Paradoksy estetyczne w świetle polemik artystów i teoretyków w XX i XXI wieku

The article deals with the issue of aesthetic paradoxes, raised in the discourse of aesthetic educators – artists and theorists. The problem seems to be still valid and has been a strong concern for artists and audiences for at least several decades. Most generally, Stefan Morawski explains them with the following statement: “Aesthetic paradoxes, that is an attempt to completely break with traditional categories relating to art, while at the same time being unable to get rid of these categories”. The roots of this dilemma can be traced back to the era of modernism, but in many aspects it is still a sensitive issue, generating many tensions between art and aesthetics, between the artist and the critic or art theorist, as well as between the extraordinary reality beyond the everydayness, related to the uniqueness of the situation aesthetic, and the entanglement of artistic activity in the matters of current life. The paradox may even be a constitutive aspect of the aesthetic crisis and it concerns, in other words, the role of the artist outside the world of art, while being institutionally entangled in this world and promoting anti-aesthetic attitudes by rejecting aesthetic categories, which, however, keep coming back.