The Category of ‘Method’ in the Didactics of Artist and Teacher D. N. Kardovsky

Abstract

This article describes a terminology issue which appeared as a result of intrusion of politically engaged verbal constructs in the conceptual apparatus of art history and the theory of art education. The author proves the contradictory nature of definitions and discloses the authentic meaning of statements in the original context. He also argues with the provisions of Soviet authors about the pedagogical method of D. Kardovsky. It is established that the category of ‘method’ still lacks proper reflection in theoretical works on the topic, because it was previously considered by Russian authors as one existing a priori as a universal category or as a number of techniques. The notion of ‘method’ which was popular during the Modern Era owing to Descartes, and reached the peak of its popularity in the epoch of Positivism in Europe, was an active construct much later, i.e. in the 1930s thanks to the concept of the Russian Association of Proletarian Writers. In the article, the author studies the Soviet discourse of the category of ‘method’ and its connotations with kindred notions such as, e.g. methodology (a relatively ordered sequence of actions). The author disproves the descriptions of the teaching activity of an artist and teacher through the category of ‘realism’ or any other tendency, direction or style. On the contrary, he puts forward categories of method and professional tradition. The school of art is regarded as a place to teach basics of art, which makes it different from the literary understanding of a school as a group of authors united by a stylistic proposition. The notions of ‘method’ and ‘style’ are differentiated in order to diverge from the Soviet literary understanding of a ‘school’ which heavily relied on the concept of method of socialist realism, reproduced by the Soviet art studies as an ‘artistic method’.