Page 48 - Bulletin, Vol.82 No.3, December 2023

THE DISCONCERTING STRANGENESS OF ART FOR

ART'S SAKE

By René GUENARD

The paradigm of contemporary artistic creation has its origins in the stance taken by
certain French artistic movements at the end of the 1960s.

Breaking with the traditional romantic posture of the artist, they advocated a complete
break with pictorial means. Henceforth, the work no longer had to deliver a message
and should represent nothing but its own material reality, i.e. itself. So, from the point of
view of these artistic circles, the work no longer had any meaning.

For a long time, mankind thought that art had a function, but the modernity of
contemporary art celebrates art for art's sake.

Freud (the forerunner of psychoanalysis) recognised that art had a cathartic function,
making it possible to sublimate and transcend frustrations that gave free rein to
fantasies. Through his work, the artist is the creator of his own universe governed by no
other law than that of his imagination.

In any case, art, as a human creation, will always be a reflection of its time and its
society.

As such, it will continue to amaze us, or disconcert us, depending on our own
sensitivity.

Translated with DEEPL, revised by Monika SPYCZAK VON BRZEZINSKA

Vassily Kandinsky, Untitled (Study for Composition VII, First Abstraction), 1913 (dated
1,2
"1910") ), graphite, Indian ink and watercolour on paper (49.6 × 64.8 cm), Musée
national d'Art moderne (MNAM), Paris.

AAFI-AFICS BULLETIN, Vol. 82 No.3, 2023-12 46

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