art theory it refers to an academic discipline that encompasses the entire representation of artistic expressions, starting with their consideration and approval in all styles of art.
What is the Theory of art?
The word art originates from the Latin ars, being similar to the Greek word τέχυη, téchne, where "technique" comes from. In its beginnings it was applied to everything that man and the different activities produced and knew how to do it.
The theory of art is also defined as theories of the afternoons, being an academic method that encompasses all the representations of the different artistic manifestations of artistic phenomena and works of art. This begins with its appreciation or acceptance in all its aspects in all genres of art with greater emphasis on those known as fine arts that contain virtual arts, painting, sculpture and architecture, reading, music, performing arts and many others. .
The well-known applied arts are also described as minor arts, decorative arts, or arts and crafts, which throughout history have been considered minor, as well as other crafts, and due to their difficulty to the more highly regarded liberal arts. For further information, you can consult the minor arts.
However, since the end of the XNUMXth century, Arts and Crafts movements have been recovered, and since the XNUMXth century, they have obtained the label of the outline, which has been generalized to any space and the generation or content of the services, are exposed in danger of being used without judgment and arbitrarily, even absurdly, altering its original content.
Art theories describe this aspect from a theoretical and normative topic, providing methods to discover the concept of their works. Within the philosophical area that can be established each version of the theory of art. It is strongly associated with different analyzes within aesthetics, due to the fact that each consideration with respect to the nature and function of art itself is found on the limit of these disciplines of complicated demarcation. Observing the theory of art, from the individual or social application it can be described as artistic delight.
The theory of art is considered as the analytical and critical study of works of art, regardless of their area. They are divided into theory such as literature, music theory and others. They have maintained throughout their history that works of art can have many reasons, it all depends on the viewer. The theory of art has sought to grant different ways of being interpreted, according to the biography of the author, the sociocultural theme in which the work was developed, depending on its formal appearance, its link with other works, and the opinion that it leaves to the observer. .
The theory of art has remained linked to the development of other theories in other areas, being the case of psychology. Giving a glimpse of the thought of Freud and Jung, who unveiled new references to understand the works that already exist and future ones.
It can be seen that the concept of art has been modified over the years, giving priority to some, containing or eliminating many that are currently classified as art. It is the case that during the Middle Ages they thought that the only thing that mattered were the seven liberal arts: grammar, oratory, dialectics, music, arithmetic, geometry and astronomy. Many of these currently belong to the natural sciences, looking at sculpture, painting and architecture as crafts.
However, with the arrival of the Renaissance, the concept was transformed, standing out the performance of the author and the arts moved away from sciences and trades. After all this, historiography and art criticism appeared, as well as exhibitions and awards.
However, the different categories of art in the XNUMXth century entered into a great bind because of the advanced and then with modern art, due to the growth of serialized art and works in other formats such as the avant-garde show.
art theory in history
Regarding this part, there are certain exceptions, such as the case of Chinese civilization where the custom of art theory since the beginning of the XNUMXth century, being the Six Principles of Painting by Xie He, a large part of the written production about of the theory of art, has historically belonged to Western civilization. We invite you to read Hispanic American Literature
Since the beginning of prehistory, works of art have been considered to have a specific meaning, which means they possess a purpose, whether practical or fantastic, for the person creating them. The creation of a work of art is never subject to ornamental effects.
The history of art theory tells that the first artistic evidence was found in Cro Magnon sculptures because they were a way of communicating and expressing themselves, as well as having a large part of sorcery and intervention by shamans. So, it was the first artists, the shamans of the tribes, who dedicated themselves to contacting the energy of nature to produce good or evil.
Main theories of art
Within the main theories of art, some of them can be mentioned as the main ones, namely:
biographical theory: It refers to the one in charge of studying a work of art, from the biographical concept of its author.
Formalist theory: The one that is dedicated to studying a work of art, from the formal elements that compose it, such as colors, structure, light and others.
Iconographic theory: Likewise, it is known as iconology, it is the theory in charge of studying a work of art from the emblems, allegories or images that personify vices, virtues and other natural or moral elements.
Sociological theory: Where a work of art is studied as an element of a specific society.
Psychological theory: It is responsible for studying and analyzing a work of art in its psychological aspect.
Structuralist Theory: The one that is in charge of studying a work of art from its link with its own parts or its own elements.
