The Trajectory of Art: Vide Supra, or See Above

The article is aimed at clarifying the nature of spiritual changes in contemporary aesthetic consciousness, art and culture. As a basis for reasoning, a number of theoretical premises and observations from the history of philosophical and aesthetic ideas which have not lost their relevance in the contemporary art history have been put forward. In the context of the general conceptual field of the postmodern philosophy and as an organizing principle of the analysis, the aphorism vide supra (its interpretation is represented by the transcendence dimension) is proposed. This position involves a departure from the planar understanding of existence to its essential perspective vision - from idolatory fabrication to existential ascentation. Such intuitions are revealed in a wide field of cultural and historical contexts. So the mythlogem "heights" is the oldest form of human orientation in the semantic space of culture linking verticalism with the highest manifestation of sacredness. As a symbolic expression of spiritual reflection on desires emanating from the outside, the height of the gaze can be attributed to the maxims, organic for the modern creative practices, that call for the fullness of cultural tradition, the depth of feeling and the blossoming complexity of life. The value of metaphysics is determined by the architectonics of a piece of art whose metaphysical vector allows it to be in the space of spiritually reflected forms, free from the dictates of artistic and cultural technicality. It is shown that the aspirations, landmarks and lines of movement of the postmodern art are mediated not only by the variability of political, social and cultural links, but also by the impact of economic strategies upon the art process and its results when the antagonism of post-avant-garde and the capitalist market is reborn into the positive creativity of the new economy, and the Bohemia environment is institutionalized into the so-called creative class. In the given context, the maxim vide supra is considered from two interrelated semantic points. One of them is the "diffused gaze", which metaphorically concentrated aesthetic methodology of rhizomatics and the breadth of allusions arising with the concepts of rhizome - a procedural deficit of axio-logical sustainability and the lack of implemented ideas. The second point, the "wandering gaze", signals the fluctuations between the revolutionary and conformist poles, which, being important ideological phenomena, are outlined and proceede in art, culture and the social field. The study notes that, in their aesthetic terms, these options are flawed without the spiritual orientation of vide supra.

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