The article comprehensively presents the profi le of Francesco Algarotti (1712-1764), an art theoretician, art collector and diplomat. Nowadays, he belongs to less known representatives of the Italian Enlightenment, but in his times he was very renowned at European courts. The article focuses on the exceptionally colorful life of the Venetian, providing information about his participation in scientific and intellectual life of the university communities and elites of 18th-century Europe. His diplomatic career is discussed separately - with special emphasis put on his role at the Saxons court and his participation in a diplomatic mission to Russia which could be of special interest to Polish readers. Against this biographical background, his main works devoted to artistic issues are examined in a concise way, such as ‘Saggio sopra la pittura', or ‘Le lettere sopra la pittura'.
Taine postulates that the status of the humanities should be equal with that of the sciences. The claim is based on a conviction, shared by other positivist philosophers, that both kinds of knowledge should share the same methodology. Thus, all knowledge turns out to be a collection of facts and relations among them. The facts are subordinate to some major facts being their “causes” or “principal features”. The task of a work of art is to extract such facts. The emergence of the characteristic feature of a phenomenon allows us to describe a work as a perfect one. The value of the work depends on the kind of a characteristic feature, being more or less universal.
The aim of the article is to present the main issues connected with the discussions between Witkacy and Chwistek. The method is a critical analysis of the material containing all the criticisms of Chwistek's theory of art. The article emphasizes the relationship between Chwistek’s aesthetics and his ontology, the flaws in his idea of individual systems, and the practical character of maximalist beliefs within Witkiewicz's theory of Pure Form.
The use of the term post-history in Arnold Gehlen’s writings can be traced back to as early as the Fifties. It occurs also in his work Zeit-Bilder. Zur Soziologie und Ästhetik der modernen Malerei (1960/1986), where his theory of the art-historical development of pictorial rationality and his notion of ‘peinture conceptuelle’ are formulated as key tendencies of modern painting. Focusing on both Gehlen’s notion of modern art’s aesthetics and on his ‘theorem’ of post-history (as a crystallization of socio-cultural structures), my attempt in this paper is to highlight the contribution of the so-called “conservative thinker” with regard to contemporary debates in art and art history.
The paper reveals a view point of G. Santayana on avant-garde, which has been created at the same time as his philosophical and aesthetic conceptions came into existence. Although he was poet and many papers devoted to studying of poetry he has been interested in all kinds of art. When creating his own philosophical-aesthetic conception he paid attention to ancient art – especially Greek art. However, he was able to make contribution to contemporary art as well. His opinion was interesting as usually, full of unanswered questions, but at the same time he offered answers, which has an impact on contemporary art, aesthetics, and theory of art. He tried to apply the theory of poetic of work of art on a visual work of art, especially works of avant-garde. He made an attempt to explain the avant-garde works of art according to language of poetry. At the same time he offered opinion on avant-garde as a movement.
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