Concept of art in western civilization
What defines art in Western civilization is considered to be open, intrinsic and controversial. There is no universal agreement among the scholars of this matter, such as historians, philosophers or artists.
During its entire existence, quantities of art concepts have been conceived, which are worth mentioning as:
Thomas Aquinas maintains "art is the right order of reason"
Schiller, expresses: "art is that which establishes its own rule"
Max Dvořák, “art is style”
John Ruskin, "art is an expression of society"
Adolf Loos, "art is the freedom of genius"
Marcel Duchamp, "art is the idea"
Jean Dubuffet, "art is the novelty"
Joseph Beuys, "art is action, life"
Dino Formaggio, "art is everything that men call art"
Wolf Vostell, “Art is life, life is art”
With the passing of the time, the concept of art is transformed, the Renaissance, art was only considered as the liberal arts, architecture, sculpture and painting seen as "crafts".
Since its inception, art has been one of the most important ways used to express the emotions of human beings, as well as their ideas and feelings, and the most sought-after way to connect with the world. Its main intention may be different from the most common to the most aesthetic, it may contain a religious aspect, or simply ornamental, it may be permanent or fleeting.
As of the XNUMXth century, the essential and material sense is left behind: as Beuys stated, that life is a means of artistic expression, standing out the vital, the action. So everyone has the ability to be an artist.
Then, the cooks, gardeners, the builder, the painter or the poet can be considered artists. With the passing of time, the Latin bifurcation ars: art, was used to name the disciplines linked to the arts of the aesthetic and the moving; and the Greek fork téchne: technique, for the disciplines that are associated with intellectual productions and articles of use.
Currently, it is difficult to find that the two terms: art and technique, are complicated or used as synonyms.
Ancient and Medieval Ages
From the beginnings of the Greek philosopher Plato, until the XNUMXth century, a general acceptance remained in cultured literature, in its content, what art referred to and what it intended, its reference was from the beginning the Poetics of Aristotle, and then the Latin books. of the architect Marco Vitruvio Polión or the literary Publio Terencio Afro or Tito Maccio Plauto.
Imitation of nature, which in classical aesthetics and poetics establishes the core of art, and the identification of the beautiful with the principles of authenticity and compassion, used to be the most recognized ideas.
During Late Antiquity, evangelization, which referred to the reconciliation of Neoplatonism with the sacred writings through patrology, which means the study of the life, works and doctrine of the fathers of the Church, put art under suspicion, as well as everything material.
During medieval times, various forms of esteem and humiliation of the arts could be observed, which in an exaggerated way reached the iconoclasm of a specific period of Byzantine art and the disappearance of representational art in Islamic art.
During classical Greco-Roman antiquity, being one of the main nascents of Western civilization and the first culture to think about art, it maintained the concept of art as a skill of the human being, which he performed in any aspect as long as it was productive. This was seen as a synonym for skill: what they considered skill to possess was to make an object, lead an army, persuade the public to participate in a debate, or to develop agricultural activities.
That is to say, any skill that follows rules, punctual norms that lead to learning, progress and technical perfection. While poetry, being typical of inspiration, was not considered art.
So, Aristotle conceptualizes art as "permanent disposition to produce things in a rational way", while Quintilian defined "that it is based on a method and an order". The philosopher Plato, in the Protagoras, mentions art commenting that it is the ability to carry out activities through the use of intelligence and learning. Likewise, Plato maintained that art has a general meaning, being the creative capacity and ability of the human being.
Casiodoro de Reina, a Spanish Hieronymite religious, stressed that art in all its content is productive in accordance with norms and rules, indicating three essential purposes of art such as: teaching, doceat; move, moveat, and please, delectet.
Modern age
The Renaissance of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, as well as allowed the social consent of the artist within the humanist field who pondered imaginatively about his own art, figured as an underestimation of medieval art, discredited as Gothic, and a speculation of Greco-Roman classical antiquity. , especially the reconstructed as its precept.
All this aspect was established and founded with the classism belonging to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in the academic schools called academicism. As for the French Revolution, it represented the modification of this concept, as a way analogous to the devastation of the Old Regime, and the incursion of what freedom means in art placed in the hands of Romanticism, which its definition of beauty also contained. the overwhelmed declination that means the gothic novel or the black paintings of Francisco de Goya.
