Abstract:

This article seeks to reconstruct the inner logic of Georg Simmel's fragmented writings on art from the perspective of the sociology of art. Through his analysis of artistic form, Simmel identifies the structural tensions in modern society between the individual and the whole, life and form, subjective freedom and objective culture. "Life for art, art for life" constitutes the central proposition of his sociology of art: art must achieve autonomy through boundary, style, and form, thereby forming a self-sufficient wholeness of the work; yet it must also remain connected, through the "the detour of the whole, " to the larger totality of life, so as to avoid degenerating into a closed and impoverished formalism. Following this line of inquiry, the article further examines the different historical structures of subjectivity embodied by Michelangelo, Rembrandt, and Rodin. Michelangelo represents the burden imposed upon individual life by supra-individual universal form in the Renaissance, revealing the tragic personality of an individuality whose formation remains incomplete. Rembrandt, through portraiture, light and shadow, facial expressions, and inner life, presents the rise of inwardness, the individuation of personality, and the formation of the modern subject in early modern society. Rodin, through movement, the laboring body, and fleeting gesture, inscribes into bodily form the speed, stimulation, rupture, and sensory unease of modern urban life, showing how the modern subject seeks to recover unity in a world of flux. In this sense, Simmel's writings on art do not reduce art to its social background; rather, they reveal how artistic form refracts social form, types of subjectivity, and the spirit of an age. The significance of art in modern society, therefore, lies not in offering an illusory escape from reality, but in giving new form to fragmented life, enabling individuals to reconstruct meaning, dignity, and a form of everyday heroism within the divided experience of modern existence.

Key words: art for art's sake, frame, form, life, heroism