge, 1984 (orig. 1979).
Becker, Howard S. Art Worlds. University of California Press, 1982.
Velthuis, Olav. Talking Prices: Symbolic Meanings of Prices on the Market for Contemporary Art. Princeton University Press, 2005.
Leder, H., Belke, B., Oeberst, A., & Augustin, D. (2004). A model of aesthetic appreciation and aesthetic judgments. British Journal of Psychology, 95(4), 489-508. https://doi.org/10.1348/0007126042369811
Regarding Vivian Maier: official archive at https://www.vivianmaier.com; documentary Finding Vivian Maier (Maloof and Siskel, 2013).
Regarding Comedian (Maurizio Cattelan, Art Basel Miami Beach, 2019): coverage in Artnet News, The New York Times, and Perrotin Gallery, December 2019.