Yves Michaud is a prominent author of books on aesthetics, art criticism and political philosophy and has played an important role in public discussions and controversies about contemporary art in France. In this article, he addresses the issue and challenges that art is facing in this age of generalised aestheticisation and puts forward the idea of ‘Protected Aesthetic Zones’ as a fundamental and critical concept in his analysis.

Contemporary art can be seen and analysed as a system consisting of various figures and institutions that depend on each other or establish mutual relationships. This map drawn by the sociology of art is much more difficult to produce if we use an aesthetic criterion, not only because there is not just one answer to the question ‘what is contemporary?’ but also because the landscape is heteroclite and difficult to navigate. However, this has not been an obstacle to the wide expansion of the category known as ‘contemporary art’.

Paul Werner, an artist and cultural critic, has written a book entitled Museum, Inc.: Inside the Global Art World. It is a critical reflection and account of his experience at the Guggenheim in New York. He writes about art institutions at a time of radical change and about art as paradoxical merchandise.

Jovan Mrvaljevic was born in Montenegro but lives in Paris. His contribution to this dossier is an article about the art world’s relationship with the luxury industry and the star system, creating an environment marked by the programmes of large institutions.

Gregory Sholette, an American artist and art critic has devoted the lion’s share of his theoretical work to the relationship between art and politics. He writes very critically here about NFTs (non‑fungible tokens), a digital innovation that is undermining the art market and creating some strange phenomena.

Robert Musil, author of The Man without Qualities, with his critical attitude of Viennese modernism, expressed huge scepticism about the idea of progress. Dario Gentili, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Roma Tre University, examines and comments on this idea.

On the bicentennial of Baudelaire’s birth, Ana Rocha, a music critic, researcher and author of theatrical texts featuring 20th century artists and writers (Courbet, Antero de Quental), evokes the poet of The Flowers of Evil and his relationship to Wagner’s music.

This interview with the philosopher Didier Eribon, focussing necessarily on his autobiographical book Retour à Reims [Returning to Reims], which had tremendous international resonance, shows the potentialities of a ‘critical thinking’ that crosses disciplines, disregarding their respective borders, and creates theoretical instruments for a political and sociological analysis and critique.

Donald Trump’s relationship with journalism and American journalists’ reciprocal relationship with Trump were more like a battlefield. They provided an important, even exhilarating chapter in the history of political journalism of our times, which have certainly been fraught with problematic deviations. Writing from different places, Carla Baptista, a lecturer at Universidade Nova de Lisboa and a specialist in the history of the media and journalism, and Paulo Pena, a journalist from a multinational investigative journalism team (Investigate Europe) analyse and discuss these issues.

It was not the match of the century, but it came close. Donald Trump vs. Democracy has not been turned into a great book like Norman Mailer’s The Fight, published in the U.S. in 1975 and inspired by the 1974 Muhammad Ali vs. George Foreman match, but it has something in common with all good novels: magnetic characters who silently carry the weight of their time.