LTMeno filosofų bandymai koreguoti sartrišką vaizduotės apibrėžimą, meno sociologijos aktualijos bei šiuolaikinės meno kalbos pobūdis skatina atidžiau pažvelgti į vaizduotės ir tikrovės santykių kaitą. Todėl šiame straipsnyje apibrėžiamos vaizduotės funkcijos, jų ryšys su sociokultūriniais procesais. Plačiau analizuojama, kaip vaizduotė įsiterpia į meno kūrinio genezę. Taip pat autorei rūpi, kaip vaizduotė veikia šiuolaikinių formų ir jausmų raidą. Kitaip sakant, kaip vaizduotė veikia sąmoningumą, dvasią ir stiliaus raidą, o socialinė tikrovė - vaizduotės sklaidą.
ENCombination of reality and imagination, which is defined by social and cultural processes, provoke a new conception of imagination. Evolution of modem art, of its own accord, forces to correct sartrian definition of imagination as possibility of creation and emancipation. From now it is most likely efforts of individual to fill lack of existence with social being. The wave of rationalisation, which flooded the industrial society, penetrates into field of art. So changes the function of imagination and at the same time of art. Elements of imagination and reality combined straightforwardly reveal opportunity to identify perception and reality, accentuate feelings that artist experience in modem society life full of strangeness and fancy, in which art rouse anger and wonder. But in spite of contemporary play with proportions, imagination remains indispensable system of cognition, perception, and information. That proves modern studies of sociology of art, where art and sociocultural processes, development of them, are explored with assistance of imagination - the participant of history of consciousness, spirit and style. Modern apolonic society inclined to perceive imagination as some qualification and activation might of imaginary. Modem man is a sacrifice of satiety of symbols, and it conditioned growing wave of rationalisation, disappointment of world. Changeable economic system determined turn of symbols of art production and imagination to the sphere of pleasure, hedonism and passive observation, just as in evolution of technology. It is obvious that certain integrity of stmcture, imagination space is characteristic to art, culture of every historical period. Really imagination embraces all spheres and levels of human existence. However analysing new artistic means of expression, norms, models, only seldom we see an attempting to embrace the whole facts, which make the experience of imagination.From the point of view of modern art sociology the process of creation is understood not only like manifestation of experience and mastery. It is an act of creation, the procedure of putting into shape, which going on in imagination. Sensual and institutional reality decides the significance of elements of work, and the system of meanings is inseparable from intellectual net. That’s why serious studies about relations of art and society don’t avoid history of civilisation, whose one of the parts is works of art, which difiuse in distinctly original way "public canons of love and sacred". Imagination gives a chance for abstraction, because performing the function of schematisation, it liberates empirical images from slavery of content and induces synthesis of images, their integration into the whole, system, and this is the base of reflection on the Whole. In according to that, symbolic form springs up in imagination; therefore it is not identical to really existing object or sign. So material expression, form, symbol, language follows mind. In this way the specific space, where its qualities are defined and realised, is creating. Thus even mathematician things not about symbols, but what they express. Therefore first of all we collide with problems of imagination investigating art language. So we come to the conclusion that work of art is object, which has material form, created following distinctive traditions and lows, and also it is the result of imagination, which combine versatile elements of experience. Artistic time and space come into being in the structure of imagination.It signifies that a change of means of artistic expression is a witness of evolution of lows of artistic thought, that the frame of perception and cognition are changed. New artistic forms hold of human landscape gradually. But it could be admitted that searches of the greatest creators are permanent and restless objections to norms and canons, which have set in.