Walter Benjamin

Benjamin, in a short essay on ‘The theory of Criticism,’ written in 1920, comments briefly on the respective roles of philosophy and art. If the task of philosophy is the pursuit of seemingly endless questioning in search of the ideal, art nevertheless provides ‘constructs that bear the deepest affinity to philosophy…without constituting philosophy themselves’ (Reference Benjamin, Bullcok and JenningsBenjamin 1996: 1: 217, 218). According to Benjamin, the multiplicity of actual works of art share with philosophical questioning the search for the ideal. Hence, ‘works of art are ways in which the ideal of the philosophical problem makes itself manifest’ (Reference Benjamin, Bullcok and JenningsBenjamin 1996: 1: 218). The task of art criticism in this context is to formulate the content of a work of art as a symbol of the philosophical. At this point the relation of art and philosophy seems grounded in Idealism or Romanticism of the nineteenth century where there is still the belief that they both disclose a state of understanding that transcends particular philosophical questions as well as the limits of any particular form of art.

Later on in the mid-1930s, in his influential essay, ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproducibility,’ Benjamin advances the thesis that the history of art has been fundamentally changed by the invention of the technologies on which photography, film, and radio are based (Reference Benjamin, Bullcok and JenningsBenjamin 2003). According to Benjamin, the introduction of the artistic means of mechanical reproducibility results in a loss of ‘aura’ in art and its replacement with mass art. Aura refers to the aesthetic as it originated in ritual and is attached to traditional art. Aura is associated with direct access to an original. In the age of mechanical reproducibility, art endowed with aura, such as a traditional portrait, is replaced by mass art capable of reaching a mass audience. Mass art is useful for political purposes as its multiple instantiations can be shared by a mass audience. This development in art parallels the increase in the productive capabilities of modern industrial assembly line production of material goods (Reference CarrollCarroll 1998: 119).

Benjamin's aesthetic did not succeed in erasing the aura from subsequent developments in art. Both photography and film may continue to exemplify aura as one important means of connecting works of art with the experience of the viewers. On the other hand, Benjamin correctly foresaw that the media arts would increasingly assume a major role in the future of art. Photography is now a well established art form, as is film. Similarly, his theory validates original artists’ prints such as lithography, etchings, and silk screen prints, which rely on an older technologies. Benjamin's theory of mass art has been especially influential in interpreting media driven arts in the current generation where photography, film, artistic print multiples, radio, and now the internet based art forms assume a major role in the production and consumption of art.

What were the philosophical implications of the theory proposed by Benjamin for changes in the way that art is viewed? First, the notion of a work of fine as a unique original is called into question by his championing of photography and film which allow for ‘original multiples.’ Secondly, Benjamin's challenge to the notion of aura undermines long-standing assumptions concerning the experience that traditional aesthetics assumed was central to the appreciation of art. Aura is very close to a traditional notion of the experience of beauty. In addition, Benjamin's references to mass art, made possible by reproduction of art multiples available to be shared with a mass audience, runs counter to the notion of the aesthetic as a form of a personal, contemplative experience. In the case of mass art, the personal aesthetic experience is replaced by a shared experience that may serve political as well as aesthetic purposes. As a proponent of dialectical materialist philosophy of history, Benjamin bases his theory of art on reproducibility corresponding to the productive forces of industrial society. In this respect, he favors a theory of art that is in harmony with ideological aspects of a mass society (Reference CarrollCarroll 1998: 118).

Maurice Merleau-Ponty

Merleau-Ponty's writings on philosophy and painting set the stage for much of recent thought among French writers on our subject. He is writing in opposition to a view which he attributes to Descartes, i.e. that the artist can only paint existing things and that a painting is capable only of presenting to the mind what the things themselves offer to normal vision (Reference Merleau-Ponty and JohnsonMerleau-Ponty, 1993a). Descartes’ claim would limit painting to the tradition of art as representation, which Merleau-Ponty and the others of his generation will oppose.^{Footnote 1}

Merleau-Ponty's essays, including his well-known discussion of Cézanne's approach to painting, ‘Cézanne's Doubt’ (Reference Merleau-Ponty and Johnson1993b), offer a phenomenological account of the respective roles of philosopher and artist. In his studies of Cézanne and his other writings on painting, Merleau-Ponty assigns to painting an ontological status with the task of presenting an imaginative access to the forms of phenomena in pre-theoretical experience (Reference Merleau-Ponty and Johnson1993a: 132–135). Philosophy he deems too tied to language and opinions to carry out this task. Yet Merleau-Ponty stops short of assigning equal weight to philosophy and art. For example, he remarks, ‘There is a critical philosophical, universal use of language which claims to retrieve things as they are—whereas painting transforms them into painting’ (Reference Merleau-Ponty and JohnsonMerleau-Ponty 1993c: 117). What does this mean? For a fuller answer, we must consult Merleau-Ponty's essay, ‘Cézanne's Doubts’ where Merleau-Ponty reflects further on the relation of philosopher and artist. Here, he makes clear that the task of the artist is not imitation or representation. He attributes words like ‘to objectify, to project, and to arrest’ to the act of artistic expression. Merleau-Ponty, commenting on Cézanne asserts, ‘It is not enough for a painter like Cézanne, artist or philosopher, to create and express ideas. They must also awaken the experiences which will make the idea take root in the consciousness of others’ (Reference Merleau-Ponty and Johnson1993b: 73).