At the time of the Renaissance, a transformation of mentality began to be generated, separating the trades and sciences from the arts, being where poetry was contained for the first time, which for that was qualified as a philosophy or even prophecy. This was something that determined the publication in the year 1549 of the Italian translation of Aristotle's Poetics.
For this transformation, the social aspect of the Renaissance artist intervened, the more appreciated than his previous ones, due to his elaborate productions that obtain a new status of products oriented for decorative consumption.
Everything was due to the advantage that the distinguished and wealthy eminences of Italian origin possessed for the beautiful and majestic that was also observed as a way to stand out socially, increasing artistic benefit and promoting collecting.
So, different theoretical treatises related to the subject of art were born in this situation, such as those by Leon Battista Alberti, De Pictura, 1436-1439; Of re aedificatoria, 1450; and De Statua, 1460, or The Commentaries, 1447, by Lorenzo Ghiberti.
Alberti obtained the Aristotelian influence trying to contribute with a scientific foundation regarding art. He spoke about decorum, the artist's procedure for adapting artistic aims and themes to a reserved, perfectionist look.
Ghiberti, who was the first to recognize the history of art, differentiating classical antiquity, the medieval period, calling it "renaissance of the arts".
With the beginning of mannerism, an artistic style, contemporary art began: the elements were not shown as they were but as the artist visualized them. The aspect of beauty was not given importance, the unique Renaissance beauty was maintained, which was based on science, to the various beauties of the mannerism style, which came from nature.
Then, it is when a new element of imagination appears in art, which exhibited the marvelous and the burlesque, as can be evidenced in the work of Brueghel or Arcimboldo.
Giordano Bruno, philosopher, being one of the first to anticipate modern ideas, stated that creation is infinite, there is neither a center nor limits, everything is movement, everything is dynamic. Bruno maintained that there were arts as artists, inserting the thought of the originality of the artist, art knows no rules, it is not learned, it comes through inspiration.
The next advances were made during the eighteenth century with Civilization. Some independence of the artistic theme began to be generated: art moved away from religion and the personification of power to be the honest reflection of the artist's character, so it concentrated on the perceptive qualities of the work and not on its own. meaning.
Jean-Baptiste Dubos, French priest, diplomat, and philosopher, in Critical reflections, about the concept of poetry and painting, in the year 1719, opens the way to the pragmatism of pleasure, maintaining that aesthetics does not come from reason but through feelings and emotions. So, in this way for Dubos, art excites, runs to the spirit in a direct and swift way, than rational knowledge.
Dubos got the freedom to choose what pleases the individual, opposed the rules established by the academy and inserted the image of "genius" as an essence of nature, which goes beyond regulations and standards.
Contemporary age
Faced with the variety of art theories, generally opposed, the referents that the historiography of art speaks of are added, which has become a university education, which has been seen preponderantly by many authors of the German language, who They transformed the history of art into a social science.
Art criticism has also been positioned as a function strongly related to the art trade, in the same way as literary criticism in the editorial context, and music criticism within the entertainment business, known as show business.
The representation of academic pleasure in awards and exhibitions such as the Paris Salon was opposed by optional convocations such as the Salon des Refusés, which refers to the Salon of the Rejected in 1863, which over time gradually formed a new definition of independent art that was also institutionalized, a result subject to new criticism and generational disagreements.
After the decisive rupture of the artistic schemes accepted by impressionism at the end of the XNUMXth century, and the consequent artistic progress of the XNUMXth century, where each of them with their own conscious theories and their own space within art that through displayed, new concepts of modern art and contemporary art were established.
Modern art is not about the art of the Modern Age, it is what we know as contemporary art, in fact not all contemporary art, rather it is that aesthetically it leads to the indefinite requirements that detail the aesthetic break against academicism. This is not carried with modernity, rather with the application of the concept of freedom to art.
The theoretical consideration regarding art, continued to be shown as one of the main central purposes of thought and philosophy, especially in the first part of the 1918th century, acting as a substantial change for contemporary art, as well as for contemporary society, called industrial, mass or consumer society, within the historical content of the wars for the years 1939 to 1929: the Soviet revolution, fascism; and crisis of the year XNUMX.
Manifesting itself in new definitions, many with dialectical harshness, as evidenced in pure art and contemporary art, disinterested art, dehumanized art.
