Art Beyond the Anthropocene: A Philosophical Analysis of Selected Examples of Post-Anthropocentric Art in the Context of Ecological Change

abstract:In this article, the authors discuss selected examples of post-anthropocentric art, which—as they show—is associated with human sensitivity, care, empathy, and the capacity for compassion. Czakon and Michna present artistic creations that serve as examples of art that respond efficiently and quickly to the pressing problems of the contemporary world. This post-anthropocentric art, as they call it, critically reacts to major ecological and social problems of today. For this purpose, in the first and second part of the essay, they briefly characterize the basic differences between traditional, anthropocentric art and contemporary post-anthropocentric art, which has been broadly investigated in, among others, the framework of feminist philosophy and women’s studies. Czakon and Michna focus on such fundamental aesthetics concepts as fine arts and the canon thereof, aesthetic pleasure, and the artist of genius, as well as the categories of beauty and the sublime and the ideal of contemplative viewing of art. Then they present and describe selected examples of artworks that reveal their critical potential by contributing to ecological changes in the contemporary world.