Политизиране и комерсиализиране на естетическия дискурс – предизвикателства пред съвременната художествена критика
Politicization and Commercialization of Aesthetic Discourse – Challenges for Contemporary Art Criticism

Summary/Abstract: This article is an attempt to point out the challenges faced by contemporary art criticism in the field of visual arts that take place in an exhibition hall, regardless of whether they are defined as painting, conceptual art, installation, performance, etc. The examined facts and phenomena are mostly part of the practices in art in the context of Western Europe and America. The article analyses various discourses that influence art criticism. Aesthetic relativism and the loss of autonomy of art lead to substitution of the missing aesthetic norms with political, ideological, and market factors. The world is polarized and the aesthetic debate is displaced by the political one – art is instrumentalized and begins to be seen only as propaganda, a political symbol, or a sign of belonging to a certain power mechanism, and its aesthetic essence is not discussed at all. Art can be both propaganda of an ideology and a form of resistance against it. The very existence of art as a territory of free expression makes it political – it has the power to question the status quo, pushing viewers to problematize the familiar, taken-for-granted world governed by media and representations. This quality will become increasingly necessary in the future world of simulated realities.

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