Should we try to define the principal, constitutive features of the art of the Italian Renaissance, for instance, or of Chinese art of the T’ang or Sung periods, this would hardly prove a daunting task. No particular effort is needed to identify some of the fundamental principles of compositional and formal construction, a specific repertory of recurring and significant themes and subjects that ultimately help us recognize unfailingly a given style, school or period in the history of art. The same is true of, say, Egyptian art as well as of Gothic art and the baroque. A similar attempt with respect to the art of our own time, however, is almost certainly doomed to failure.

         There is hardly another epoch in the history of mankind that can boast such a great diversity in the visual arts as our own – ranging from the products of mass culture to the sophisticated manifestations of concept-ualism. Today it is extremely hard, not to say impossible, to systematize the vast domain of art on the basis of styles and currents, to define the leading movements and tendencies. Traditional and brand new genres and forms are co-existing freely and uninhibitedly. We are discussing the art of tribal communities in Africa and South America of our day in the same breath as ‘Internet art’ and the use of multimedia technologies as a means of artistic expression. What is more, open to question is the very unity of these arts as belonging to a distinct whole, as well the validity of the hitherto established accepted modes of their historical and theoretical comprehension and interpretation. Perhaps the time has come to conceive of a ‘non-classical art history and art criticism”, just as we have long been speaking of “non-classical physics”.

        As Arthur Danto has rightly observed, art of the late twentieth century can be interpreted as a collective search for the substance and nature of art. Art has abandoned the precincts of a clearly defined, self-contained sphere (whose metaphorical image is the picture’s frame) and is imperceptibly and diffusely penetrating everyday life. But it is precisely this fact that raises the question of the differentia specifica of the visual arts. Is it possible that what we are in the habit of describing as ‘art’, is merely a concept, a peculiar mental abstraction, imposed by Western culture in the period from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century and which has evolved into an imaginary meta-physical ‘reality” bearing little relation to the concrete historical needs and practices that result from the functioning of the visual image in different cultural periods and circumstances?

         What was said of the flexibility of boundaries is evident from the numerous behavioral and body art manifestations, gestures in public space, environment interventions etc. that are being demonstrated at various artistic forums around the world, where the borderline between “art” and “non-art”, metaphorically speaking, is effectively wiped out. It could be said that the world of “non-art” is increasingly absorbed, appropriated by the “world of art”, which is continually expanding its domain. Incidentally, this is probably one of the reasons for the recent ever more intensifying research work in art within the framework of the so-called Cultural Studies, carried out in an anthropological, and not only art historical, context.

         Is it possible to delineate a general, integral physiognomy of contemporary art? Can indeed everything that is created in the sphere of art be described as ‘contemporary’? From a formal viewpoint – yes, but hardly in terms of substance. In that case, what should be considered genuinely  contemporary? Is it only that kind of art, which expresses and reflects a certain functionally conditioned personal and social need for images of a given type? We might recall in this connection the lively interest stirred up in European culture in the late nineteenth century by the art of the primitives, which proved to be much more relevant to modern art than academic art, seen until then as the immutable standard, i. e. as permanently ‘contemporary’. Let us not forget that our consciousness is weighed down with a vast, unprecedented mass of visual information stemming not only from our own time but also from past epochs that are taking on new cultural relevance today. Aren’t the ancient Chinese artists, committed to artistic laws and principles that have taken centuries to mature, of greater topical interest to us than some of the latest artistic manifestations, and in this sense, more ‘contemporary’? Henri Focillon, the eminent French art historian, has said that on entering the world of medieval Romanesque art we have the simultaneous feeling of having gradually drifted away from something that is very great, with which, alas, we have lost the organic connection. To put it figuratively, the temple seems to be completely destroyed, but its unique place in man’s spiritual life remains empty.

         How are we to find our bearings in the present exceedingly complex situation? What are the responsibilities of present-day artists and art critics faced as they are by a new Tower of Babel of languages and idioms where there no longer seem to exist any rules, norms and standards of universal validity?

         Assessing its place and role in contemporary society is one of the crucial challenges facing art of our time. However, societies differ widely from one another, so that analyses and prognoses cannot be reduced to drawing up any universally valid, let alone prescriptive models.

         And yet it is evident that in the age of globalization two opposing tendencies are emerging: on the one hand, an ever growing preoccupation with the local and the specific, and a leveling out and universalization of the plastic language – on the other. We are witnessing a process of transition from modernist Europocentrism to a postmodernist global polycentrism. Even so men on the planet Earth still seem to lack a common awareness of the most urgent and crucial challenges facing mankind and a common will to cope with them. The momentary, the local and fragmentary have precedence  over the long-term, the global and the integral.

       The power of visual images that do not need special interpretation can be exploited, as all things in this world, for good and bad purposes. It is perhaps apposite to recall what the Chinese artist Se He has said as far back as the sixth century:  “There are no such pictures that do not affect the viewer in a positive or a negative way.” The postmodernist attitude, however, usually epitomized in the phrase ‘anything goes’, is misleading and indeed provides no clues for artistic judgment. As if it were indecent, or at least inappropriate, to reflect on art in terms of the categories ‘god’ and ‘bad’. The supposed ‘deliverance’ from all constraints might play a practical joke on us by bringing about a situation of extreme artistic licence and chaos.