XIXth Century
Romanticism, which was born in Germany at the end of the XNUMXth century together with the well-known Sturm und Drang movement, came out victorious with the idea of an art that flourishes naturally from the individual, growing the sense of genius, with art they have the freedom to express their emotions as an artist who begins to turn their facts or things into myths.
Many specialists have given themselves the task of giving their own reflections about what art means, such as: Novalis and Friedrich von Schlegel, who stated in the famous magazine Athenäum, who are their own editors, where the first expressions appeared of the autonomy of art united with nature.
For these two authors, the intrinsic part of the artist can be found in the work of art, as well as his own natural language to express himself.
Arthur Schopenhauer, a German philosopher, offered his third work The World as will and representation to the theory of art: art is the way to escape from the state of man's unhappiness. He likened knowledge to artistic creation, being the deepest way of knowing.
Art is the mediation that occurs between the will and the conscience, between the object and the subject, obtaining a state of mysticism and placidity. Aesthetic consciousness is a state of disinterested mysticism, where everything is observed and shines in its most delicate and profound candor.
Art is expressed from the language of intuition and not reflection, it is a complement to philosophy, ethics and religion. Mediated through Eastern philosophy, he expressed that man be free from the effort to live, from wanting, which comes from euphoria. Art is an expression to get rid of the will, and to be able to reach beyond the "I" itself.
Wilhelm Richard Wagner, composer, was able to collect the ambivalence, that is, the two interpretations that could be deciphered between the perceptive and the spiritual of Arthur Schopenhauer, German philosopher: in Opera and drama during the year 1851. According to Wagner's approach the intention of the “total work of art”, the German term Gesamtkunstwerk, a concept attributed to the opera composer Richard Wagner.
In this, a synopsis of the concept of poetry was made, the word, seen as a masculine element, while music seen as feminine. He considered the primitive language as effective vowels, while he observed the consonants was a reasonable element, so that the entry of music into the word was seen as a return to the original ingenuity of language.
At the end of the XNUMXth century, aestheticism appeared, being a reaction to the dominant materialism that existed at that time, as well as the disfigurement and greed of the industrial age.
Then, a style appeared that gave art, as well as beauty, a particular independence, brought together in Théophile Gautier's formula “art for art's sake” (L'art pour l'art), to the point of speaking of “ aesthetic religion. This behavior tried to get the artist to separate himself from society in order to achieve an independent form of his authentic inspiration that only allowed himself to be carried away in the search for the beautiful that was far from any moral element.
This becomes his only goal to be an artist, who lives his own life as if it were a spectacular work of art, as can be seen in the dandy's work.
Among the main thinkers of the movement, is Walter Pater, literary critic, and art historian, who intervened in the well-known English decadence, capturing in his works, the life of the artist must be lived energetically, but reaching beauty as the only ideal.
According to Pater, he points out that the sense of art visualizes it as "the magic circle of existence", as a separate and free universe, which is only within the reach of pleasure, preparing a true philosophy of beauty.
Charles Pierre Baudelaire, French poet, essayist, art critic and translator, was one of the first literary figures who dedicated himself to investigating the link between art and the recently appeared industrial era, anticipating the beginning of "modern beauty": there is eternal and absolute beauty, each concept of beauty has an eternal and temporary element, final and individual.
Beauty is supposed to come from passion, and each person has their own special ardor, who also has their own unique definition of what beauty is. In its link with art, beauty manifests on the one hand an "eternally subsistent" sense, which is seen as the "soul of art", while on the other hand an analogous and casual element, which becomes the "body of art". art".
So the dualism of art is found as an expression of the dimorphism that the human being has, who is always waiting for a perfect satisfaction that faces the ardors that lead him to it.
Charles Pierre Baudelaire, poet, essayist and art critic, had his opinion about art as a neo-Platonic definition of beauty which means that it comes from the Philosophical School of Plato's doctrine; as the desire of the human being to reach a maximum ideal, which is attainable through art.
The artist is described as the "hero of modernity", his main characteristic being nostalgia, being the desire for perfect beauty.
In contrast to aestheticism, an ideological approach to aesthetics and absolute beauty, the French philosopher, critic and historian, Hippolyte Adolphe Taine, created a sociological theory of art: where he manifests in his Philosophy of Art, in the years 1865 to 1869, applying art to determinism, philosophical doctrine, which is based on race, content and time.
