The Problem of the Intellectualisation of Contemporary Art

Analyses of contemporary forms of public life reveal that they increasingly often include the presence of various artistic activities. The traditional image of artists, in which they are largely identified as passive observers of the public sphere, must more andmore frequently be confronted with the growing aspirations of contemporary artists in the sphere of civic communication. The article’s main aim is to show how theoreticians outside the art world support this trend through the fashionable discourses of contemporary humanism that try to define the role of art in public life. In their endeavours, artists acquire advocates among recognized representatives of the academic world: for instance, Pierre Bourdieu, Rosalyn Deutsche, or Chantal Mouffe, to name a few. The intellectual support granted to artists today plays an unusually important role in creating their public missions, to which the intellectuals are happy to add their names. Taking inspiration from the work of Michel Foucault and Nikolas Rose, the author proposes that tne intellectualisation of art should be considered a new version of ‘power-knowledge’