On the New after Modernism: Artistic Creation in the Context of the “Extended Concept of Art”

Abstract

The paper examines the meaning of artistic creation after the historical avant-gardes, that is, the neo-avant-gardes and post-avant-gardes, with their radical reinvention and extension of the concept of art, to the point where art has started to question itself and becomes unrecognizable by its purely perceptive properties, asserting itself as a sort of philosophy. It is often said that art has thus reached the end of its historical development, that is, “a notion of historical selfconsciousness that is able to recognize all historically determined differences.” It is a controversial period in art history, which on the one hand is the pinnacle of modernism through its purest formalistic expression, but on the other implies abandoning its main idea (belief in the progress and emancipation of humanity), a critique of the autonomy of art, abolishing the distinction between high and popular art, and stepping out of the studios and museums into everyday life, the street, the landscape, and so on. The aim of this paper is to analyse the idea of artistic creation in the context of contemporary art practice, where discourse on the impossibility of the new, according to the art theorist B. Groys, has become particularly influential and widespread.