Merleau-Ponty's rejection of representational approaches to painting reflects (or is concurrent with) a shift in painting practices in the Post-World War I art in Europe during the 1920s and 1930s and also in the Americas during the late 1940s and 1950s. This shift occurred first, with the Surrealist artists of the earlier period, such as André Breton, André Masson, Joan Miró, Salvador Dali, Max Ernst, and René Magritte, and later with Abstract Expressionists working in the USA such as Willem DeKooning, Robert Motherwell, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko. Surrealism, though subject to many variations in its techniques, focuses on the spontaneous expression of the creative mind. Surrealism developed in two distinct directions, Automatistic and Veristic. Both favored the anti-rationalist unconscious as a source of imagery over the external world. The Automatists (Breton, Masson) focused on expression of feelings arising from the unconscious, using a process where the unconscious enters into consciousness through free form, while the Verists (Dali, Ernst, and Magritte) opted to create images of meticulous realistic detail of the world of dreams intended to establish a link between the world of dreams and the world of objects and people.

Abstract Expressionists’ imagery also rejects traditional rationalistic based realism in favor of explorations of the non-rational consciousness. It too draws upon the inner life, as opposed to the external world. Hence, recognizable iconography, cultural symbols, and historical borrowings hold a lesser place in these works. Instead, the artists draw upon the subjective and on the formal abstract properties of the medium itself including the visual elements of color, shape and line and the two-dimensional flatness of the canvas. As well, the Abstract Expressionists draw upon the art of non-Western cultures and Native American cultures to expand the range of their engagement with the forms of human consciousness in its different cultural manifestations.

Gilles Deleuze

Taking the discussion closer to contemporary art, let us now consider the views of Gilles Deleuze in reference to the matter of boundaries between philosopher and artist. Positioning himself as an empiricist philosopher who does not belong to either of the dominant phenomenological or analytic schools of recent philosophy, Deleuze grounds his theories of philosophy and art in an examination of their respective roles and interrelationships, and applies his finding in specific writings on the arts of cinema, music, painting and other arts.

It is useful first, to consider Deleuze's general remarks on the philosopher and artist (Reference Deleuze and JoughinDeleuze 1995: 123–125; see also Reference Deleuze, Guattari, Tomlinson and BurchellDeleuze and Guattari 1994: 197). Like Plato and Hegel before him, he launches an inquiry into the conceptual and cultural interface between philosopher and artist. In an essay on philosophy published in Negotiations: 1972–1992, Deleuze locates philosophy and art in relation to science instead of religion which was paired with art and philosophy in Hegel's triad. As Deleuze sees them, each of the three disciplines, philosophy, art, and science represents a creative endeavor. There is no order of priority setting one above the other as in Hegel's philosophy of art. Each develops along different lines according to its possibilities. The aim of philosophy is to create new concepts. Its business is not simply to reflect on or to contemplate other things, but to function as a creative activity alongside art and science. ‘The history of philosophy isn’t a particularly reflective discipline. It's rather like portraiture in painting. Producing mental, conceptual portraits’ (Reference Deleuze and JoughinDeleuze 1995: 136). In contrast to philosophy, the point of art is to create sensory aggregates as a means of contributing to thought, and the aim of science is to create functions. ‘Great artists are also great thinkers, but they think in terms of percepts and affects rather than concepts: painters think in terms of lines and colors, just as musicians think in sounds, filmmakers think in images, writers think in words, and so on’ (Reference SmithSmith 2003: viii).

Despite their diverse roles, it is expected that philosophy and art will enter into relations of mutual resonance and exchange in their advancement of art and aesthetics. Deleuze is at pains to show that philosophy as a creative enterprise is no less difficult than creating new visual or aural artistic works, or creating new scientific functions. It is not a question of philosophers monitoring or reflecting on the works produced by artists, or vice versa. Philosophy and art are like ‘separate melodic lines in constant interplay with each other’ (Reference Deleuze and JoughinDeleuze 1995: 125). The point is that the philosopher and artist serve as mediators to one another, helping each other to express themselves in the process of creation. Concepts involve percepts (packets of sensations and relations that have an existence independently of their being experienced by a particular individual) and affects (becomings that extend beyond their being lived through). These three, concepts, percepts, and affects, constitute inseparable forces that run from philosophy into art and from art into philosophy (Reference Deleuze and JoughinDeleuze 1995: 137). Deleuze applies these concepts to film, painting, literature, and music. Common to all arts is the principle that art is not a matter of reproducing or inventing forms, but of capturing forces. Hence no art can be figurative (Reference Deleuze and SmithDeleuze 2003: 56).

