Publication Details

Abstract

Aesthetics and the theory of art elucidates, among others, the relation and the difference between the extra-artistic and artistic aesthetic sphere. Jan Mukaŕovský’s structuralistic theory has enriched those findings by precise analyses of the structure of the work of art in which, according to the theory, the aesthetic function gains dominant position and, consequently, shifts the other functions of the work to further places. In the present paper the question is studied of whether the finding of the dominant position of the aesthetic function is sufficient for the determination of work of art. The author’s answer is negative, because in the work of art exists — besides the aesthetic function —i also the artistic function, and between these two functions not only specific differences exist but even tensions and contradictions are possible. Since the historic moment when art has arisen as a special form of human expression and as a special set of specialized social activities, we meet in art not only with the aesthetic aspect but also the artistic aspect connected with the specific sphere of the norms of art. This phenomenon is being analysed on a few representative examples from the sphere of visual arts. The first example concerns the analysis of the causes, why the building of the National Gallery in Washington was built (1937 — 1941) in the classical style from the beginning of the 19th century. The contradiction is pointed out which existed at that time between the aesthetic criteria and the norms of art as applied to such a kind of building. Contemporary neodadaism (the so-called pop-art) serves as another example to illustrate the dialectics of the aesthetic and the artistic. This dialectics can be observed also in the area of aesthetic consumption, e. g., in the influence of sentimentalism in landscape-painting on the perception of nature. The author arrives at the following conclusions: the aesthetic moment is universally present in all the expressions and attitudes of man and belongs to anthropological categories. Art as a special sort of activity represents, on the one hand, enhancement and program realization of this anthropological aesthetic moment; on the other hand, however, it tends to form its own norms, to shut itself into a special system, and becomes, before all, a social category. The dialectics of the aesthetic and the artistic, which is practically typical of all phenomena of art, is, in fact, a reflexion of a deeper dialectics between the anthropological and the social.