Emphasis: Category of sublime in contemporary aesthetic culture

Abstract

The text has the aspiration to sketch a frame of reference for understanding the concept of the sublime today, as it is used in the context of art. The basic idea is to investigate how the category of the sublime appears in the modern age, both within aesthetic theories and with regard to certain poetics and specific works of art. The key difference in the perception of the sublime in relation to the earlier phases of capitalism and the present one consists in the connection that the sublime establishes with new technologies, which is also reflected in the world of art. The exploitation of the category of the sublime through new technologies, embedded in some of the contemporary poetics, is characteristic of our time, which is determined through the primacy of profit in relation to any aesthetic/artistic quality manifested by contemporary art.