Deleuze develops important aspects of his writings on aesthetics in conjunction with his understanding of artist Francis Bacon's paintings. It seems that Deleuze's concepts quite literally begin with the paintings and emerge in the resonance established between concept (the philosopher's contribution) and affect (the artist's contribution). The results of this collaboration form the basis for Deleuze's book, Francis Bacon: the Logic of Sensation. Bacon's paintings, which are among the most powerful works of contemporary art, arrive at a most interesting time in the history of art when some theorists have declared the end of art as a meaningful voice of truth. He dismisses the, for him, tired theories of representation and abstraction in search of a new approach to painting. But he refuses to give up on painting. And Deleuze's study offers a fresh approach to an aesthetic to support his effort. Bacon's Figures are freed from figuration. That is, they are not copies of characters or models in the world outside painting. Nor are they rationally conceived geometric structures of abstraction. Rather, they emerge from the artist's engagement with the material elements (color) of the painting process itself. In this respect, they are intended to release presence, or the forces operating beneath representation. It is the forces of sensation that give life to the painting as the artist engages the materiality of the body and the materials necessary to produce the painting.

Arthur Danto

Perhaps the philosopher whose work intersects most directly with the developments in art from the 1960s on to the present is the American philosopher Arthur Danto. In various stages of his career, Danto has functioned as practicing visual artist, aesthetician, and since 1984 as art critic for The Nation magazine. As an insider in the art world through his roles as artist and critic, as well as being a philosopher of art, Danto is in a unique position to comment on the problem of philosophy's relation to art. Similarly, he is well informed on the current state of the art at the beginning of the twenty-first century. He credits art with contributing self-reflexively to philosophical understanding of the concept of art. For example, he addresses the question of how two objects, for example, (Warhol's Brillo Box and a brillo box carton in the warehouse) may look the same but only one can be a work of art (Reference DantoDanto 1994a: 12, 13; see also Reference DantoDanto 2001: 428). Their differences must rest on grounds other than perceptual observation. A theory of art is required to distinguish between the two.

Danto understands the history of art until 1960 as a narrative composed of related developments in a particular time period and when artists were focused on the evolution of progress in mimesis, or rendering the world in images of art. He shares with the modernist critic Clement Greenberg the view that, for artists of the twentieth century, self-definition has been ‘the central historical truth of modernist art’ (Reference DantoDanto 1994b: 326; see also Reference Greenberg and KostelanetzGreenberg 1960). This has been especially the case since Marcel Duchamp introduced his famous ready-mades into the art world using a manufactured urinal, snow shovel, and bottle wrack at the beginning of the twentieth century. For Greenberg, modern art culminated in abstraction as it focused on the anti-illusionist flatness of the medium of painting itself.

In Danto's mind, the practice of self-definition on the part of artists accelerates to a climax for both art history and philosophical aesthetics when Andy Warhol introduces his Brillo Boxes as art in 1964. For art history, this meant the end of a narrative of its own traditional development. With respect to aesthetics, Danto's interpretation of the ‘Brillo Box’ as a contribution to the philosophy of art appears to collapse the distinction between philosophy and art as it had heretofore been understood. In Danto's words, ‘My thought is that art ends in philosophical self-consciousness of its own identity’ (Reference Danto1994b: 326). Danto at first seems to suggest that art turns into philosophy when, after modern art, it becomes self-conscious and reflects on its own meaning. But he clarifies that he does not mean that art literally becomes philosophy, only that by calling attention to the shift from mimesis to abstraction and conceptual art it becomes a part of its own self-reflexive understanding.

