Anthropological interpretation of non-classical art
The logic of the modern era prepared the way for the birth of “non-classical” art as it was a part of the growing distrust of rationalism. Skepticism of the classics came as a consequence of the crisis of classical rationalism that erupted in European culture starting in the 1830’s. The new art focused on ways of expression that cast doubt on the absolute norms of classical art. In painting, this was manifested in the prevalence of pictoriality (color-light relations) over plasticity (the primacy of the line, drawing), the dynamic over the static, atectonics over tectonics, and a shift from the central axis of the picture in favor of so-called “landscape vision,” in which the painting has several centers at once. Artists of the post-classical age (including the present) understand that life presents a completely different picture of the world and their works reflect a contradictory era, expressed by colors, lines, complex composition, deformed space, and displacement of the painting’s fixed center. The language of painting dramatically changed. The tried and tested elements of classical art were unsuitable for depicting the dramatic and tragic collisions of modern times. In the sharp, painful, depressing images of Egon Schiele, Rene Magritte, Francis Bacon, Anselm Kiefer, and Jean-Michel Basquiat, modern philosophical art captures the conditions of unhealthy eroticism, loneliness, acute anxiety-an existential impasse, almost an anthropological disaster. Nevertheless, all of the creators listed have a powerful style. The works of these twentieth-century artists do not fit into any expected, familiar format but are full of hidden vitality. A number of examples of non-classical art demonstrate that in their own unique ways these painters are not afraid to confront the problem of good and evil.