Strukturalistička i poststrukturalistička kritika tradicionalnog pojma umjetničkog djela

Abstract

This paper illustrates the importance of structuralist and post-structuralist approach to art when facing the traditional concept of a work of art and developing a different approach to the phenomenon of art on the borderline between modernism and postmodernism. The first section of the paper analyses the consequences for art of the structuralist position that reality is the effect of semantic practice and not vice versa – as the traditional discourse dictates. The search for meaning among sign relationships pointed to an interactive nature of meaning, its construction in an act of reception. In the criticism of an inherited approach to art, structuralists were focused on disputing authority which would, beyond and before encountering a work of art, guarantee its meaning, and thus its completeness and self-purpose. Linguistic turning-point in the structuralists' works emphasizes the structuralist at the expense of mimetic issues in the approach to art. Art cannot be reduced to the intention in the author's consciousness, but the meaning of art is conveyed by reconstructing the internal architecture of a work of art, the immanent regularities it rests upon as a part of superstructure – the system. Post-structuralism continuation (and criticism at the same time) of structuralism efforts, insistence on active nature of meaning has opened up new questions about the meaning of art when encountering contextual plurality. The liberation of art from a unique and indisputable meaning which began with structuralism is continued by poststructuralists through their indication to the practice of constructing and deconstructing of an artistic text, where the specific contextual transaction has the authority. The theory of text is represented in this paper as a worldview which marked the process of transfiguration of the discourse about art when art becomes an interpretative activity, with partly diverse discourses and complex processes of exchange and communication of meaning in a culture. Carried by textuality, these changes mark in reality the end of the traditional approach to art and stepping on an uncertain and risky ground of post-academic research, which no longer wish to be considered traditional disciplines but cooperate with the daily lives of people.