Towards a Methodology of Artistic Research. Nov 8th

Transcription

1 Towards a Methodology of Artistic Research Nov 8th

2 Undercurrents What we are doing next is an attempt to recognize a discourse that was not mainstream but still identifiable enough Not all were taken by technological principle and Enlightenment beliefs: undercurrents were evident but their impact to mainstream culture blurred During the period of practice, craft, art and techné were not propagated as sources of knowledge or moral reasoning but as practices only, without any other significance

3 Giorgio Vasari One book became important: Vasari s Life of the Artists; it was published in 1568; then read as biographies but hundred years later as a source of a forgotten tradition Vasari was no original thinker but he had a keen eye to the difference between thinking and doing, thus to techné as well He gave explanations that become common property for a long time, mainly paraphrases from Aristotle understood in a new context

4 Vasari Vasari thought that disegno is the main concept if one has a wish to understand techné Disegno is in techné what eloquentia is for (or: in) conceptual culture Vasari sees the truth of disegno originating in Nature; it comes to be seen when something is expressed with hands Thus doing makes Nature to be sensed, to become seen and appreciated

5 Vasari Disegno includes an evaluation: from many experiences (observations, etc.) something will be concluded in practice and done by hands: this is a skill of coming to be, as Aristotle called it (in Posterior Analytics 100a2-9) concluded in practice indicates knowhow, practical sensitivity, intuition of what can be done and what not

6 Vasari Vasari read Aristotle to his own purposes and explained the difference between scientia and disegno: scientia is demonstrative knowledge of eternal, whereas disegno is for living, something good for human beings The former originates in abstraction, the latter in well-done practice

7 Vasari In disegno, we use two instances: techné and phronesis They are differing only in the former concerning purposeful making, the latter any kind of doing Together they disclose the characteristics of practice: one needs skill (techné) and ability to assess (phronesis)

8 Vasari Aristotelian word phronesis is understood quite differently in different times It belongs to practical wisdom It describes the relation between the know and the how in know-how: phronesis shows whether a craftsman s practice is good or not; it is good if the artefact works, i.e. it finds it context in everyday life of human beings

9 Vasari This interpretation of phronesis has been (historically, at least) important: it gave an idea that not anything is good if done; instead something done must find its place in casual life and be of some use Assessment in/as phronesis gives valuable information of the procedure of disegno: purposeful making can be managed more properly on the basis of everyday assessment of accidental doings, i.e. by experience

10 Vasari Vasari seems to have thought that in disegno, with the help of phronesis and techné, a craftsman is able to find out what is the practical principle that guides our making in the human environment, a law on some kind that is no abstract natural law but the kind of law that makes it possible to human chores to fit into Nature, not being pervert, unnatural, against Nature

11 Vasari, a second thought Vasari has, as well, a modern side where he strongly emphasized an all-bound theory that will explain everything He saw this being separate from human activities but reachable by making and thinking, in the outcome that was called (Renaissance-wise) poetics His favourite was Michelangelo who aside of his doing and making was a poet: ut pictura poesis meant here that making gave birth to a meta-level that was scientia

12 Vasari

13 Vasari In this sense, in the modern spirit, all was scientia, in the end, though there was the divide between craftsmen who were proud of their phronesis, and the literary men (mostly of higher social order) who were poets and/or pursued theories as abstractions

14 And then Vasari was significant mainly because of his ideas, so inconsistent as they may look like (the 2 nd and 3 rd edition of the Lives are quite different and not harmonized), and he was read through centuries as a traditionalist, a defender of craft and techné, though he could be read in the opposite sense, as well

15 Swift The debate between scientia and disegno did not disappear Jonathan Swift ( ) was a writer who used satire as his style but he wrote very clear texts on the theme of knowledge, its sources and the status of craft in modern society He is best known because of his Gulliver s Travels that is the main source of his ideas

16 Swift In Gulliver s Travels most of the men are craftsmen who are entirely dependent on their skills and materials, Gulliver included; Swift had a great admiration to well-managed practices Instead, he had a lesser admiration to the modern men who assembled in beautiful buildings in order to write and discuss on issues not ever experienced by them Swift wrote on the Academy of Lagado, a fictitious assembly of moderns (See attached file under the title doc )

17 Academy of Lagado

18 Academy of Lagado Swift is very illustrative when he describes the learned men of modernity, how they try to solve problems with science, and have no practical knowledge at all, nor a disposition to yearn for some practice On the contrary, they use all other approaches but practical in questions like how to prevent Sun shining over cucumbers; the rest of the time the men were begging money for their research Pleading for money & trying to solve practical problems with abstract solutions quite modern end