ABSTRACT
In the last decade of the twentieth century, controversies in aesthetics show that art cannot escape a thorough questioning of its definition and its ontological and existential bases. Analytic and pragmatic aesthetics, as well as Anglo-Saxon-inspired theories, undertake to modify radically the paradigm in use; the aim is to replace the European aesthetic tradition by a form of thought more in agreement with the present conditions of cultural integration in liberal democracies. To create means to risk, and the aesthetics of risk in art, particularly in contemporary art, means to reassert the essential role of criticism, of judgement and of evaluation as necessary conditions to bring about a real public debate on the art of today. Analytic philosophy of art, in particular the Anglo-Saxon branch, reached France at the time when the debate on the crisis in contemporary art was undergoing a paroxysm.
