Art and the Postmodern Aestheticization of the World
Art and the Postmodern Aestheticization of the World

Summary/Abstract: The 1980s will be remembered as a great change in the functioning of art. The term postmodernism consolidated this feeling even more. However, no one knew what this new functioning was to be all about. At first, the issue of freedom was raised, the freedom that paralyzed artists; if everything is permitted, if all manners of artistic expression are acceptable, then how to differentiate between the important and the unimportant? Later, it was pointed out that art is subordinated to a business way of thinking; here the term art industry, coined by Jeffrey Deitch, seems to be extremely accurate. The 1980s show that everything can be art or can be seen as art, even sports. But that does not mean that the difference between the popular and elitist understanding of art has disappeared. It took a different form; it can be treated now as the difference between the aestheticization of different spheres of reality and the institutionalization of artistic practice. Elitist art should be sensitive to the processes of aestheticization, should make us sensitive to what we do not see, since to see one thing means not seeing something else. “There is no seeing without a blind spot.” Artistsic activity should make us sensitive to what the processes of aestheticization conceal or try to conceal, what they want us not to see.

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