Radical changes of art or a problem of the art's death

Šiuo metu daug meno požymių, formų, žanrų, šakų ir net pavienių kūrinių irimo bei nykimo procesų vadinama meno krize arba net „mirtimi", taip ne tik atskleidžiami empiriniai šių reiškinių faktai, bet dažnai ir diskvalifikuojami tyrinėtojo principams, skoniui bei įsitikinimams svetimi meno reiškiniai. Kadangi tyrinėtojų principai ir skoniai rodo istorinių vertybių konfliktą, per juos atsiveria fundamentalūs meno, kartu ir visos kultūros lūžiai. Tradicionalistai žlungančiu, dekadentiniu, mirštančiu menu laiko avangardizmą, modernizmą, postmodernizmą, o modernistai - klasiką. Pastarojo meto Lietuvos menotyra prisimena, kad kalbėta apie meno mirtį, aptariant naujų idėjų ir išraiškos priemonių stoką. Naujumas - meno kitimo šaltinis ir viena iš jo įdomumo priežasčių, bet neretai atsitinka, kad, be naujumo, keistumo, šių laikų kūriniai nieko ir neturi.Hegel's statements on the decline of art touch upon some tendencies of the modern art. The main symptoms of the fracture of art are works that are conscious abolition of traditional artistic qualities. The other meanings of the art's death are the change of meaning of every art work; the death of individual genre, or the individual kind of art; the death of classical art as a whole - i. e. the break of European artistic tradition. The modern art is similar to the other cultural phenomena, such as technique, science, game. It avoids of any reference to the reality outside art or of the limit between author and spectator. The sensual matter is not essential in it. The authors make use of non-created works or of accident, etc. The prevailing relation to the works of art is not equivalent to them. The viewer's intention is not the perception of the very work but the presentation of such a relation. So it makes sense to speak of a death of the art's perception in this sense. The death of art may be conceived as a result of the transition, when the culture as a whole becomes an artificial or the very artistic phenomenon; and the possibility to discern the art as such disappears. The art's death may be apprehended as the inner transition of the essential properties of art. The most striking change is the creation as a conscious opposition to the very concepts of traditional properties of art. The main message of such works is that artist destroys some of them or aims at the abolition of art as such. The first general meaning of art's death is that with regard to its highest determination art loses its main task of representing the absolute truth. The fundamental determinant of the transition in art is a lack of the unifying principle of culture, that is to legitimate the values, to bring the last goals forth, etc. The consequences of this lack are the destruction of style and of the universal significance of the works of art. Art is the form of absolute truth when it is a principle that articulates and unifies the culture. Obviously, it fulfils such a function only if it is not separated from the mythological world outlook. The cause of the art's death is the relative self-dependence of universal standards of thought and conduct. Their expression in a form of sensual semblance became contingent. The very expression of essential truths, the exhaustion of the potential new appearances and forms are the other cause of a decline of art. Hegel perceives the romantic art as the overstepping of the art boundaries by means of the very art. The manifestations of romantic art are the works that satisfy only one of two necessary conditions for a perfect work of art. Some works are an art because of formal mastery of representation. The other works are an art only as an expression of an inside of the artist, irrespective of formal means of the expression. Both the former and the later are not valuable with respect to ideal art. Nietzsche notices that traditional bounds of content and of form are the manifestations of artistic self-will and begins the topic of the self-will as a cause of the death of art. Nietzsche perceives the greatest self-will of an artist in the works that are pretending to expression of truth or moral values. The most dangerous aspiration is making effect on publics. It is the new aim of the self-will, which means the death of the work. Heidegger returns to Hegel's standpoint that perfect art must be the expression of absolute values. The great art dies because of a lack of basis that legitimates these absolute things. Such decline does not result from the fact that the qualities of an inner structure of a work are poorer; it is rather that art forfeits its essence to make manifest the truth and preserve such manifestation in the work. The expression of a discrepant world outlook that is characteristic of modernity is not a work of the great art. The domination of reflection and subjectivation of reality as a whole, that limits the attitude to work up to outliving, is a cause of the essential change of art. The passing of the work of art into the very object of subject's feeling of satisfaction would become the main cause of the art's death. The art's death has another meaning for Adorno. He considers all the classical art as ideology. It is not an art exactly like modern popular art. The previous authors pay their attention mostly to the decline of art in its historical transition. They analyse the destruction of tradition that is legitimating the universally valid values and the consequences of this destruction in the artistic creation. Adorno thinks over the contemporary situation of art's creation and perception. The situation of contemporary art is such that everything goes or anything does not go to it. We may consider Adorno's theory as asserting that contemporary art is the destruction of such essence of its own. Art may oppose to the contemporary situation of its own, if it would be destroying itself, i. e., including and undermining various elements of art. The above-mentioned notions of the art's death all together allow us to claim that the essential fracture of art has happened and the return to the tradition of the past in the strict sense is impossible