Current scholarship on contemporary art is beset by two opposing tendencies. There is, firstly, the now familiar postmodern position that takes as its focus the set of artistic practices emerging since the 1960's. Characteristic of this postmodern current is a rejection of Modernism, both for its ignorance of contextual questions of race, gender and class and correlatively, for its defense of the autonomy of the work of art.1 Recently, a second tendency in contemporary discourses on art has arisen, marked by a desire to revive the study of philosophical aesthetics as a unique domain with a distinct set of interests and concerns.