Research

Summary

Discovering and Rebounding the Ocularcentristic Aesthetics: an Eye and a Treasure

The article is devoted to the conceptual and historical analysis of the eclipse of ocularcentristic aesthetics and to the opening of opportunities for the present visual aesthetic discourse of visual culture. The text highlights two main opportunities for the development of ocularcentristic aesthetics – such as eye apologetics and mistrust, denial and contempt. The analysis of specific examples of art history and analysis of aesthetical perceptions shows that the different parts of the human sensorium, which make up a complete multisensory tissue, become a consequence of the fluctuation of this bipolar phenomenon. From here, the distrust of the pre–eminence and supremacy of the eye, which is most noticeable in French aesthetics and art philosophy, has emerged in modernist consciousness. In the long run, it also spread to the English and German speaking countries, reaching the epoch of the 20th century, when the French philosophical doubts were fruitfully taken over by American art philosophers; in turn, the unpredictability of the eye was already overwrought by modern art and became the self–image of the current post–modern visual culture and aesthetic and artistic consciousness.