Danto rejected Greenberg's emphasis on the purity of discrete artistic media such as painting and the notion that abstraction is necessarily the concluding moment in art, history in favor of pluralism. Similarly, Danto holds the view that a philosophy of art should in principle be able to accommodate any and all developments. According to Danto, art history in its traditional phase ended with the end of modernism in the 1960s, at which time art enters into a post-historical phase. ‘I think of post-historical art as art created under conditions of objective pluralism, by which I mean that there are no historically mandated directions for art to go in…’ (Reference DantoDanto 1994b: 328). On the other hand, Danto does not believe that all future understanding of art will derive from art itself. Rather, he remands this task to philosophy. ‘It is not that art has turned into philosophy as much as that the history of art has moved onto a philosophical plane. Art making may go on and on. But so far as self-understanding is concerned, I do not believe it can take us further’ (Reference DantoDanto 2001: 428). Perhaps Danto's reason for limiting all future understanding of art to philosophy is Danto's claim that the pluralism that he extends to art does not, in his view, apply to philosophy. However, it is a fact that pluralism does also exist in philosophy, when one considers that philosophy also is manifest in various forms: idealism, realism, empiricism, pragmatism, phenomenology, and analytic philosophy to mention a few of its western variations. Moreover, it is not clear why art itself in the future might not continue to disclose additional understanding of itself, as well as to shed enlightenment on other aspects of human existence and culture. Although Danto does not give us answers to all such questions, his views on the respective and collaborative roles of philosophy and art extend further than most previous aesthetician have ventured. His reflections on the end of art, which were initially attributable to a reading of Hegel's Philosophy of Fine Art, turn out not to be the end of art. Rather they refer to the end of a particular narrative of art history. This means that artists, and the cultures in which they operate, are free to practice and support any form of art including the re-emergence of neo-dada, neo-surrealism, neo-expressionism, abstraction, figuration, neo-pop art, media arts, and whatever inventions might unfold in the future. As we shall see, Danto's acknowledgement of pluralism turns out to be correct with respect to art as it moves into the twenty-first century.

The main problems facing Danto's reconstruction of the relation of art and philosophy are twofold: first, how to distinguish art from non-art in an age of radical pluralism of the post-historical era, and second how to formulate a philosophical theory of art that will account for all of art past, present, and future. On one reading, which at times Danto seems to entertain, it would follow from unrestrained pluralism that anything can be considered art. But even a backward look at the case of Warhol's ‘Brillo Box’ which is a work of art, versus the Brillo Box carton, which is not, requires a different answer. With respect to the second concern, Danto seems to emerge as an avowed essentialist as he searches for the equivalent of Hegel's universal spirit, which would serve to underlie the changes brought about in art history. A theory of this magnitude might also act as a key to distinguishing art from non-art.

This part of his inquiry leads Danto to posit a theory of deep interpretation which, in theory at least, would be able to adjudicate among the incommensurables of art-making that occur beneath a phenomenology of stylistic changes. It is at the level of the deep interpretation that it is possible to discern what is, and what is not, to be valued as art. At this point, Danto's views seem to require the possibility of a universal understanding of art not subject to historical overthrow, but an understanding that allows for openness with respect to future instances of art. The theoretical answer must come from philosophy rather than art history (Reference Danto and FeaginDanto 2007: 121–129, esp. 126–129). Clearly, the proclamations of an art world will not be sufficient to tell us what is and is not art. Nor will the precedents from the age of art history necessarily be able to accredit radically new creations of the artists of the future. Perhaps it is through on-going close and extensive attending to a wide and inclusive range of particular works of art that a common feature of art will continue to manifest itself. In some instances this common feature may evoke a response which we identify with beauty. In other instances where aesthetic qualities appear to be absent or of lesser importance, the response may be something closer to philosophical understanding. At times, the experience offered by art may be no more than a burst of spirit that simply moves us and enriches our experience if in inarticulate ways. Whether given in sensory experience (Alexander Baumgarten) or as intellectual pleasure (Immanuel Kant) the response is determined by the experience offered by the art work in question.

Issues affecting contemporary art practice

Turning now to the contemporary art scene, what are some of the major cultural developments that affect the way artists today see and create art? Among these are globalization, the art market, emerging ethnic diversity, issues of social change, popular culture, and the continuation of the avant-garde in contemporary art. Each of these major forces has had significant bearing on contemporary art.

Globalization

Global art embraces any type of art, including paintings, sculptures, photography, cinema, video art, digital internet art, as well as conceptual, installation, and performance arts, that participates in the international art world through cultural exchange or commerce. Broadly understood, globalism in the contemporary art world takes place alongside increases in world commerce, cultural exchange, world travel, advancements in communication and transport facilities, and the reawakening and the demand for inclusion of local cultures in the postcolonial era. Although globalization is not a new development in history, the term was seldom used before 1980 in academic literature or everyday speech.

What is clear, however, is that contemporary global art has given new life to the international art market and expands the opportunities for innovative collaboration worldwide among the artists and cultural institutions. On the positive side, global art increases the flow of ideas and art across cultural boundaries and invites collaboration in the efforts toward mutual understanding among the peoples of different cultures. It endows the individual artist with greater resources to create, using ideas, visual forms, and materials, irrespective of their particular cultural or geographic origins. This means that the artists have available an evolving universal vocabulary of artistic resources and significantly greater opportunities for collaboration with artists from other cultures. Artists may then draw upon the cumulative traditions of their own cultures, as well as to seize upon innovations from other cultures in their creative undertakings.