For the philosopher Taine, the concept of aesthetics and the “science of art” function like any other scientific activity, based on reasoned and experimental measurements. In this sense, it can be related to the pedagogical theory, where art also plays an important role in education.
Similarly, the French philosopher and poet Jean-Marie Guyau Tuillerie, manifests in The Problems of Contemporary Aesthetics of 1884, and Art from the Sociological Point of View of 1888, a vision where art advances, and also maintains that art It is found within life, and it progresses just as it does.
Just as human life is organized socially, art must be a reflection of society. In this regard, you can find more information about the history of art, which details its evolution over time.
When speaking of sociological aesthetics, it can be said that it maintained a strong relationship with pictorial realism and with leftist political movements, with special emphasis on utopian socialism, where several authors such as: Henri de Saint-Simon, French philosopher, economist and social theorist ; François Marie Charles Fourier, a French socialist, and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, a French revolutionary philosopher and politician, safeguard the social activity of art, as a support for the development of society, combining beauty and utility as a whole in perfect harmony.
Likewise, it can be seen that in the United Kingdom, the work of the British writer, art critic and sociologist, one of the great masters of English prose, contributed a functionalist approach to art in the stones of Venice, from 1851 to 1856 Ruskin reported on the devastation of beauty and the diffusion of art that has been carried out by an industrialized society, as well as the humiliation of the proletarian class, protecting the social work of art.
In the year 1879, the art of the people, requested that changes be made in the economy and society, claiming an art "made by the people and for the people". On the other hand, Morris, the creator of the Arts & Crafts movement, supported a functional, practical art that meets material needs, but not spiritual ones.
They appear in texts, years 1882 to 1884, which refer to the aesthetic, and The Ends of Art of 1887, set out a definition of utilitarian art, but, separated from production systems that are extremely technical, close to a concept of socialism close to medieval corporatism.
On the other hand, the function of art was criticized by the Russian author Lev Tolstoy: who says in what is art?, year 1898, exposing the social justification of art, a subject where art, being part of expressing, is only allowed if the feelings that it transfers can be reciprocated by the participation of all human beings.
Tolstoy states that the only valid justification is the intervention of art to reach human unity: it is considered that a work of art can only have social value when it truly transfers companionship values, which translates feelings and emotions that stimulate union of the towns.
During those times the process of studying art in psychology began. Sigmund Freud, an Austrian neurologist, began the practice of psychoanalysis in art in Leonardo da Vinci's A Childhood Memory, from 1910, protecting art as one of the ways to express a longing, an impulse inhibited in an aggrandized way.
He maintained that the artist is a narcissistic symbol, the closest to the child, who shows his desires in art, and he maintained that artistic works can be analyzed like dreams, and mental illnesses, with the practice of psychoanalysis. . He was based on the semiotic method, which means studying the different signs.
Likewise, Carl Gustav Jung, a Swiss psychiatrist, psychologist and essayist, associated psychology with different disciplines, namely philosophy, sociology, religion, literature and art. It can be seen in contributions to analytical psychology from the year 1928, he recommended that the elements of signs that are present within art are treated as “primordial images”, or “archetypes”, which are essentially immersed in the “collective subconscious”. ” within the human being.
Wilhelm Dilthey, German philosopher, historian, sociologist, psychologist and hermeneutic, manifests from the cultural aesthetics approach, a theory about the unity of art and life. Anticipating the art of progress, Dilthey suspected that at the end of the XNUMXth century, art was moving away from academic norms, and how it was recovering with great force the participation of the public, who have the energy to ignore or praise the work of a certain artist. .
He was able to achieve an "anarchy of taste" in all this cluster of art, which he attributed to it a social transformation of interpretation of authenticity, however he was able to perceive that it was momentary, so it was imperative to find "a healthy relationship between aesthetic thought and the art".
In this way, he gave the "sciences of the spirit" as protection of the arts, exclusively the subject of psychology: artistic training is due to research with the psychology definition of illusion.
In Life and poetry of the year 1905, he showed the epic as an expression of life, as an experience, which expresses the external reality of life. So, artistic creation has as its objective the task of intensifying the vision towards the outside world, exhibiting itself as a logical and meaningful whole.
