The Art Scenes

‘The art scene in Berlin is political.’ ‘The Atlanta hip hop scene is red hot!’ These are remarks about scenes that we have heard lately. Scenes are a commonplace in art talk. But what are scenes and what is their role in arts? Aestheticians, art theorists and art historians often pay attention to different scenes. Although many classics in the field are even based on comments regarding only one scene, which is for example the case with Arthur C. Danto’s “The Artworld” (1964) and Susan Sontag’s “Notes on Camp” (1964), which both focus on New York there is still no discussion about scenes themselves. Starting from some contemporary classics of aesthetic theory written on art and culture, and then continuing to discussing what scenes really are, we intend to work out a sketchy understanding about not just what scenes are but how we should take them into account when we write about art and aesthetics.