For the practice of art today, the essence of globalism can be linked to post-modernism. Frederick Jameson in his essay, ‘Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism,’ identifies Postmodernism as the first cultural paradigm to emerge from the United States (while all the previous ones arose from Europe) (Reference Jameson, Jameson and MeyoshiJameson 1998: 54; see also Reference ErjavecErjavec 2004). Postmodernism recognizes commoditization fed by the global market and global circuits of production, with their predominantly visual character, as the driving forces of contemporary art. The new global empire has a series of geographic centers rather than a single center such as Paris or New York and does not rest on nationalist foundations. Neither language, nor history, nor tradition, nor nationalism represents the dominant force. The artists themselves tend to be marginalized geographically in the sense that their identity is not grounded in a particular place or culture. Artists from Beijing, Tehran, Sao Paulo are as likely to be shown in London or New York as any other center. Thus the idea of a British Art Show or a Whitney Museum Biennial focused solely on American artists can no longer be thought of in terms of national boundaries.

The contemporary agencies of global art include biennales, art fairs, galleries, auction houses such as Sotheby's and Christie's, and also museums. The focus in these contexts is on artists producing works aimed at making a contribution to culture through aesthetic or conceptual understanding and deemed to have artistic merit. It does not include the work of amateur artists made solely for personal expression, or art produced solely for commercial purposes.

In some cultures, there are many layers of artistic production: government supported artists, artists who participate in regional and national art associations, members of art academies and university art departments, and free professional artists. It is the latter group that figures most prominently in the contemporary global art world because their work is most likely to have long lasting importance and to attract the interest of the museums and other cultural institutions. In the long run, if not immediately, this art will also be the most attractive to the art market. These global artists often work in multiple geographic locations. For example, contemporary Chinese artist Xu Bing works in New York and Beijing; Gu Wenda works in New York; and Indian artist Anish Kapoor works in London.

A highly visible aspect of the contemporary global art world is the art biennale of which there are currently some sixty offered throughout the world. A biennale is a major international, non-commercial showing of works by up and coming contemporary artists held in an important city every two years. The artists are invited by the organizing institution and are able to show, but not to sell, their works. A biennale, such as the Venice Biennale, typically has a theme, and may spotlight artists of the host nation.

While the biennale circuit has contributed to the globalization process, it is also responsible for development of a nomad-like character to global art. Biennale artists tend to move from city to city presenting their works under the guidance of an international curator designated by the organizing city. Curators, who may have initially worked on museum collections and exhibitions, or as art critics, also follow the path of nomadicity created by the constantly shifting geographic locations of the biennale circuit. Similarly, the transient character of the biennale circuit has impacted the shift from painting and sculpture as the preferred art media to photography, video art, and digital art. From a practical perspective, these media arts are more portable than paintings and sculptures and less susceptible to damage in transport.

Global art takes the discussion of contemporary art and art institutions one more step beyond postcolonial discourses on art. As Hans Belting has noted, globalization of art brings forth a tension between the forces of ‘an aggressive localism that makes use of culture as a mark of otherness and as defense, and a transnational art, indifferent to claims of geography, history and identity’ (Reference BeltingBelting 2007). With the latter claiming universality and the former holding on to local traditions, or seeking to embrace global art that is grounded in local or national traditions, the future of art world-wide remains in a state of transition. Thus it is not possible to predict the future of global art at this time.

Accordingly, the push for global art raises complex cultural and psychological issues. Whether people who share the same visual environments and ownership of particular art practices will adapt to radical changes in art resulting in the abandonment of local cultures remains to be seen. Despite a century of exposure, many people still have difficulty adjusting to the inventions of modern art. There is some evidence from research in current neuro-science that sustained exposure to certain forms of visual conditioning may result in shifts in cognitive patterns, which supports the possibility of changes in local art practices with respect to both production and appreciation of art (Reference ElkinsElkins 2007: 96–105). Yet other factors including the pressures from economic and political interests may also affect receptivity to changes in artistic practices. In any event, on-going tensions from conflicting local and global interests in art will be important in shaping the future of global art.

The art market

Closely related to globalization is the international art market. International fine art fairs organized for the display and sale of art also represent an important means of globalizing art. Art Basel, the Maastricht Art Fair in the Netherlands, Art Basel Miami Beach, Art Chicago, Art Dubai, London's Frieze, Arco Madrid, Asia Pacific Contemporary Art Fair in Shanghai, and the Korea International Art Fair in Seoul are among the main vehicles for global art market transfers. Art dealers, collectors, and museum representatives frequent these gatherings in order to select art works for their respective art enterprises. In fact, the international art fairs offer opportunities for exchange of ideas and socialization among global art patrons, as well as a vehicle for commercial transactions. Just as art is global, so are the mind-sets of the art fair's participants.

Private Art galleries and art auction houses located in virtually every metropolitan center across the world also contribute to globalization of art. For example, one finds available in the Beijing Art Zone 798 artists from the United States, Europe, and other parts of the world, as well as offerings of Chinese artists. New York's Chelsea art district, as well as similar sites in Paris, Berlin, London, and Tokyo, regularly offers art from China, India, Japan and elsewhere across the world.