Twentieth Century
During the XNUMXth century, a primordial innovation about the concept of art has been imagined: the advancement of rationalist ideas of wisdom, which leads to concepts of subjective and personal nature, from the romantic movement and specifying in the work of writers such like Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, who imagine a break with tradition and a rebound from classical beauty.
The definition of reality was criticized by recent scientific theories: Bergson's time subjectivity, Einstein's relativity, quantum mechanics and many others. But, on the other hand, new technologies transform art into different functions, as is the case with photography and cinema, which are responsible for showing the truth.
All these elements general the beginning of abstract art, the artist, at present, does not try to show reality, what he seeks is to show his inner world, demonstrate his feelings. At present, art has continuous fluctuations towards pleasure, and is transformed in parallel in its company: as occurs with classical art that was based on a philosophy of unalterable ideas, current art finds pleasure in the social conscience of pleasure, that is mass culture.
Likewise, the advanced minimization of illiteracy must be appreciated, because in legendary times, when the majority of the population did not know how to read, graphic art used to be the best way to communicate knowledge, especially in a religious sense, which is not imperative in the twentieth century.
Being one of the first manifestations of Marxism: in the work of Marx, it was shown that art is a cultural "superstructure", which is established by the social and economic conditions of people.
Marxists maintain that art is the reflection of social truth, although Marx himself did not observe an authentic direct communication that was present between a given society and the art it generates.
Gueorgui Valentínovich Plejánov, Russian revolutionary, theoretician and propagandist of Marxism, in Art and Social Life of the year 1912, establishes a materialist aesthetic that refutes "art for art's sake", as well as the personality of the artist who is foreign to the society that involves him. .
Walter Benjamin, German philosopher, literary critic, translator and essayist, once again affected the art of evolution, which makes sense to him, as "the culmination of the dialectic of modernity", the completion of the essay that totalizes art as a expression of the surrounding world. He tried to interpret the role of art in modern society, carrying out a semiotic investigation, where art is exposed through the signs that man tries to decipher without obtaining a supposedly pleasant result.
In the work of art, in the times of tests or technical experiments, year 1936, the way in which the new techniques of industrial reproduction of art were observed, could transform the meaning of art, when it lost its focus on a single object, and in fact its splendor of mythical courtesy, which allows the opening of new paths to admit art, still isolated for Benjamin, however, with a more free and open link with works of art.
Theodor Ludwig Wiesengrund Adorno, a German philosopher, as well as Benjamin, who belonged to the Frankfurt School, protected avant-garde art as a response to the colossal technification of modern society. He maintains in his Aesthetic Theory of the year 1970, he maintained that art is the brilliance of the cultural hobbies of society, however, although it has not been the faithful reflection of it.
Because art shows the non-existent, the unreal, or failing that, it shows what exists, but with the probability of spreading. Art is the "negation of the thing" that through negation manifests it, exhibits what does not exist originally. It is a simulation, falsehood, showing the non-existent as if it were existing, offering that the impossible is possible.
John Dewey was an American pedagogue, psychologist and philosopher, representative of pragmatism, and with experience in art, he conceptualized art as the "culmination of nature", favoring that the foundation of aesthetics is sensory experience.
The artistic function is another result of human nature, whose organization responds to the environmental conditions in which it develops. Thus, art is an "expression" that aims to blend ends and means into an engaging experience.
For Dewey, art as another work carried out by man, involves providing initiative and creativity, as well as the interrelation between subject and object, between the human being and the environmental and material conditions where the activity unfolds.
José Ortega y Gasset, Spanish philosopher and essayist, examined The dehumanization of art in the year 1925, the art of progress from the definition of "mass society", where the small element of avant-garde art generates a struggle of the art-consuming public .
Likewise, Ortega maintains that in art there is a "dehumanization" caused by the loss of historical perspective, which means, of being able to investigate with a wide critical stretch of the sociocultural essence that cooperates towards avant-garde art. The loss of the realistic, mimic approach that Ortega values in avant-garde art presumes an exclusion of the human approach that was present in naturalist art.
Similarly, the loss of the human leads to the disappearance of aspects related to classical art, presuming a break between what is art and the public, and producing a new way of understanding art that can only be understood by its followers.
