In this essay I examine the figure of the contemporary artist through a convergence between Larry Shiner's genealogical critique of the modern fine arts system, Boris Groys's diagnosis of the transformation of art in public space, and Gianni Vattimo's post-metaphysical ontology. My central argument holds that the dismantling of the modern narrative of the artist as autonomous creative genius — historically operated through the separation between art and craft and the institutionalization of the fine arts — opens the conditions for a reformulation of their public responsibility. Read through Vattimo's pensiero debole, this responsibility does not consist in the production of universal truths but in the interpretive operation over contingent fragments of the real, in a terrain where the artwork becomes a device of warning rather than of answer. I also propose that the emancipatory vocation Vattimo attributes to the philosopher finds in the contemporary artist — insofar as their practice shifts toward the collaborative, the participatory and the situated — an analogous, though not equivalent, agent of transformation of thought. I conclude that the turn toward collective practices and spaces alternative to the museum or gallery is not a symptom of loss of autonomy, but the condition of possibility for an artistic practice coherent with a world without strong metaphysical foundations.
Keywords: Contemporary artist, pensiero debole, Boris Groys, Gianni Vattimo, Larry Shiner, post-metaphysical aesthetics, emancipation, public agora.
Profesor Santiago Zabala. MECLAP 2021-22. Universidad Pompeu Fabra.
Barcelona, Abril 2022.
References
Boris Groys. Volverse público: las transformaciones del arte en el ágora público. Buenos
Aires: Caja Negra Editora, 2020.
Larry Shiner. La invención del arte. Barcelona: Paidós, 2004.
Gianni Vattimo. Vocación y responsabilidad del filósofo. Barcelona: Herder Editorial, 2012.
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