The aim of this subject is, in first place, to introduce the student into the study of the relationships between art, as a definite cultural form, with its peculiar institutions and practices, and the broader cultural context in which it is produced. The student will know the main debates which occurred in some disciplines about the cultural signification of art and how the influences of the cultural context on the great artistic movements are produced. A second objective of the subject is to know the changes in general culture which bring about the artistic movements as well as the very art institution (i.e., art as a set of institutions as academies, museums, prizes, etc., and of a peculiar market affecting the purely artistic trajectories). The subject will deal with the process of autonomization of art as a cultural institution which presents new and complex relationships with de forms of social power. Thus, the student will learn the induced transformations by the art into the diverse historical and cultural contexts, especially in the period in which the institution art is constituted, and the associated complex of multiple spaces of access and consumption by a wide audience. In this sense, it should be noticed the significant changes generated by the modernization processes in the access to literature, by way of the massive editorial industry, the creation of networks of libraries, theatres, and latterly, the new mass communication media. 1. The idea of art as aesthetic education of humanity 2. The constitution of art as institution and the cultural autonomy or art 3. The loss of aura in the era of technical reproducibility 4. Avantgardes as artistic movements and as projects of cultural transformation 5. Art, folk culture and mass culture 6. Art politically engaged: the debate about the social commitment of art 7. Art in the age of the cultural industry. The debate about the illegibility of the artistic work in times of mass communication media