EN
The author discusses the shifts in the XX c. theory of art and artistic practice in reference to the concept of representation as shaped by Western philosophy stemming from the soil of Platonism. The Kantian paradigm of disinterested, distanced contemplation has locked aesthetic object within the frames of ‘representation’ locating it beyond the realm of reality. This ‘order of power’ as Arnold Berleant calls it, protecting the hierarchies of types and genres of art and favouring the senses of distance gives way to new solutions that open the fortress of art to the full spectrum of human existence, to almost uncontrolled intrusion of the phenomenal, the temporary, the transient. Confusion in the field of contemporary aesthetics or philosophy of art is expressed by the on-going discussion announcing the subsequent forms of ‘end of art’. However, the crucial question seems to be not the crisis of art but finding a proper way to incorporate it into our experience.