Abstract

The essay discusses the claim and the attempt to theoretically grasp the entire artistic production of the present, the possibility of which is suggested by a philosophical concept of art in the singular. On the basis of Umberto Eco’s reconceptualization of the code of a language as a heuristic fiction, it analyzes various attempts of mapping and categorizing certain historic developments and fields in the arts and contemporary attempts of writing a global history of art and music, respectively. Finally, it turns to theoretical projects that claim to be able to capture the heterogeneous field of contemporary art. Even though there is a fundamental difference between encyclopedic and clearly normative approaches, any totalization must be recognized as situated. In this sense, it is a speculative fiction that may be productive but is in danger of becoming ideologic if this situatedness is forgotten or obscured.