Editor's Introduction: Modernism, Aesthetics, Historiography

In: Modernist cultures, Band 3, Heft 2, S. 94-99

Abstract

Aesthetics is the reflexive construction of the concepts necessary for the comprehension of the stakes and meaning of art in the light of the history of the dominant art of the second half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century: modernism. The task of aesthetics is to vindicate modernist art's own claim to mattering, to being significant, indeed unavoidable, for our collective selfunderstanding of ourselves as denizens of modernity. (J. M. Bernstein)