       At the very moment that craftsmanship, in the noblest sense of the word, and draughtsmanship, as it was understood, for instance, by the great masters of the Renaissance, cease to be valid and are superseded by the concept, the notion of criteria becomes irrelevant. But how can one gauge the merit of a concept?

       It is perhaps precisely at this point that the humanistic orientation of part of contemporary art may prove to be one of the possible areas of reaching a degree of consensus on the problem. The enormous power of the visual image is well known. It is not by accident that images of a certain type  have sparked off grave conflicts and perturbations in the past – for instance, the iconoclastic controversy in Byzantium in the eighth and ninth centuries or the Reformation in Germany in the sixteenth. Georges Rowley, one of the great connoisseurs of Chinese painting, recounts in his book Principles of Chinese Painting that a Chinese who had visited a museum of modern art found that the pictures hanging there had too strong an agitating effect and exclaimed: “All this is painting of war, and what we need is a painting of peace that would instill calm in people’s hearts.” In the same context we might recall an utterance by Henri Matisse: “What I dream of is an art of equilibrium, of purity, of tranquility, free of disturbing or worrying subjects, which would be for every intellectual worker, for the businessman as well as for the poet, for instance, relaxing, mentally soothing, very much like a comfortable armchair, which relieves him of his physical strain.“

       After all that happened to art in the twentieth century, can we still speak of giving directives and prescribing guidelines in the sphere of artistic culture? Of course not. We hear very often people assert that art does not instruct, appeal, explain, persuade, and should not serve anyone or any preconceived cause, but exists, so to say, solely in its own right, and it is precisely this that constitutes its inherent value. The debate as to whether art is conducive to the improvement of morals or not is at least as old as Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s reflections on this subject. The twentieth century abounds in examples of a hypertrophic expansion of its didactic and propagandist functions: socialist realism is a telling case in point.

       Of course, it is not a question of giving prescriptions, but of facing up to certain problems related to the great responsibility of contemporary artists. While it is no longer sensible to put forward speculative plans or downright Utopian projects concerning the future of art, it is really of crucial importance to look for new approaches and ways of fostering the social function of the art product and enhancing its effectiveness. I do not remember who had said that “art is the power of someone ruling over free people”. This is no Utopian goal, but a rationally perceived necessity, that is, free choice based on a changing consciousness of the world. Artistic activity is both a reflection of this process and the generator of new consciousness. It seems to me that the growing importance of contemporary art’s semiosphere in the life of present-day societies is now perfectly obvious.

       The modernist project, in its teleological attempts to “change the world”, being already exhausted, postmodernism went to the opposite extreme – that of complete relativism. Major importance in contemporary art seems to be accorded to the individual mythologies, the so-called personal legends (to cite an expression coined by Paolo Coelio). If that is so, then the responsibility of contemporary artists has increased manifold if only for the simple reason that they can no longer conceal themselves behind group ideologies or manifestos.

       The genuine artist, not the fake, in all societies and periods is a sui generis combination of talent, sincerity and moral standards.  Talent, as the old saying goes, is given by God, but sincerity and morals are human qualities that need to be cultivated and developed. It is here that we face up to the extremely important issue of artistic education. The artist should bear responsibility for the additional pollution of the visual medium, which is anyway overladen with clichés, with kitsch of all sorts and quite often with frankly misanthropic images. Art is in a position to stem the trite mass imagery that is flooding us from the big and small screen, and this is probably part of its humanistic mission. It may seem that we are harking back to the notion of the artist as a prophet, as a hypersensitive barometer of his time?

I do believe, however, that what is needed in any case is a certain trans-cendental perspective linking such an attitude to that, so to say, plane of metaphysics, which reflects the bond between homo sapiens and the Absolute, or whatever we choose to call it. Otherwise art would be found

to be charged with purely pragmatic tasks, and that seems to run counter

to its nature.         

        What can art do today to fulfill its mission as an indispensable spiritual

and cultural factor in human societies?

        - Above all, it should assert more distinctly and emphatically its

            central role in upholding the traditions of humanism and averting

            the danger of human culture disappearing from the face of the earth.

            If there is anything that we have learned from postmodernism, it is

            that there is no simple, linear progress in art.

        - Art should devote its attention to the unsolved problems of our world    

            (ecological, demographic, religious, social, ethnic, of war and peace,

             etc.). Actually, developing an ecological awareness is more of a

             challenge to the consumer society of the West. The East has an age-

             long tradition of maintaining an equilibrium with nature. It is

             obvious that the modernist paradigm of man’s dominance over

             nature should be replaced by the postmodernist paradigm of

             harmonious coexistence with her.

        - Art should spur on the transformation and expansion of thinking

             towards a true understanding of the dramatic historical transition we

             are living through. There is no doubt that we are witnessing a really  

             decisive moment in the history of mankind.

        I am convinced that even with all innovations, drawing and painting, the direct pictorial expression are and will remain an unchanging anthro-pological function, which is a guarantee that as long as man exists there also will be art. That is why the painting, the sculpture, the graphic sheet are not threatened by the video, the installation and the performance.

        The crucial dilemma today, it seems to me, is: “Is the human phenomenon in art to be or not.” Shall we go on speaking of ‘art’ and ‘culture’ or shall we have to use such words as ‘post-art’ and ‘post-culture’?