Also important to the market distribution system for global art are the international auction houses such as Christie's and Sotheby's. With headquarters located in London and New York, these major action houses also have offices in cities throughout the world. For example, Christie's hosts offices in 30 countries and regularly holds art auctions in a wide range of places including Beijing, Dubai, Moscow, Mumbai as well as New York, London, and other European and Asian cities. Sotheby's also offers auction services in the Americas, including major sites in Buenos Ares, Caracas, and Rio de Janeiro; as well as through its offices in Asia, and Europe. Since the gallery and auction systems are not limited to contemporary art, as are many of the art fairs and biennales, they often offer an important vehicle for movement of a broader range of art in the global sphere. As Bloomberg.com reported in December 2009, worldwide auction sales grew more than eightfold between 2003 and 2007. As the art market depends on the overall economy, sales declined seasonally in the period of 2008–2010. However art market prices for quality works are again on the rise in 2013. The increasing dominance of contemporary art auctions is further evidence of the influence of global art.

Emerging multicultural (ethnic) influences

Artists representing diverse ethnic cultures operating in the pluralistic societies across the world are increasingly contributing to the shape of contemporary art. In the United States, for example, where millions of people with different ethnic origins, speaking different languages, and professing different religions reside in growing numbers, the potential for addressing cultural differences continues to challenge artists and the public. As the historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr cautioned in a speech to the President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities in 1991, as ideological conflict subsides, ‘humanity …re-enters a potentially more dangerous era of ethnic and racial animosity acerbated by faster modes of communication and transport, and the flight from tyranny in search of the dream of a better life somewhere else’ (Reference SchlesingerSchlesinger 1991: 1). Schlesinger's warning that the mixing of people will be a major problem for the century that lies ahead has already come to fruition in many parts of the world including parts of Europe and the United States. The hopes expressed by the eighteenth century French American Hector St John de Crèvecœur in his Letters from an American Farmer for a society where persons from diverse backgrounds would relinquish ethnic differences in favor of a new national identity did not altogether materialize. Instead, the late twentieth century shows a society challenged by increasing demands for recognizing the differences articulated in Latin American Hispanic, African American, Asian American, Islamic American and as well as American Indian cultures. These developments offer both challenges and opportunities for artists. One outcome for artists working in the United States, for example, is increasing diversity in artistic production and representation in museum exhibitions. For museums and other arts organizations, how to represent diversity in artistic production and presentation remains a set of problems under review.

Social/political conditions

There is growing concern among artists working in the United States and elsewhere across the world to reflect upon the conditions of society. Concerns about the environment, security, gender and racial identity, exclusiveness, incursions on freedom, protests against war, and advocacy of peace are increasingly prominent in the work of artists. A few examples will suffice to demonstrate this point.

As India moves beyond its postcolonial stages of development as an independent nation, the focus of artists reflecting on the use of art as a means of social change shifts from nationalism to more concrete, fragmentary issues relating to class, caste, and gender. Increasingly, artists of the 1990s and beyond employ representational strategies in painting and sculpture, as well as performance and media arts to address such concerns. For example, the painter Surendran Nadir (b. 1956) employs the body of Gandhi in his repertoire of cultural symbols to create art with a social message.

In South Africa, Willie Bester (b. 1956) uses images constructed in part from materials collected from the garbage and altered to comment on Apartheid and post-Apartheid issues of interest to the community. Among these issues are unchanged racial attitudes, social violence and lack of freedom, the failures of the Truth and Reconciliation Committee and the Group Areas Act which mandates the segregation of people into districts based on color. Bester's monumental sculpture ‘Security Guard’ symbolizes the lack of freedom in South Africa (Reference Perez-VegaPerez-Vega 2009).

Moving beyond the social protest paintings of the Mexican Muralists of the early part of the twentieth century, Mexican performance artist and writer Guillermo Gómez-Peña (b. 1955) explores such issues as cultural identity, cultural diversity, and gender from the perspective of Mexican-Latin American-USA border culture issues. His works focus on topics such as immigration, cross cultural and hybrid identities, and the politics of the brown body with special attention to confrontations and misunderstandings between cultures and races. He approaches these topics through virtually all contemporary media including ‘performance art, installation, experimental radio, video photography and installation art,’ as well as experimental poetry, and writing books.

