WINCKELMANN ON OBSERVATION OF ART WORKS
Text topic: Visual Art as a Mass Communication Medium
Text author: Предраг Драгојевић
The idea of art as communication was sporadically present among Serbian artists, critics and art historians, but was rationally developed in the Serbian science on art in the second half of the 20th century. Three major procedures are distinguishable in the context. The critic procedure (Trifunović in art history), where the artist’s work is interpreted, evaluated in the context of art, while the discussion with the artist serves more as a role model, example and encouragement for a number of similar but not identical procedures. The theoretical procedure (Ognjenović in psychology) introduces valuable observations about artistic creation to generalizations and statistically validated models, which may serve to a number of researchers in the same, scientifically demonstrable way. The scientific procedure in the narrow sense (Petrović in sociology and culturology) starts from the validated model and in the “laboratory” conditions (using tests on artists) scientifically confirms the model, as well as some of the critical points of view. What all three procedures share is to find role models, bases, or at least encouragement in a number of researchers of information, communication, semiotics and others who interpret the artistic process using the model: inspiration-artist-work of art-viewer-interpretation. Though the elements of this way of thinking exist in the Serbian art criticism and theory as common place since the early 20th century, they are not studied or used; the idea of art as communication is taken from the current theoretical conceptions of the science in the world. However, if one looks in historiography for some earlier examples, or sources of the idea of art as communication, one could trace a communication “model” back to the time of Winckelmann, and his article On the observations of works of art (1759). He pointed to the artist’s creation, to the content of work of art and to the procedure of the observer in the evaluation and understanding of the work of art. It is interesting that the text was presented in the Serbian culture in a 1848 shortened and adapted translation used merely for entertainment of the public. One could conclude that in the period of century and a half (between the time of the naive translation to the time of introduction of communication theory) the Serbian culture relatively successfully mastered the process of receiving ideas from developed cultural or scientific centers (translation of sources, publishing, scientific interpretation, application, the training of specialists, popularization), but still does not succeed in keeping the continuity of those ideas, as it exists in the centers of their origin.
