Change, break, crisis, or fulguration – what is a turn in art?
Change, break, crisis, or fulguration – what is a turn in art?

Summary/Abstract: The aim of the article is to find the main determinants of the changes/transformations in art that would satisfy the necessary conditions for defining some phenomenon as a ‘turn’. The first part of the study presents some attempts to specify the nature of a cultural turn, and the methodological positions offered by the contemporary humanities. The point of departure here is the conception of Doris Bachmann-Medick. Assuming that the inflation of cultural turns is a signal of profound change, we will ask about the impact of such processes on art. It is not a question of the response of art to changes, but of art as a fragment of the changed reality. In this context, the article refers to Umberto Eco’s concept of art as an epistemological metaphor of reality and Mieczysław Wallis’s theory of continuity/discontinuity, or gradual and abrupt changes in art. The concepts characteristic of the early stages of modern consciousness have been tested according to the criteria for the contemporary understanding of transformation in art, termed ‘a turn’. For this purpose, we have considered the different meanings of the concept of ‘change/transformation’ and of the concept of ‘turn’. The material used as an example is the history of the reception of Art Nouveau, and the problem of radicalness of the avant-garde turn. The final part of the study discusses different uses of the concept of turn, employed in art in recent years. Two ‘turns’ have been distinguished; an affective turn, linked with the somatic one, and a social turn. Both of them can be treated as constituents of a culture-wide turn: the performative turn. The postulated direction of the research on contemporary turns in art is finding a new formula of esthetic experience.

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