Aesthetics of Installation Art

In recent years, debates surrounding the concept of art have focused in particular on installation art, as its diverse manifestations have proven to be incompatible with the modern idea of aesthetic autonomy. Defenders of aesthetic modernism repudiated installation-based work as no longer autonomous art, whereas advocates of aesthetic postmodernism abandoned the concept of aesthetic autonomy altogether. Juliane Rebentisch asserts that installation art does not, as is often assumed, dispute aesthetic autonomy per se, and rather should be understood as calling for a fundamental revision of this very concept. Aesthetics of Installation Art thus proposes a new understanding of art as well as of its ethical and political dimension.