Modification of Artistic Language in the Modern Era: Factors of Influence

Referring to the aesthetic and philosophical treatises of the Modern Era and its artistic heritage, the author examines the driving force and key factors that determine manifestation and consolidation of changes in the expressiveness of the language of art. The dialectics of form and content occupy one of the central places in aesthetic theory. Studying the impact that the mechanisms of “artistic form wear” have on the evolution of artistic expressiveness from specific to general allows tracing how the content is formalized and concentrated in particular structures of the artistic language, thereby subsequently influencing the content of contemporary art. The author reveals the incentives that forced the artists of the Modern Era to look for new ways of expressiveness in their work, referring to both the “aesthetics from within”, i.e. the factor of self-movement of art, and the “aesthetics from the outside”, i.e. stereotypes of the era laid down by mentality, which determine the expressive form of art, the methods and techniques of expressiveness used by artists. The focus of attention in the article is shifted to the art of classicism, since it is in the strict academic framework that the elements of transformation and change in established forms become especially evident.