Nikiforova A.S. The Crisis of Art Forms and a New Perception of Reality in the European Culture of the Second Half of XIX — Early XX Centuries

Abstract: The article conciders the processes taking place in the European culture of the second half of XIX — early XX centuries. Particular attention is given to the various manifestations of the crisis of the old system of art forms and gradual search for other ways except for established ways of reality transmission. Impressionist painters, French writers and poets developed a new understanding of art and its role in human life. During that period aesthetic appreciation and creative intuition rose to the level of the leading means of knowledge of reality. The present study has been carried out through successive selection of various cultural phenomena that allowed to describe changes not only in the arts but also in philosophy as artistic creativity of that period was closely related to the interest demonstrated by philosophers towards consciousness, intuition and new understanding of the category of time. The novelty of this study is caused by the fact that the researcher has identified what caused the failure of the previous model of reality perception when reality lost its unchanging and solid status and the boundary between the internal feelings and external reality increasingly blurred. From this point of view, philosophical concepts of Ernst Cassirer and Maurice Merleau-Ponty can be considered as the final stages of the process that orignated from the «impressionist» vision of the world.

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