2nd Lecture — Abstract

Art Theory as the Internal Framework of Art Education Theory

Milan Butina

Art theory is the part of art theory that deals with the study of all aspects of art, while art theory deals with the study of artistic speech. Perhaps nowhere is the distinction between science and its object of study more pronounced than in the field of art. Therefore, when writing about art theory, it is necessary to start from this distinction, clearly aware that art is not science and science is not art.

In my paper I will start from this distinction between art and science, drawing on the American philosopher Morris Weitz’s reflections on the role of theory in aesthetics, because his thoughts, in my judgment, apply to all scientific theories whose subject is art. “Philosophers, critics, and even artists who have written about art agree that the primary theory in aesthetics is the theory of the nature of art”, Weitz writes, and goes on to say that, despite many theories, “we seem to be no closer to the goal (i.e., the definition of art, MB) today than we were in Plato’s time. Every age, every artistic movement, every philosophy of art, tries again and again to reach the ideal it has set itself, only to be replaced by a new or revised theory that is based, at least in part, on the negation of the previous ones”. For him, the basic inadequacy of theories of art stems from a fundamental misunderstanding of the being of art. “Aesthetic theories – all of them – are wrong in principle to think that a correct theory is possible, because they misinterpret the logic of the concept of art. Their main controversial claim is in the view that ‘art’ is amenable to a true or any real definition … In art, as the logic of the concept shows, necessary and sufficient properties cannot be found in a sufficiently large number, and therefore no theory is logically possible, and it is not merely that it is actually difficult … Therefore, the problem with which we must begin is not ‘What is art?’ but ‘What kind of a concept is art?’ The fundamental problem of philosophy is really how to explain the relationship between the use of certain kinds of concepts and the conditions under which they can be used correctly”.

It is an indisputable fact that the arts exist. But all of us who are involved in any theoretical way with art know the problem that Morris Weitz is talking about: we don’t really know what the term “art” means to everyone, because everyone uses it in their own way. None of the definitions of the term that have emerged throughout history are any longer useful or are only partially useful today. Weitz therefore recognises the need for an open concept of art and says: “A concept is open if the conditions of its use can be improved and corrected… If we can establish the necessary and sufficient conditions for the use of a concept, the concept is closed. But this can only happen in logic and mathematics, where concepts are constructed and fully defined. This is not possible with empirically descriptive and normative concepts, unless they are abstractly closed by agreement on the scope of their application”. It is clear, however, that open-ended concepts can lead to misunderstandings and make scientific work much more difficult, especially if it is inspired by the natural sciences. To add to the difficulties of scientific theories of art, each science has a specific corpus of fundamental concepts that are its own and that are integrated into a system that is certainly not the system of art. It is therefore usually the case that when a science casts its net of concepts over art, it can only cover what its concepts cover. It follows, however, that what it does is certainly not specific to art, but only to that particular science.

All scientific approaches are therefore doomed to barely touch art without being able to capture it fully, without being able to capture it as art. Science, therefore, by its very nature, always remains outside art. This is far from meaning that scientific theories about art do not, in their own way, illuminate and clarify the phenomenon of art and are therefore unnecessary. It only means that they cannot capture and explain art in a way that is appropriate to it, because they can only explain it in their own way. They always remain only theories about art and can never become theories of art. For example, aesthetics is not a philosophical theory of art, but a philosophical theory about art. But aesthetics can be a philosophical theory or doctrine of the beautiful, because the question of the beautiful is a question of reception, not of making art. Artists repeatedly propose new possibilities for the existence of the beautiful, which are then rejected or accepted by a community and theorised by philosophy in a theory of the beautiful. The sciences are always convinced that they are making theories of art and are usually not even aware that the most they can make is a theory of art.

From what I have said, it is clear that I do not reject any scientific theory of art, because every insight can enrich us. Therefore, I am of the opinion that the theory of art education must use all those scientific theories of art which can help it in its research. At the same time, I think that it is necessary to look for the possibility of studying art from within, with theoretical research that comes from artistic practice, but which will have to use the right scientific methods. I am then arguing for a scientifically grounded theoretical exploration of art from within, in the form of a theory that will grow directly out of the laws of the art being studied, which will therefore have its roots in art and not outside it. The question that immediately arises is: is this even possible, and what would be the benefit of such a scientifically based theory of art for the theory of art education?