The aesthetic appreciation of dehumanized art is about a new sensitivity that is based on the non-sentimental resemblance, as was the case with romantic art, but with a distance, an estimation of mixtures. The distancing between art and humanity presumes a purpose of returning being to existence, of diminishing the definition of art as a secondary task of human experience.
Luigi Pareyson, Italian philosopher, in the semiotic school, built the Aesthetics. Theory of modal aesthetics from the year 1954, a hermeneutic aesthetic, which translates technique or method that is responsible for interpreting texts, where art interprets reality. For Pareyson, art is something "formative", which means, it expresses a way of doing that "as well as doing, it invents the way of doing it".
What finally translates, which is not based on perennial regulations, on the contrary, specifies them according to how the work is carried out, and projects them at the moment of carrying them out. So that, in formativity, the work of art does not end as a "result", but an "achievement" where the work finds the norm that qualifies it.
So, art is any function that tries to reach an end, without the intervention of specific means, finding for its execution a process of innovative creativity that ends with genuine and inventive results.
Pareyson, had a great influence on the well-known Turin School, which carried out its ontological concept of art: Umberto Eco, an Italian writer, philosopher and university professor, in The Open Work of 1952, maintained that the work of art is only found in its interpretation, in the opening of various meanings for the viewer. This search for meaning is also observed in the postmodern art, where many interpretations are open to subjectivity.
Gianteresio Vattimo, known as Gianni Vattimo, Italian philosopher, in Poetry and Ontology of 1968, associated art with being, therefore with reality, because it is in art where reality looks more chaste and significant.
This is one of the last consequences of philosophy and art is postmodernity, a term used to name the artistic, cultural, literary and philosophical movements of the XNUMXth century. It is a socio-cultural theory that currently demands the validity of a historical time that had highlighted the modern project, which translates, the cultural, political and economic roots that are authentic to the Contemporary Age indicated culturally by the Enlightenment, in the political by the French Revolution and in the economic aspect indicated by the Industrial Revolution.
At the forefront of the proposals of advanced art, postmodernists do not expose new ideas, neither ethical nor aesthetic; the only thing they do is reinterpret the truth that surrounds them, through the reproduction of previous images, which manage to lose their focus.
The repetition effect envelops the approach of art within art itself, the frustration of artistic commitment is admitted, the inability of art to convert daily existence. Postmodern art returns without decorum to the usual true essence, to the work of object art, to "art for art's sake", without attempting to carry out any type of revolution, nor a break. Certain of its most significant theoreticians are Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault.
To conclude, it can be said that the old formulas base art on the formation of the beautiful, or failing that, on the repetition of nature, which have turned out to be archaic, and today art is an energetic condition, which is in permanent evolution, also introduced in the mass media, in the consumer media, with elements many times as fleeting, with a brief perception, which is effectively present between the idea and the object, in its conceptual beginnings and in its physical execution.
Morris Weitz, an American philosopher, especially devoted to the field of aesthetics, and a representative of analytical aesthetics, maintained in The Role of Theory in Aesthetics from 1957, that “it is impossible to establish any kind of criteria of art that are necessary and sufficient; therefore, any theory of art is a logical impossibility, and not simply something that is difficult to obtain in practice.”
According to Weitz's approach, an internal quality that artistic creativity possesses is that it generally generates new forms and objects, so "the conditions of art can never be established in advance." Likewise, “the basic assumption that art can be the subject of any realistic or true definition is false”
Finally, the lack of definition of art lies in its reduction to specific categories such as: imitation, recreation, as expression. Art is seen as a complete concept, which contains all these statements and many other things. A definition in evolution and that is open to novel interpretations, that cannot be established in an agreed way, on the contrary, it must gather all the interests of expressing and formulating it, being an extensive and subjective synopsis of all of them.
Art is a conscious human activity capable of reproducing things, building forms, or expressing an experience, if the product of this reproduction, construction, or expression can delight, move, or shock.
