Art vs Theory

When we look at the biennials, art fairs, auctions and museums where the main direction and the distinguishing characteristics of today's art can be seen, we find that art has ceased to represent, narrate, reflect or objectivize, in a unified and particular form, man's individual journey in this world, his feelings, thoughts and imagination. It has been reduced to a game whose rules are predetermined by the parties involved (the viewer, artist, critic and so on), and more importantly to being a mere piece of social conversation. While contemporary art emphasizes reality (objective, social, economic or ideological) in its inevitable obviousness and thus surrenders to it, there remains nothing essential that distinguishes it from the news reports, fashion, ideology, philosophy, culture or the commonplace. Art as the expression in a particular, irreducible and concrete form of an otherwise immaterial substance has evaporated, giving way to a constructed art subjected to the intellectual or aesthetic manipulation of the artist. And ironically, it becomes the fertile ground for analysis and theoretical speculation as it is impoverished and vulgarized in its form. This article examines the conditions underlying the contemporary art production through artworks which find existence on such a ground, and texts that identify, explain and interprete them. Keywords: Contemporary art, theory, aesthetics, reality, illusion, art world.