Art et esthétique : du moderne au contemporain

Abstract

The author sketches the development of the relationship between art and aesthetics in the past four decades. He takes as his starting point the change that artists established in the sixties in relation to philosophical aesthetics. He argues that 1980 represented a historical threshold as concerns transformations both in art and its philosophy. He then discusses three theories of art and aesthetics—Nicolas Bourriaud’s “relational aesthetics” from the nineties, Jacques Rancière’s aesthetic project from the following decade, and the very recent “theory of contemporary art” developed by Terry Smith. In the author’s opinion, these three aesthetic or art theories not only disprove the pervasive opinion that contemporary aesthetics understood as philosophy of art is once more separated from contemporary art and the art world, but also manifest their factual import and impact in contemporary discussions on art.