Table of Contents - 7 Introduction - 9 1. The Institutional Th eory of George Dickie - 19 2. The Institutionalist Pragmatism of Howard S. Becker and Paul Dimaggio - 33 3. Pierre Bourdieu’s Grand Th eory of the Artistic Field - 55 4. From Theory to the Methodology of Singularity: Bruno Latour and Nathalie Heinich - 85 5. Niklas Luhmann’s System of Artistic Communications - 107 6. How Art Worlds Help the Arts to Function - 127 7. What Philosophers Say that the Arts Do - 151 8. Foundations for the Functioning of Art Systems - 209 9. How Distribution Conditions the Functioning of Art - 243 10. How Aesthetic Values Become Contextualized - 277 Epilogue: For a Second Life of Artistic Experiences - 293 References - 297 Index - 305