Władysław Tatarkiewicz, A Story of Six Ideas. 1976
Theories of art and most significant authors
Research methods of the History of Art
Einfuhlung. Empathy by: Einfühlung
Wilhelm Worringer, from: Wilhelm Worringer
Formalism
Jacob Burckhardt, belonging to the previous period
Max Dvorak, de:Max Dvorak
Iconology
Aby Warburg
Erwin panofsky
Ernst Hans Joseph Gombrich
sociology of art
Pierre Francastel, fr:Pierre Francastel
Structuralism
Michel Foucault
Umberto Eco
Synopsis on the theory of art
By custom, a theory of art has for its object the very concept of its object. The degree of difficulty presented by any theory of art has a double root. On the one hand, the diversity of media, practices and objects, which we often consider to be artistic. On the other hand, the diversity of activities and values that works of art have carried out throughout their history.
During the last century, with the appearance of the so-called ready made, the conflict of conceptualizing art worsened when it was possible to make art with any object, without there being the possibility of understanding at first sight, something that was exhibited in a museum as a work of art, or failing that it will form part of the furniture equipment.
Probably, a way to fix the diversity of functions, values and concepts that, with any simple reading of an art history, places it as notorious to continue with the art historian, is that EH Gombrich, maintains "There is nothing that is Art ; there are only artists”.
Which means in a transparent way, that attention must be paid to the skills that generate art, and analyze how they determine it, from the very center of the practice, which ends up being important from the interpretation and estimation approach.
So, with all the problems of the concept of art, it has been one of the central conflicts of contemporary Aesthetics, which in its majority in the face of the uncertainty produced by the case of the ready made, as well as certain emblematic works of art that correspond to the century XX, such as the Brillo Boxes by A. Warhol, who has tried to deal with the subject with new tools.
On the one hand, it can be seen between conceptions that admit a descriptive use of the definition of art, and those that remain within the concept of art, which is used especially in an evaluative way.
Without the existence of artistic merit there would be no art. A concept of art, it is considered that belonging to the artistic environment is not limited by the recognition of a certain value or merit, but by the liking of a certain non-valuative property. According to this definition, any element can be art, however, it is not necessarily valuable.
Art as representation is one of the most legendary definitions of art that recognizes it with the essence of the artistic to personification. In general, the element of representation generates a wide amplitude and low luminosity as a category to understand the artistic world.
A painting or a sculpture can be considered as visual representations, just as a hieroglyph is, but this kind of figurative sculpture is not considered to establish in its own essence an artistic personification.
Similarly, the knowledge of representation looks little if you look at artistic practices such as music or architecture where knowledge does not transcend. All in all, the thought of what brings together the different artistic practices is the knowledge of personification, which has come a long way in the history of aesthetic thought.
For the Greeks, the thought of painting, sculpture, drama or music came together under the approach of mimetic personification that was admitted. A simple way to understand mimetic personification may lie in a personification class that will simulate the sentient aspect of what it represents. We recommend mesopotamian art for its cultural importance.
The actor will personify the character, copying his gestures, his way of speaking and behaving, while the painting will personify some grapes to exhibit their visual appearance. A more suitable way of understanding the legendary definition of mimesis would hold that the artistic object forms the illusion of the object it shows.
So, the painting of some grapes by Zeusis, or a hanging by Parrhasius can achieve the effect of visualizing something that does not really exist and the adverse drama of generating the emotion that the vision of events would generate.
Finally, what will merge painting, and sculpture and drama, would be the ability to form the illusion of the objects and events shown. Being what would differentiate art from other kinds of representations such as: linguistic ones, it would be the ability to bring the same object shown to the senses. This approach to representation is what works in the Platonic criticism of art as a "mere copy of appearances" and "deception of the senses", as occurs in the Aristotelian conception of misfortune.
For the purposes of the legendary world and until the Renaissance, painters and sculptors were craftsmen who had the ability to master a technique, while poets and musicians were not considered within the same group, contrary to the pre-sophistical conception these were people who created through enthusiasm, which means, because they were inspired by the muses.
At the time of the Middle Ages, poetry and music were considered as liberal arts and not mechanical as mimetics come to be. Later, in the concept of the disciplines, music is marked in the Quadrivium, while poetry maintains it within the Kristeller Trivium. However, there is still no common type of arts, a definition of art that encompasses all those that are known today and are considered different from other disciplines such as science or philosophy.
To conclude, roughly, two great moments can be evidenced in the development and advance of the history of Art, namely, the first, which began with Leon Battista Alberti, from 1404 to 1472, which took place until the middle of the XIX century, during this time it is intended to specify what the object of study of this discipline refers to, what period it studies, and the styles and artist.
