About two trends in art: from aesthetics to onto-aesthetics

The article analyzes two fundamental strategies in contemporary art. The author connects the first trend with conceptualism, the second-with the visual turn in culture. Exploring the processes in modern thought, the author captures the parallelism, which consists, on the one hand, in the blurring of the boundaries between the human and non-human, and on the other hand, in the eluding of the boundary between art and non-art. The author shows that today the ideology of posthumanism is taking the place of the concept in contemporary art. The largest art projects, both in Russia and abroad, are associated with the translation of the ideas of anti-anthropocentrism and the end of the exclusivity of human existence. While philosophy makes an aesthetic turn, within the framework of which there are resources for the apology of the non-human, art, sharing the same positions of posthumanism, makes an ontological turn. The article notes the criticism of onto-aesthetics and points out the reasons for its limitations. The author understands the visual turn in culture in the context of civilizational shifts, when the culture based on the word is replaced by the culture based on the image. Analyzing the causes of the crisis of verbal culture, the author shows that modern art, tending to the pre-language, overcomes its own limits, setting itself the task of creating a new myth. Despite the apparent opposition of both trends in art, the author shows their dramatic relationship.