 

First of all, it is probably necessary to answer the question: does art practice even allow for the right conceptual thinking that would make it possible to build a scientific theory of art from within? In principle, it is possible to derive concepts from any phenomenon, including art practice, if they are not there. But who says they are not there? There have been many artists in history who have thought about their art and written down their thoughts and insights. In our century, the theoretical thought of artists is very rich, to mention only Malevich, Klee, Kandinsky, where very abstract concepts are used, which are not inferior to scientific ones in depth and applicability. Usually scientists know the concepts of their science very well, but they know and understand very little, if any, artistic concepts, and therefore cannot use them. They usually come out of this saying that artistic writings and theories are inappropriate and useless for scientific use.

One part of their resistance and misunderstanding stems from the fact that artistic concepts are inherently syncretic. What I mean by “syncretic” is that they are not abstract in the way that scientific concepts are, because they are always tied to their material bearers and to sensory modalities of perception. Therefore, they are at the same time thought-abstract on the one hand, and sense-concrete on the other, because only in this way can they be defined according to their nature. The definition of a visual concept must therefore include both its mental abstractness and its sensuous concreteness, and here, of course, all science fails, because this is contrary to its nature. But what is the definition of a concept? It is a verbal description of some mental knowledge; and what is a word? A word is a sensuous sign for thought. In our predominantly verbal and written mode of communication, we forget that spoken words are also sound phenomena, that written words are also visual phenomena, and therefore we forget that any means of expression and communication is always also sensuous-concrete, however abstract its content. It is characteristic of the verbal-written mode of expression that the material carriers and the content they carry do not come from the same medium, and that therefore the transfer from the medium in which the research knowledge is produced to the medium in which it is expressed tears the link between the knowledge and the field that is known. In the arts, however, it is mostly the case, especially in the visual arts, that we remain within the same medium, that we express the knowledge we have gained visually in a visual way that is also visual. This is why the expressive means of art are more emphatically linked to sensuality and materiality than scientific ones. Therefore, when defining artistic concepts, it is always necessary to take into account this sensual and material component as an integral part of the description of the definition of the concept. Sometimes this cannot be done with verbal equivalents, because words cannot carry all the content, or may not be available at all. But this does not mean that it is not possible to define a visual concept, it is just that the description uses different descriptive possibilities.

If we try, for example, to decompose architectural practice as an example of artistic practice into its fundamental components, we can obtain a schematic structure like this:

→ → → → architectural
(fine art)
theories as worldviews
→→ → → → scientific content
→ → → → architectural
(artistic)
theoretical practice
→ → → → art theory as a doctrine
of the means of expression
→→ → → → expressive systems

architecture
(artistic) creation

↕︎ → → → → architectural
(art) technology
→→ → → → technical processes
→ → → → → → → → → → → → architectural
(art) practice
→→ → → → design and formulation

Other arts could be structured in a similar way. In any case, such a structure of an art discipline reveals that it is necessarily made up of mental as well as sensual and material parts, and therefore enables us, in our search for appropriate concepts and conceptual systems, to turn to those works where we will find such conceptual formations that we can use them to formulate a theory of art and use them as a basis for research, using the scientific methods best suited to such research.

