The essay is an introduction to two – published in this issue – essays by Helmuth Plessner, whose subject is the socio-philosophical analysis of the contemporary art, in general, and of the contemporary painting, in particular. What comes to the fore is the attempt to identify social and cultural processes that since the second half of the 19th Century have considerably influenced art. Special emphasis has been put on three processes: commercialization, democratization, subjectivization of the aesthetic criteria, and emancipation of seeing.
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