Gehalt-Aesthetics : A Philosophy of the Arts

One of the founding myths of postmodernism is that art has abandoned modernism's claim to novelty. In fact, however, this claim was not abandoned, but only reformulated. Whereas advanced art in the 20th century largely followed a material aesthetic, as manifested in cubism or serial music, for example, today we can observe a turn towards a gehalt-aesthetic. Artists such as Ai Weiwei or Damien Hirst no longer seek newness in the aesthetic material, but in the new aesthetic content articulated by a work. This gehalt-aesthetic turn in the arts is the quintessence of Harry Lehmann's philosophy of art. Based on a theory of intrinsic aesthetic values, which include beauty, sublimity, event, and ambivalence, he retells European art history as a history of aesthetic experience. Numerous examples from the visual arts, poetry, and music, as well as from advertising, fashion, and design, make this paradigm shift in the arts vivid and evident