This research is based on a systemic approach to art that makes it possible to observe its relations with what constitutes the social environment in an attempt to establish what the process of functional differentiation consists of. Proposing an investigation on art as a system implies a shift from the ontological order to the systemic order. The consequences of this change in observation have an impact on our conception of art itself, as well as on the evaluation we make of its products. Guided by Niklas Luhmann's Social Systems Theory, we start from the idea that complex societies require approaches that respond to that complexity, so the approach implies observing art, its elements and operations from a systemic observation horizon that makes it possible to find the evolutionary aspects that explain the limits of art, as well as its social dimension.