Popular culture (advertising, fashion, Hollywood movies, television entertainment, graffiti art, and comics)

Since the 1960s when Pop art emerged and continuing beyond the Post-modern era, the lines between art and popular culture have become increasingly blurred. In fact, popular culture is a contested concept in reference to aesthetics. Although Pop art is not popular culture, it draws on some of the same imagery. Popular culture is generally associated with kitsch, camp, calendar art, reality TV, soap operas and other forms of escapist art that is perceived to be lacking in substance as compared with art intended for the cultivation of thought and emotions or social commentary. However, the lines are increasingly blurred as people are more open minded, or perhaps less demanding of the intellectual content and form of art. It has become increasingly difficult to draw a firm line between art and popular culture when artists regularly appropriate images and concepts from the commodity based commercial world of advertising, fashion, Hollywood movies, entertainment television, as well as street graffiti art, and comic books. In some instances, the appropriated popular culture images or objects that appear in art are visually indiscernible from their non-art sources. One result of this development is the recurring problem of how to differentiate art from non-art.

Virtual reality: simulations created thru cyberspace explorations

The still camera, video, and computer were among the first tools to liberate visual artists from the limits of brush and canvas. These revolutionary possibilities brought about by information and communication technologies have substantially altered the possibilities for artists to create innovative works. Among the recent contributions of technology is virtual reality. In 1992, virtual reality artists at the University of Illinois created a prototype virtual environment foreshadowing the potential for artistic use of this medium (Reference RushRush 2006). Virtual reality allows artists new resources in that it generates computer simulated environments that can simulate real physical presence in the real world, or in imaginary worlds.

In the larger picture virtual reality introduces infinite possibilities, even threatening to replace the reality of time-space on which our lives have been constructed throughout the previous history of mankind. These new possibilities are of particular interests to the most adventuresome and imaginative artists working today because they are driven, ‘not so much by the question of what reality is, but how it could be,’ as the Dutch philosopher Jos De Mul has noted (Reference De Mul2010: 255).

The avant-garde in contemporary art practices

Throughout the twentieth century and beyond avant-garde movements continue to serve as a source for new art. Improvisation is a core practice in avant-garde art. Improvisation replaces hierarchical systems of production in the arts. It invites collective participatory art practices and employs the concept of open form. Open form offers an alternative to repetition within the limits of established artistic structures. When open form is employed, the creative process itself often remains in a state of flux and may end up becoming the final artistic product. This notion of open form involves changes for the audience as well as for the artists. What the audience views in avant-garde works is often just one of the many possible realizations of an idea. The artistic process may invite the active participation of the audience. Why is improvisation so important to the arts? First, improvisation is a means of suppressing historical consciousness. Suppressing historical consciousness is necessary to break the causal chain between existing conventions and new developments in an artistic practice. With improvisation there is hope that one will discover something that could not be found in a systematic preconceived process. Improvisation is thus a means of assuring a constant source of fresh materials including new paradigms.

Perhaps one of the clearest examples of innovation in contemporary art of the late twentieth century is Performance Art. This form of art was especially important during the period of the 1980s to the end of the century and still has a place in contemporary art practices. Performance art is anti-theatrical in that it ignores the conventions of traditional theater. Instead, performance art consists of experimental live artistic events that are not theater, even though they may involve speaking and bodily movement. Actions from everyday life replace conventional acting techniques. A performance art piece has no rules apart from the idiosyncratic choices of the artists. It may include painting, music, film clips, or simply everyday acts and speech. Performance art defies the commercial market in that its works are not for sale. They are often not even repeated. These movements have precedents in the Dada performances of the 1920s and in the artistic life of the artists’ center at Black Mountain College. Performance art is anti-art in the sense of Dada. It aims to question the boundaries of both art and aesthetics (Reference GoldbergGoldberg 2010; see also Reference CarterCarter 1992–1993).

It would come as no surprise that performance art did not always fit well with the expectations of traditional aestheticians views on art. In 1980 I invited Belgian artist Jan Fabre to present a performance art work on the occasion of the American society for Aesthetics Annual Meeting. Fabre performed his solo piece, ‘After Art.’ The actions performed in the piece included undressing, changing from blue Levi street clothes to white, drawing an outline of the sort used by police to mark the site of a corpse, cutting fingers and mixing the blood into water (later offered to an audience member in a glass), covering face and hair with shaving cream, writing with shaving cream on the mirror the word ‘smart.’ The piece continued with the artist's repeated appearances before a mirror for reflection on his own image, shaving, washing of feet, pacing, and assuming various poses including that of a harleqin image. After each meditation at the mirror, carried out at intervals throughout the performance, the artist shouted out successive numbers in drill sergeant tone: ‘one,’ then ‘two,’ on through the number thirteen. The forty-five-minute performance left the audience of American Society for Aesthetics members baffled, and outraged. Among them was the distinguished aesthetician Monroe Beardsley, who declared in a moment of great agitation that the event had nothing to do with art.^{Footnote 4}

Objectives for contemporary art

Questions that every artist might consider asking are these: Why am I doing this? What larger purposes might it serve? On one level, an artist might consider it sufficient to answer solely on a personal level. Or perhaps the artist finds that the very process of creating art has its own intrinsic rewards. However, if the artist intends to move beyond the personal pleasure and satisfaction, other considerations may apply. The art market offers the possibility of achieving commercial success. Art dealers in the USA, and elsewhere, are literally quarrying the art schools in search of the next Andy Warhol or Keith Haring. An article in the April 15, 2006 New York Times reported that a prominent New York gallery director, accompanied by a venture capitalist, was seen visiting the art departments of Columbia and Yale Universities scouting for new art talent (Reference VogelVogel 2006; see also Reference CrowCrow 2006). There is considerable debate over the long-term effects of this practice on the future of young artists.

