Abstract

In order still to be able to answer the central question of the avant-garde today, it is necessary to have a model of aesthetic modernity showing what the „avant-garde“ once was and what became of it. According to the author’s model, the major divisions in art historiography such as classical modernity, avant-garde and post-modernity can be reconstructed ideal-typically as steps in the progressive differentiation of art, here leading to a gradual separation of work, medium and reflection in art. If this process of differentiation has been completed, then art can react in two ways to its self-created hyper-complexity: reflexively or naively. Accordingly, art has now reached a point of bifurcation in its history at which it can evolve either into a reflexive or a naïve modernity. The fundamental precondition for a reflexive modernisation of art would be the development of an art criticism that was autonomous in every respect, enabling a paradigm shift in the self-definition of advanced art: namely from a material-aesthetic to a gehalt-aesthetic orientation