The Weak Universalism

Abstract

This essay is a discussion of the task of the avant-garde, and it presents it as an implication of Benjamin's weak messianism, as a „weak universalism” - a construction of democratic art. There is a similarity between the art of Malevich, Beuys, Warhol and internet art, which consists in efforts to build a transhistorical art pieces, which contains the conditions of possibility of all art pieces, but which is at the same time accessible to the widest public. This is the translation of the original text published „The Weak Universalism” in e-flux magazine, issue 15/2010.