ART AS A WORLD-VIEW CHALLENGE AND PHILOSOPHY OF ART AS AN ATTEMPT TO RESPOND

Abstract

Art has almost never been literal in the visual and semantic sense. The only exception to this rule is the figurative art on the walls of caves of the Stone Age (although only a small part of the professional community considers these artifacts of human culture to be art). For the most part, the semantic load of art is neither literal nor symbolic (in the sense of a sign as a specific counterpart, a designation of an object, events, or process), but essentially indefinite, secretive due to its not just attributive, but imperative symbolic component.

By means of symbols, the artist encrypts the semantic and motivational orientation of his works. Under the conditions and circumstances of such interpretative uncertainty, works of art require reverse decoding, rethinking and reinterpretation, which involves the use of reflective tools inherent not so much to art history as to the philosophical field of knowledge.

Another significant clarification is related to the false stereotype, according to which the entire spectrum of philosophical understanding and interpretation of art falls to aesthetics: in fact, aesthetics operates only with a narrow spectrum of the phenomenology of art, which concerns primarily the aspects of beauty, harmony and interaction. However, these factors do not exhaust the worldview challenges of art – aesthetics is unable to convincingly explain even the fundamental interpretive challenge regarding the criteria of art, namely: who, how, and why determines what exactly should be considered art?

Why is aesthetics helpless in this and many similar cases? Because the vastness of the outlined subject field goes far beyond its competences and competence. This state of affairs requires the use of instrumental options for a comprehensive philosophical perception of artistic realities, carried out under the auspices of a field of knowledge that can be correctly described by the term «philosophy of art».

Keywords: art, worldview challenges, reflection, philosophy of art, symbolic means, meanings and significances, cause-and-effect relationships.