A deeper analysis of this scheme tells us that not all parts of the structure are equally suitable for extracting open-ended concepts from. Fine art theories (as expressions of a worldview) are closed because they are oriented towards certain dimensions of reality in a very particular way. E.g. the impressionist worldview and the impressionist theory derived from it is oriented towards a very specific domain of reality that opened up to the impressionists in their time as relevant to them and worthy of artistic treatment. Each -ism has its own exclusive field of interest and therefore also a limited, closed sphere of its artistic attention. This closed sphere of reality, which is transformed into an artistic and thus cultural reality by the members of a particular artistic outlook, is defined in their works of art. The paintings are finite syntagms that point to their theoretical paradigms from which they emerged. Or to put it another way: the paintings formulate the essential contents that are more or less explicitly given by artistic theories. Art historians and aestheticians are always complaining that the artists’ manifestos and theories are not clear and telling enough. If they were, then there would be no point in painting any more; paintings are the final statement of artists and form a whole with manifestos and verbally expressed theoretical premises. More precisely, what was possible to express visually from these starting points. Of course, it is necessary to know how to read paintings. Because paintings are the concrete expression of an artistic idea, they are a linguistic formulation, that is to say, a sensuous-concrete formulation of an abstract artistic idea. The idea in the mind is just a thought, an idea, it is a pure abstraction that is “seen” only by the artist himself. Only the painted picture is a formulated thought, the painter’s thought exists only in a sensuous-concrete way. For the reasons given above, works of art are also closed systems of concretised closed pictorial conceptual systems. Open concepts will not be found here. The field of fine art technology is not primary to the theory of fine art, but that does not mean that it is not important.

But is it not a mistake to speak of conceptual thinking in relation to art, since art, according to many, grows out of emotion? In my judgment, in the artistic creative process, the emotional experience of the world and the rational cognition of the world are equivalent categories. In order to create, a painter must experience the world and his work emotionally and grasp it rationally. Only when he has grasped himself and his experience of the world, and on the basis of this has found his expressive possibilities, can he express this experience and cognition adequately in the language of art. The emotional experience of the world, the rational grasp of this experience and the rational artistic analysis and execution must merge into a single process if it is to lead to a complete artistic expression. Only such a totality of the emotional and rational components of pictorial expression can ensure the totality of the viewer’s aesthetic experience. Emotionally experienced reality can only be transformed into an artistic art form through an extremely rational approach in the analysis of the experience and the means and possibilities of expression. The very process of artistic formulation and design is a rationally guided process. The “genius” of a painter always has at least two components: a great sensibility in relation to reality and, adequate to this sensibility, the ability to realise it in the artistic material. Both components must be able to be rationally analysed by the painter and the results of the analysis synthesised in a painterly formulation, an artistic form. Of course, the method of this rational work is not the same as the scientific one, especially because it is always immersed in the subjective situation of the painter and not in the objective research relationship that is characteristic of science.

Artistic experience and thought, therefore, can only be discovered and expressed in a system of artistic expression. Visual expression systems are languages in the proper sense, because they are articulated in the primary plane of visual syntax and in the secondary plane of visual outline elements (i.e. in the two planes required by linguists in order to recognise a communication technique as a language). The basic visual outlining elements are: shape, light-dark, colour, line and point; (they are outlining elements because they are used to outline shapes and all other visual relations). Since they are derived from and return to sensory reality in artistic practice, their meanings simultaneously refer to those parts of reality from which they are derived. Each such visual expressive element is a fundamental visual concept and as such subject to the laws of thought. At the same time, it is also a sensory-perceptual element of the pictorial outline and thus subject to the laws of sensory perception and emotional experience. Since it is necessarily carried by a material carrier, it is also subject to the laws of matter (which is what art technology deals with). It therefore unites all three basic layers of human existence: the material, the sensual and the spiritual. At the same time, it is accessible only through its sensual manifestation. Only through a painting can we access the painter’s thought and emotion, only through the process of painting can the painter express his thought and emotion. When he analyses reality, the painter moves from materiality through sensuality to emotion and thought; when he expresses his experience and cognition in the language of painting, he descends from the mental through the sensual to the material; from the purely mental layer to the pictorial substance.

