The Problem of Composition in Avant-garde Art

Abstract

What is the nature of composition and meaning in a work of art? The avant-gardes, in their refusal to follow the apparent course of things, aimed to “represent the noumenon”, to disclose the inner bonds between the things. Composition, in a work of art, becomes an instrument of revealing such bonds and serves as the “way” setting one on the track towards finding the meaning. In French, representation means presence. The appeal for presence can be realized on three levels – that of contents, that of the reference point, and that of unmasking for the sake of corroborating the truth. That is why the main artistic ideas of the modern age are related to the understanding of the threshold beyond which there opens something of importance for the universal whole.