1st Lecture — Abstract

Where does art theory fit in

I originally wrote this text for a different purpose and I have only rewritten it for this occasion. Perhaps I could replace the terms art, art and artness with architectural, architectural and architecture. But I think that would lose some of the breadth of the text, so I have left those terms alone.

***

When it comes to education in the arts, we start from the constant apparent duality between talent and education; in reality, it is a confluence and coexistence. We start from the assumption that talent without education is dumbed down, and education without talent is empty. Education is not and cannot be a substitute for talent; on the contrary, education activates talent. As the architect Durand says, we need to learn certain skills first, so that only later can we see if we have any talent at all. Learning is (only) a necessary condition to be able to use the talent, for the talent to come to the fore at all. Education introduces talent and actively prepares it to enter the practice of the profession, as the painter Frank Stella would say, its “workspace”.

The main characteristic of education is that it builds on the past and prepares us for the new. Or, as the architect Kevin Lynch puts it, by knowing the past and acting in the present, we are training for the future. It would therefore be very wrong to conceive of education only in formal terms, as a collection of past experiences, facts and recipes. Experience, facts and recipes, like all rules, only ensure that we can expect in advance what we will end up with if we stick to them. But the essential emphasis is on the ‘if’. Past experience is only a possibility, not a condition. Therefore, the purpose of education is to master the process (as such) through experience. So education, as the ordering of past experience, is only the beginning, and its application is the goal. It is above all a way of acquiring new information from the past; of drawing logical conclusions from the known to the new; of learning to use the past while being attentive to the limits of the use itself. Thus, with education, with knowledge of past experience, we have the tools we need at any given moment.

We must learn to observe our own (and others’) use of experience and to use creative, formative thinking as the active basis of that use. The point is to learn to look back at the thinking we have used and are still using when we work with experience. It is a feedback loop; we are “watching” ourselves in the action of using experience and so gaining new experiences. Education could therefore be defined as a deliberate introduction to doing with experience.

In art practice, we create a new art product based on experience, conception and knowledge, in which all previous engagement with the discipline is manifested: the mastery of tools, skills, technical and technological knowledge and skills. This is the coexistence of practice and knowledge. One could even say that artistic practice is the rearrangement and transformation of artistic materials and artistic space.

Art practice is clearly about working on two inseparable foundations. One is the sphere of direct practical activity, which is governed by actual tools, manual skills and mechanical manipulations of the art material. The other is the area of our “application”, of reflection; this is the area of inventiveness and artistic thinking. Practical action is very close to craft, but theory explores the content of artistic expression and looks for ways – it explores (artistic) conception (ideology) and artistic facts.

Both works form a functional whole, which is directly concluded in the practical action of painting, printmaking, sculpture, architecture or design.

*

Art practice is the web and mutual dependence (not the sum (!) – addition, addition) of practical action and theoretical reflection. Practical action resides in studio work or practice. The theoretical side of artistic action is made up of three intertwined layers:

1 – Layer of artistic conception

Art theory reflects the conceptual basis of artistic creation.

It explains or represents the creator’s personal world view; it is the mental starting points and goals by which he or she creates in a certain way in a certain direction. We are talking about poetics in which a worldview is expressed.

The starting points are defined in the artistic creations; that is to say, the creations point to the starting points.

2 and 3 – Layers of artistic facts

Art theory and art technology together constitute the field of artistic realisation.

2

Art theory develops the outlines of the tools of artistic expression of contextual starting points; it is the theory of the expression of artistic content.

It explains or presents the conditions and circumstances of the artistic realisation of the premises and aims with which art theory is concerned. It is based on the logic of artistic means of expression and formative procedures. It is about the way in which artistic messages are formulated and about the conditions and laws. It deals with the transition of artistic thought into artistic materials, when artistic content passes into form. It is a tool for describing artistic facts; it is a tool for creating formative strategies that manifest themselves as authorial expressive systems and are finally manifested in the compositional structure of artistic forms. This allows the design of formal relationships.

3

Art technology is the technical-technological basis of artistic realisation and constitutes the actual link between practical and theoretical action. Expressive systems can only be realised through the use of appropriate physical tools and technical procedures that have their theoretical and practical side. Theoretically, they are dealt with in art technology, while practically they are put into practice in studio practice.

*

All three layers converge into practical art practice in direct studio work. As the art theorist Jožef Muhovič states, without art theory this would be mere craftsmanship (formalism), without art theory it would be cheap image-making (amateurism), and without the knowledge of art technology it would be dilettantism.

1

Art Theory The course introduces the student to the logic of the historical transformations of the formative aims of fine art in changing social conditions, to its embeddedness in the broader context of civilization, to its attitudinal infrastructure, and especially seeks to encourage the student to go beyond historical facts in a meaningful way, and to reflect reflectively on the contextual background and perspectives of his own artistic creation.

2

Knowledge underlying successful conceptual planning of artistic realisation. These subjects systematically build insight into the laws, possibilities and limitations of the means of artistic expression, develop a sense of their systematic mastery, and especially create the conceptual conditions for translating the attitudinal (conceptual) assumptions of artistic creation into their formal equivalents, for logically progressing from the formal facts we have already acquired to the ones that are still lacking in the conceptual goal, i.e., for planning the formative strategies of the future.

3

Technical-technological procedures The task of the courses is to develop the technical-technological basis of artistic realisation, without which even such a wonderful goal or content and even such a unique formative strategy would never be able to reach an effective and unforced artistic reality.

*

The subject matter of education at the FA is logically aligned with the multifaceted practice of art. Direct artistic realisation is covered by the core subject Design Seminar. It is a studio practice; a meeting point and a practical verification of the knowledge of the theoretical subjects. Here the student has direct or individual (artistic) guidance. The course is open to exploration, but it is by no means “laboratory”! This activity is very similar to an actual artistic or architectural (-studio) practice.

By contrast, all theoretical subjects are in principle laboratory subjects. They deal with the subject of artistic creativity in a generalised and refined way under deliberately controlled circumstances. They try to know the laws and the general in artistic reality and to express this in a logical and practically applicable form, describing the actual situation not in its uniqueness but in its typicality (in the characteristic of the structure). They talk less about the concrete realisation or occurrence in the history of fine art and more about the conditions that a certain artistic realisation or occurrence must satisfy in order to be given the status of a certain kind of creation. Therefore, we are free to apply the insights of these objects in new and unpredictable circumstances. This is the domain of the principles that govern the operation of experience in artistic practice.

With these objects we see the artistic reality in conception and we place the artistic conception in reality.

The study process at FA is designed in such a way that we start with quite abstract elements and use them to build new artistic spaces in which most of the ordinary experiences of existential space are united according to a single logical principle. The condition for this is that the theoretical base is as versatile as possible, that it is not an end in itself and that it does not end with forms that have already been established throughout history, but that it serves to design the circumstances of artistic creation, which is fundamentally spatial. Thus, the theory of artistic reality is a gathering of attention for creation.