Amazon cover image
Image from Amazon.com

Techne theory : a new language for art / Henry Staten.

By: Publication details: London : Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019.ISBN:
  • 9781472592903
Subject(s):
Contents:
Acknowledgements / Part One: Fundamentals / Chapter 1: Introduction: The Techne Standpoint / Chapter 2: Art and Evolution / Chapter 3: The Artist's Touch / Part Two: Origins in Greek Philosophy / Chapter 4: How Plato (Despite Himself) Invented Techne Theory / Chapter 5: From Aristotle to Extended Mind / Part Three: Where Do Poems Come From? / Chapter 6: A Romantic View: Seamus Heaney / Chapter 7: Excursus on the Nature of Language / Chapter 8: An Anti-Romantic View: Paul Valery / Part Four: Studies in Modernist Techne / Chapter 9: T. J. Clark's Picasso / Chapter 10: What's Radical About Radical Painting? / Chapter 11: The Techne of Kafka's Metamorphosis / Part Five: Techne Metatheory / Chapter 12: Universal Design Space and the Lines of Force / Bibliography / Index
Summary: 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.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Acknowledgements / Part One: Fundamentals / Chapter 1: Introduction: The Techne Standpoint / Chapter 2: Art and Evolution / Chapter 3: The Artist's Touch / Part Two: Origins in Greek Philosophy / Chapter 4: How Plato (Despite Himself) Invented Techne Theory / Chapter 5: From Aristotle to Extended Mind / Part Three: Where Do Poems Come From? / Chapter 6: A Romantic View: Seamus Heaney / Chapter 7: Excursus on the Nature of Language / Chapter 8: An Anti-Romantic View: Paul Valery / Part Four: Studies in Modernist Techne / Chapter 9: T. J. Clark's Picasso / Chapter 10: What's Radical About Radical Painting? / Chapter 11: The Techne of Kafka's Metamorphosis / Part Five: Techne Metatheory / Chapter 12: Universal Design Space and the Lines of Force / Bibliography / Index

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.