Aesthetic concepts : modern and postmodern

Abstract

This unit first focuses on a discussion of modernity in terms of a process of subjectification. The artists’ inward expression inspires a subjective interpretation of the world, one that generates a crisis in the objective interpretation of the world. Modern aesthetics turns out to be a much more difficult task as it will no longer consider as necessary the principles of traditional aesthetics to evaluate art in terms of mimetic representation. In this essay, Duchamp’s Fountain will be deployed to question whether modern aesthetics could produce a meaning of art which transcends the imitating process. This will be followed by an explication of conceptualism as a force that breaks the strict correspondence between aesthetics and the objects of art. The condition of the postmodern will be analysed from Lyotard’s perspective of the loss of the solace of forms. In this context, it will be argued that Warhol’s Brillo Boxes are an illustration of a process of art which does not need to justify its purpose. In the conclusion, the focus is on whether such loose correspondence in postmodern aesthetics will still allow us to distinguish between art and kitsch, a distinction that can once more infuse the narrative of splendour in the evaluation of art.