 

It is good to know what Ferdinand de Saussure, one of the founders of modern linguistics, thinks of this process of the descent of thought into language: “Taken by itself, thought is like a nebula, where nothing is necessarily limited. there are no preconceived ideas, and nothing is discernible before the appearance of language. But do signs, as opposed to this swaying empire, of themselves offer preconfined beings? No, no more. The substance of sound is no more definite nor more solid; it is not a mould whose form thought must necessarily cling to, but a plastic substance which also divides itself into specific parts in order that the signs necessary to thought may be produced ( … ) Thought, which is chaotic by its very nature, is forced to specify itself by dividing itself into parts. Language might be called the field of articulation … Each linguistic term is a small link, an articulus, where thought stops in sound, where sound becomes the sign of an idea. Language can also be compared to a sheet of paper: thought is the front, the recto, and sound is the back, the verso; it is not possible to cut the recto without cutting the verso at the same time. In language, too, it is not possible to separate sound from thought, nor thought from sound. This could only be done by means of abstractions …”

 

This thought of de Saussure’s also applies to visual language, with colour standing in for sound. Of particular relevance to visual expression is de Saussure’s emphasis that it is impossible to separate thought from the language in which thought is expressed. Thought cannot articulate itself adequately if it does not take into account the requirements and laws of the material in which it is to be expressed. Thought articulates its material bearers and these bearers help thought to articulate itself adequately. They enable each other to give rise to an artistic form appropriate to thought and matter. However, since it is characteristic of fine art that it remains within the same medium, that is to say, within visual and tactile space, this also means that fine art thought and its material vehicles are linked to the laws of visual and tactile perception, which enable fine art thought, which is thought about space, to settle properly in fine art materials, which are sensuous and spatial by their nature. This inner union enables the artistic thought to be realised as a possible spatial artistic reality, which can become the spatial reality of a given society at a given time.

In the problem of language, we must be aware that artistic thinking is different from scientific and philosophical thinking, that their systems of expression, their languages, are also different. Logical discursive thinking is characterised by having a primarily cognitive function and by its very nature unfolding in a linear, temporal sequence: each thought follows on from the one before it. It is purely abstract, it is purely thought. Visual thinking, as we have seen, is different in its nature. Above all, it is not only a mental cognition, but it is also an emotional experience. Because of its attachment to material media, it is also directly productive – the artist thinks directly in the artwork, when he shapes the art materials in accordance with his artistic conception. Therefore, artistic thinking is the direct creation of space and the bodies in it. It is the direct transformation of an abstract idea into a new and concrete possibility of the existence of spirit and matter in the artistic product. Because of its material nature, it has several dimensions, which are spatial and only indirectly include the temporal dimension. Artistic thinking is therefore not a discursive thinking, but a thinking about space that takes place in space. It therefore takes place in three dimensions, which are transcended by its spiritual dimension, and only in that dimension does it connect with the discursive thinking of philosophy and science.

This direct and necessary connection between art language and art thinking makes it possible to formulate a specific theoretical discipline, art theory, which makes it possible to think about art from the inside, on the basis of its own concepts. We can speak of art theory in both a narrow and a broad sense. In the narrower sense, art theory is the theory of visual language, it is a visual linguistics and is concerned with the study of visual grammar, morphology, composition, etc. As a visual linguistics, art theory already has at its disposal a large corpus of concepts, which are open-ended concepts, because they allow any complete visual system of thought to choose the linguistic concepts it needs and to implement them in its own way in its visual expression. Because the flow of artistic thought into artistic language is necessary, because artistic linguistic concepts have only minimal semantic values that allow their use in any system of artistic expression, and because they are open-ended, because they can be used with great freedom, they allow entry through themselves into any artistic thought and thus open up the possibility for an artistic theory in a broader sense, for a true theory of the fine arts from within. Such a theory of art will be able to carry out the tasks that Zoran Didek has defined as follows:

“Art theory analytically and comparatively investigates, develops and justifies form and form-forming creative processes … towards a complete information about the origin and meaning of the artistic form and its sensible use.

