IN SEARCH OF A LIVING MIDDLE
This article analyses the main category of Sedlmayr’s theoretical works, namely “the middle” (Mitte); Sedlmayr is a classic of Vienna School of Art Studies. The relevance of Sedlmayr’s scienti c views in the epoch of digitalisation is due to his desire to understand the whole. The “middle” is an ontological and epistemological category denoting the integrity and relevance of a work of art; it originated in Classical Antiquity. Sedlmayr understands a work of art as a living whole, existing here and now. A work of art for Sedlmayr is, rst of all, an event which needs to be recreated. To understand a work of art is to experience its actual presence (Dasein). The personal experience has a speci c structure expressed by the category of the “middle”. According to Sedlmayr, this is both the beginning (origin), the middle (centre), the end (aim) of the work of art. It is due to the “middle” that the work of art acquires integrity, selfness, existence, and individuality; it is also the main means of the cognition of art. Sedlmayr’s category of the “middle” decribes, in fact, the principle of existence of the whole, which implies the unity of the whole and the part. Because of this, the most proximate Russian concepts are the целое ‘the whole’ and живое ‘the living’. The “middle” in Sedlmayr’s works also refers to man and his link with God.