Sociological analysis on the discourse of crisis in art
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Abstract
For about a hundred and fifty years, it has been continuously expressed that art has been facing a deadly crisis and this crisis roots itself from the reality that there exists no concrete answer to the question of ‘what is art’. However related with the non-existence of consensus on what art is, it’s nothing more than a weak understanding to claim that it is impossible to talk about art. Thus, it can be acknowledged that the continuous repetition of the question of ‘what is art’ and non-existence of consensus on this subject is a clear proof of existence of a sharp struggle in art; and the state of non-consensus and historical continuity of the struggle can be acknowledged as the main source of dynamism of art. For this reason, in this study, it is acknowledged that non-existence of a concrete definition of art is a historical incident; and this controversial state about what art is and calling it the crisis of art itself was made the subject of a sociological analysis. In this analysis, it is concluded that; the actual crisis is not the crisis of art but that of aesthetics’; and that this crisis roots itself from the replacement of aesthetics regime (which dominated art for a very long time) with the non-aesthetic ‘artist regime’ in the beginning of 20th century and the nonfunctioning of aesthetics by this new regime.
 Keywords: art, sociology of art, aesthetics, art regime, artistic change.
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