Art theory defines the formation of works of visual art from conception to creation, in visual, analytical and creative formulations of the art form.
Art theory introduces rational organisation into the intuitive world by selecting the most appropriate elements, models and methods for the creation of works of art.”
Just as I agree with the idea that art practice cannot be the basic theory of art education – since it is not possible to turn a practice into a theory – I am also convinced that in art education one cannot bypass art practice without the danger of leaving the main goals of art education unattained, namely the understanding of art. If the art viewer is to recreate a work of art, then this will be most easily achieved if he is guided through active creative practice, through the space of art, not around it. From the analysis of production and consumption we can see that painting (production) creates for the art spectator (consumption) not only the image as the object of spectatorship, but also the definition, character and completion of this spectatorship. A painting is not a painting in general, but a certain painting that has been created from a certain artistic viewing of the painter. This artistic viewing has defined the painting itself and, therefore, also every subsequent viewing of the painting, and therefore also the way of viewing of each viewer. Painting then determines the way of looking at the painting in an objective and subjective way: by the painting itself and by the way of artistic looking which has objectified itself in the painting; painting therefore determines the spectator in the sense that it determines the way of looking at the painting. “Art – just like any product – creates an audience that has a sense of art and is capable of enjoying beauty”, writes Marx. Painting therefore produces 1/ the image, the object of looking at, 2/ the way of looking at the image, 3/ the need to look at the image, and 4/ arouses in the painter the inner need to paint the image. Since art theoretical concepts are not closed but open, since they are not moulds, as de Saussure would say, whose form artistic thought must necessarily cling to, we must understand them in the right way, because “The concept is but that which mediates between form and content … that form may only be the development of content”. The artistic – I stress, artistic – content is the artistic form and the artistic form is the artistic content. Of course, the art form can also carry other, non-art content, but the understanding of art can only be reached through the understanding of the art form. Each art form is the result of the inter-art relations in a certain art expression system of the participating art categories. Therefore, artistic thought and artistic emotion live only in the relations of the artistic form. So that there is no misunderstanding. When I say that in art education it is necessary to guide the pupil through the practice of art, I do not mean that he himself must create art. I mean that he has to be made very aware of the specificity of artistic thinking and expression in a very demonstrative way, and this demonstrativeness is the inner way through the theory of art. If he does art himself, it will be so much easier for him to understand and feel this specificity of art.

Because: since art theoretical concepts are open concepts, because they mediate between form and content, they can be used in any relation to the art form, both by the creator and by the spectator. Such an open concept is closed only by a certain artistic practice, because it has to decide on the extent and manner of its use, in accordance with its own mental starting point, its own artistic outlook. Through this openness of art-theoretical concepts, it is possible to penetrate into every closed artistic use and the resulting expression and form, and in this way to understand it from the inside. The notion of light-dark has its minimal semantic value – describing space and volume is, as John Constable said, a space-creating force. Therefore, this is the starting point for the right reading of this concept in e.g. the Renaissance, the Baroque or Cubism, although in the Renaissance it was realised as modelling, (shading), in the Baroque as a spatial displacement of light and dark planes and in Cubism as a spatial break.

Fine art concepts have their roots in visual perception and, as they are realised in a work of art, they become visually perceptible again. But the term “visual art”, which is supposed to designate fine art, does not point to the change that takes place in the transition from the purely visual plane to the fine art plane. In visual perception, for example, light-dark, or rather, luminosity values are inseparable from other visual properties of visible reality to form a perceptual whole. In visual analysis, however, luminance values can be separated from other visual values, isolated and used as independent values. But when they are isolated, when they are lifted out of their connections in reality, they are given a chance of a life of their own and begin to behave according to laws inherent in themselves, e.g. differently from the colour values so isolated. The artist is by nature sensitive to this own life of the artistic phenomena, knows how to follow them and allows them to live their own life. Whoever wants to understand the play of art, the expression of artistic experiences and cognitions, must cultivate an understanding of the specific visual value of the visual phenomena which art elevates from the visual to the artistic, that is to say, from the purely sensuous plane to the spiritual plane.

To point to this specificity of the visual, to discover it and to make it available to art education, is the task of art theory. This is also the basis of my conviction that art theory, in the narrower sense as a theory of art language and in the broader sense as a theory of art, is the inner framework of art methodology, i.e. that theoretical construction which can provide art education theory with inner strength, solidity and effectiveness in art education practice.

Schema of art theoretical concepts

Photology Morphology
A
Morphology
B
Syntax of the art space Syntax of art composition
light-dark
line
point
colour
spatial
Form
planar
size
weight (mass)
position
direction
number
density
linear
tonal
valerian
colour
etc.
replication
harmony
colour
dominance
etc.