Another option for artists is to eschew pursuit of creating art objects solely for the personal satisfaction or economic gain and consider producing art with the aim of contributing to a greater good for society. In certain societies the artist's production is co-opted for use to communicate a social or ideological message. In other societies, the artist can choose to become a voice for social and political change. Of particular interest here are examples provided by the success of artist in post-socialist and communist nations in East Europe such as Slovenia, where artists succeeded in advancing the democratization of society and shaping their country's future as Slovenia disengaged from Yugoslavia (Reference ErjavecErjavec 2003). The examples of current artists’ work cited earlier suggest that there is growing concern among artists today to make the effort to effect social change.

At the risk of sounding too idealistic, I would propose that art offers substantial potential for a greater role in the service of humanity. Any artist who might hope to find a place of distinction in the history of art is challenged to transcend the temptation to produce art objects merely to satisfy an obsession, or indulge in the pleasure found in the process of making art. What is required to move beyond these temptations and to achieve greatness in art? Here, I would like to suggest two objectives for today's artist: First, is to consider art as a means of generating knowledge and understanding leading to enlightenment (that is, to educate in the broadest sense). The second is to engage in art as a form of social action aimed at liberation or social change. To realize these objectives, it is useful to draw upon utopian themes which might include a vision of human artistic potential based on ‘a fusion of passion with intelligence and artistic talent’ (Reference BellBell 1962: 405). Art as a means of generating knowledge and understanding draws the artist into the realm of ideas as generated in philosophy, the sciences, and technology. Art connected to social change gives the artist a role in shaping the values of society and assumes a commitment to democratic actions in the pursuit of social justice.

Conclusion

Philosophers such as Benjamin, Merleau-Ponty, Deleuze, and Danto would agree that art and philosophy have intersected in important ways to shape the direction of our understanding of both aesthetics and art during the recent times. Their differing methodologies cut across diverse paths of art-making that have emerged over the past century. The choice of philosophers cited here is driven mainly by their overt attempts to address directly the relation of philosophy and art and by their insights into some of the main directions taken by modern and contemporary art. This of course does not mean that others have ignored such concerns. However, these philosophers approach aesthetics from representative main schools of Western Continental and Analytic thought, and show the range of interest in the relation of philosophy and art from their differing perspectives. Philosophers in the East and in Africa and other parts of the world will have their own perspectives to bring to the subject.

The main question then is, what are the implications of these new developments noted in Part II for the future of aesthetics? These developments take us beyond the existing relations between philosophical aesthetics and art considered in Part I. One option would be to simply proceed to do aesthetics as in the past relying on more traditional forms of art, if any, in the development of aesthetics. A better alternative – and the one that I will endorse – is to take seriously the need for constant revisions in philosophical aesthetics based on the new developments in art. For example, how do the developments cited here affect our approach to definitions of art? Surely they support an open instead of a closed understanding of the concept of art. It would appear that some of these new forms of art do not rely upon traditional aesthetic features such as beauty. Instead, they point to other kinds of experience, for example the use of art for socialization purposes as in participatory art. Globalization and ethnic diversity in art invite inquiry into the role of economic considerations, and the relation of art to cultural identity. For example, what of interest to aesthetics can be learned by looking into the role of the art market in formulating contemporary thoughts concerning art and its role in society? Symptomatic of the current possibilities for closer collaboration involving market considerations in the deliberations of aesthetics is the recent project of a Danish gallerist, an artist, and a French economist ‘to produce a piece of art to reflect the status of the world's 10,000 artists’ (Reference BonsdorfBonsdorf 2010: 60).^{Footnote 5} Or, how does virtual reality alter the way we approach questions of art media and art's relation to the world outside art? From my perspective, there is much richness to be gained in understanding, not to mention for the continuing relevance of aesthetics, by looking carefully at new developments in art and forging comparable new developments in aesthetics. Given these factors, it seems clear that aesthetics will need to look beyond philosophy and remain open to insights from the diverse influences on art as it formulates any future understanding of art. Are there any guidelines for these developments? The two objectives cited above for artists apply equally to the work of aestheticians. In this respect, aestheticians who also view art as a means of generating knowledge and understanding, and/or as a means of effecting social change will find willing partners among artists who continuously chart new ground in their work.