Aesthetics of the act of de-activation
The term “de-activation” in the title refers to that of Creazione e anarchia by Giorgio Agamben about the concept of the act of creation in an anarchic sense. In his work, Agamben describes a deactivating action that renders the operations of the functional, the pragmatic and the necessary inoperative, opening new possibilities to the human […]
On the aesthetic sense of life
In his work On the tragic sense of life, Miguel de Unamuno speaks of the tragic history of human thought, consisting of the struggle between reason and life. Any position of agreement and lasting harmony “between reason and life, between philosophy and religion becomes impossible” (1). The reason wants life to come to terms with […]
1. Facing the art of “anything”
The disappearance of any normative idea of art since the era of conceptual art has opened up unlimited possibilities and total freedom of contemporary art. The whole problem is to know by virtue of what to judge a work under the denunciation of any notion of quality. How to appreciate the art of “anything”? Critics […]
2. Ruptures of contemporary art
Appearing after the Second World War, with Marcel Duchamp as a precursor, contemporary art is often unrecognized or misunderstood. It leaves no one indifferent, arousing passion, perplexity or contempt, sometimes going so far as to question its legitimacy. By presenting itself as an experimental art, contemporary art transgresses rules in perpetual innovation. It seeks a […]
3. How to judge contemporary art
The controversies around the value of contemporary art always revolve around aesthetic criteria. Each artistic practice obeys more or less explicit rules from which it is possible to evaluate the excellence of the artworks. The problem that arises from the considerable variation in artistic practices in contemporary art is that there are too many criteria […]
4. Appreciation scales of contemporary art
One day in February, after visiting the Jeff Koons exhibition at the Pompidou Center in Paris, I was sitting in a small creperie nearby and looked out the window. “Art is everywhere! », I suddenly exclaimed while observing the Stravinsky fountain and its eccentric sculptures, the Saint-Merri Church known for its contemporary art exhibitions, and […]
5. The aesthetic rationalization of contemporary art
To speak of aesthetic rationality is not simply to pronounce a verdict that a work of art is good or bad. What constitutes the real aesthetic judgment is the process of explaining valid reasons to justify the artistic qualities of a work attributed to it. In contemporary art, each language game of an artistic practice […]
6. Chance in the Paintings of Francis Bacon
I don’t draw. I start doing all kinds of stains. I am waiting for what I call “the chance ”: the stain from which the painting will start. The stain is the chance. But if we care about the chance, if we believe that we understand the chance, we will still do illustration, because the […]
7. The ontology of the ready-made: Duchamp’s Bottle Rack
The ontology of the ready-made always has a controversial meaning compared to that of traditional art. The Mona Lisa da Vinci, for example, is a work that is based on the process of creation, virtuosity or know-how of the artist. We do not question its status, its actuality, the moment at which this work exists. […]
8. The Aesthetics of Immersion: Blind Light by Antony Gormley
Some works of contemporary art sometimes give us disturbing, strange, immersive emotions, without offering any object to see or feel. These are devices that disorient and decondition the viewer’s habits. Among them we can notice the installation Blind Light by Antony Gormley (2007), which leads our perception to new sensory discoveries (1). By excluding the […]