One of Jacques Rancière's contributions to aesthetics is his re-reading of the historyof aesthetics. Rancière refers to the regime that has identified art as "art" since the endof the 18th century as "the aesthetic regime of art." Against the short divisions of arthistory by modernism or postmodernism, he seeks to describe the long term.For Rancière, ideas of "modernism" and "postmodernism" need critique becausethe two cannot treat general transformations in the aesthetic regime of art. We willexplain how his thinking can renew the discourses of modernism and postmodernism.This essay first examines the pre-existing modernist and postmodernist thinking thatRancière criticizes. It then deals with his view of the history of art history by readingLe partage du sensible. This reading aims to emphasize the work's originality withregard to modernist and postmodernist thinking. We finally investigate his analysis ofpolitical art in Malaise dans l'esthétique, whose arguments offer us a new point of viewfot reconsidering contemporary political art. We conclude this essay by stating thatRancière recognizes the political effectiveness of the "mixtures" of the heterogeneousthat fundamentally characterize the aesthetic regime.