This text analyses theories of reception, i.e. the aesthetics of communication within the art and media studies. Realistic, antirealistic and productivistic theories of reception, i.e. essentialist, ontological and relativistic, constructionist theories of reception were distinguished. Theoretical systems that treat piece of art as a source of communication are presented, for example: cognitive aesthetics (Ernst Gombrich), hermeneutics (Hans Robert Jauss), analytic aesthetics (Nelson Goodman), theory of the open art work (Umberto Eco), phenomenology (Maurice Merleau-Ponty), structuralism and poststructuralism (Roland Barhes), and also contemporary, interdisciplinary theories of vision and visual culture (Jonathan Crary, Norman Bryson, Martin Jay).
