Aesthetic Formalism in the View of Contemporary Art

Abstract

In a narrow sense, the formalistic conception of art cannot range and explain a wide variety of contemporary art phenomena. In a wide sense, formalism – rejecting the re-ductionist definition of the essence of art, involving the conceptual dimension of the art-work, and expanding the dimension of sensibility – becomes a productive philosophical art theory allowing one to explain and investigate some part of the contemporary art (modern and postmodern) phenomena. In the expanded conception, the basic principles of aesthetic formalism include a wide scale of the principles of the creation and comprehension of the artwork – from an abstract form (perceived by senses) to a conceptual form. The article gives an illustration of these principles discussing abstraction-ism and surrealism as two different types of the contemporary formalistic visual art.