Looked at from the standpoint of their formative dynamics cultural traditions can be described as emerging from the accumulation of transmission processes organized as networks with built-in feedback loops. The same dynamics governs the birth, development and death of artistic traditions. I will address three questions: a) A transmission always involves a transmitted content: in the case of artistic transmission, the contents are of a particular nature, which I will try to analyze. b) Transmission dynamics comes in several forms. Depending on the dominant form-vertical transmission, oblique transmission, horizontal transmission or retrograding transmission-the construction of tradition will follow different lines. c) As an emerging reality, tradition cannot be reduced to its constituent elements (the acts of transmission), even though it is radically dependent on them (a tradition dies out when the chain of transmission is interrupted).