CZECH STRUCTURALISM AND SEMIOTICS AS APOLOGY OF AVANT-GARDE

• Authors: Ján BAKOŠ
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

The present paper deals with the relationship between Czech structuralism and Avant-garde. Jan Mukařovský’s effort to constitute a universally valid model of art can be understood as an implicit apology for the avant-garde concept of art, as making its principles into the trans-historicaly valid “essence” of art. His project to formulate a dynamic structuralism by means of the connection of the idea of structure with the idea of dialectical antitheses, can be regarded as an attempt to justify the validity of the basic contradiction of the inter-war Avant-gardes: their efforts to liquidate art as an autonomous institution and transform art into life itself on one side, while on the other retaining the demiurgic ability of art and so its privileged position in social life, giving it an irreplaceable role and a new active autonomy. Also Mukařovsky´s idea of the semiotic nature of art, his model of art as an autonomous sign was a means of dialectical synthesis of autonomy and heteronomy. Nevertheless, Mukařovský’s model of art was not ideologically critical. It contained an implicit theoretical apology of the socially affirmative nature of Czech avant-garde art. Moreover, Mukařovský attempted to remove the antagonism, which had arisen between the academic study of art and anti-bourgeois Avant-garde.

Keywords

EN

STRUCTURALISM; SEMIOTICS; AVANT-GARDE; JAN MUKAŘOVSKÝ

Discipline

• OTHER_SOCIAL_SCIENCES: OTHER SOCIAL SCIENCES

• Publisher: Institute of Philosophy, Czech Academy of Sciences
• Journal: Eirene. Studia Graeca et Latina
• Year: 2012
• Volume: 48
• Issue: 1-2
• Pages: 147-152

Contributors

author

Ján BAKOŠ

• Eirene, Kabinet pro klasická studia FLÚ AV ČR, Na Florenci 3, 110 00 Praha 1, Czech Republic