Techne Theory: A New Language for Art

Description

Only since the Romantic period has art been understood in terms of an ineffable aesthetic quality of things like poems, paintings, and sculptures, and the art-maker as endowed with an inexplicable power of creation. From the Greeks to the 18th century, art was conceived as techne--the skill and know-how by which things and states of affairs are ordered. Techne Theory shows how to use this concept to cut through the Romantic notion of art as a kind of magic by returning to the original sense of art as techne, the standpoint of the person who actually knows how to make a work of art. Understood as techne, art-making, like all other cultural accomplishments, is a form of work performed by an artisan who has inherited the know-how of previous generations of artisans. Along the way, Techne Theory cuts through the humanist-structuralist impasse over the question of artistic agency and explains what 'form' really means. Cover Half Title Series Title Copyright Dedication Contents Acknowledgements Part One Fundamentals Chpater One The techne standpoint Chpater Two Art and evolution Chpater Three The artist’s touch Part Two Greek Origins Chpater Four How Plato (despite himself) invented techne theory Chpater Five From Aristotle to extended mind Part Three Where Do Poems Come.From? Chpater Six A Romantic view: Seamus Heaney Chpater Seven Excursus on language Chpater Eight An anti-Romantic view: Paul Valéry Part Four Studies in Modernist Techne Chpater Nine T. J. Clark’s Picasso Chpater Ten What’s radical about radical painting? Chpater Eleven The techne of Kafka’s Metamorphosis Part Five Techne Metatheory Chpater Twelve Universal design space and the lines of.force Index