Abstract

To End the “End of Art” Topos While a scrupulous attention to the multiple dimensions of contemporary artistic creation remains indispensable, the predominantly optimistic vision which, a few years ago, sought to counter the strident contempt of the censors of “contemporary art” no longer constitutes the adequate response. Nor does it remain self-evident that the idea of an “iconoclastic” and “autophagic” art still encloses a kernel which is recalcitrant to any institutional or commodifying recuperation, or that it is is anything other than the symptom of a residual and stubborn idealism, devoid of any bearing on the current status, social, economic, economic and political, of contemporary art. True, there is still room for personal strategies and there are still some lingering possibilities for individual acts of micro-resistance to the dominant artistic networks. These can develop on the margins of the general commodity logic and its speculative excesses. However one has only to take a walk in the aisles of the numerous international art fairs to grasp the extent to which such forms of resistance are, indeed, marginal