<i>LA MACCHINA ESTETICA. L’ESSENZA MITICA DELL’OPERA D’ARTE</i>

Abstract

This essay points out the perspective by which contemporary art’s development may be considered as some sort of mythical regression; in particular, the support given by Arthur Danto’s thinking to Andy Warhol’s poetics is identified as the paradigm of this regression, since the work of art and the common object become aesthetically indiscernible, but only the former possesses an artistic essence that the latter doesn’t. Likewise, the mythical concept of reality doesn’t consider things for what they really are and, nevertheless, it confers to some of them an intangible essence that eludes aesthetical perception. To solve this, it has been chosen to transpose into aesthetics’ field the reflections upon myth and mythology conceived by the gifted and versatile Italian scholar Furio Jesi.