 |
 |
To return to my starting point,
Art is much more than a collection of productions : it is a philosophy, an
history, methods to understand the meaning of works in their context, methods to
understand why this works has been produces in such a way because of the
available techniques (the relation between the chemistry of colours and the
“innovation” of Tintoretto, the relation between the progress of metallurgy and
the apparition of the ronde-bosses in the 13th century the Pisanos in
Sienna), methods to understand the secret meaning of the works like (for
instance) what Freud propose in his “essays of Applied Psychoanalysis”,
Iconography, the links between texts and visual production (from Warburg to
Panofsky), and so on. And all this constellation of disciplines related to art,
are themselves using various field of Science : psychology, history,
chemistry.
I have not yet read in those
excited exchange between Accorn members any reflection on how the methods
developed and mobilized to study art could be transferred, adapted, to study
this recent productions (comparatively to art) that are economic decisions. (I
hate to quote myself, but there is a modest try in a paper published a long time
ago in various languages and journals entitled “Portrait of the Manager as an
Artist”). Decisions are linked together by their context, their “authors”, they
are series such as works of art. They can be classified according to school of
thoughts, (may be alike “scuola” in. painting).
Ok that’s all, I am sorry if I am
not clear enough, sorry for my French.
I am presently working (not
professionally, as a dilettante) on a “theory” of art considering that a work of
art is a solution, perhaps the only solution if you take into account all the
constraint (technical, of style, of his personal history, of the patrons, of the
location, etc.) that the author could produce. If you demonstrate or accept this
hypothesis studying a work id reconstructions the tree of choices that –
consciously or not – the author has made. I think that such a “theory” could
have some resonance in management study. I this topic appeals to some of the
scholars on the AACORN “network” let me know.
The problem with theories on art –
and probably be other domains -, nowadays, is that at the difference with those
enounced by Kant or Croce, is that their authors will be challenged to validate
them, meaning in the modern way to gather the material to validate them. Did you
noticed any reference to a precise work of art in Kant’s Critique
of Judgment.
But a theory is two sided object.
Either you collect and classify and analyse material to substantiate then (the
scientific way) or you accept it as it is and observe to what extend it explains
the world (psychoanalysis being a good example of what has been described by
Ginzburg as the Evidential Paradigm).
The reference to Kant reminds me
of another research project connected to art and aesthetic that I would like to
tackle if they were some scholar (that I am not) interested to invest some time
in digging with me. Is it possible to reconstruct the corpus of works of art
effectively known (in the sense of a physical encounter) by some of the authors
(philosophers like Kant or Nietzsche, man of letters like Flaubert or James) who
have proficiently written on art. To deal with such a research one has to
establish first the travels those authors have done which could have put them in
contact with works , but also, if we are dealing with authors in the
18th or 19th century, to locate where were these works,
belonging to whom, visible or not.
OK now I am
done
Vincent Dégot (Ecole
Polytechnique, Paris)