Location: PALAZZO DEI PRIORI – SALA SAN ROCCO

 14 | 28 SEPTEMBER 2019

UNDER THE PATRONAGE OF

 

THE CREATIVE ENERGY OF ART

The notion of creativity has become commonplace and, faced with a spirit of the time that has made it a sort of fetish, this diffusion would require to specify its meaning. A deciphering that appears opportune also when we refer to the relationship between art and creativity, and in the presence of that phenomenon that has been defined as “artistization” of the world, that is to say the “fringe” turning point and the widening of the sphere of art. But the context does not allow abroad analysis but only the indication of some reasons.
By the now classic Truth and Method (1960), Hans-Georg Gadamer wondered about the ways of understanding, in its broadest sense, showing how in them an experience of truth and meaning is attained that is broad and not reducible to the sole method of modern scientific thought. From Descartes and Galilei onwards, these formulas of knowledge have pursued the ideal of an exact
and verifiable knowledge of the world. But this vision of knowing has revealed to be incomplete and insufficient. The question of truth as it emerges in the experience of art is the title of the first chapter in which the German scholar intended to demonstrate that there are specific areas of truth that lie outside the cognitive area of science and that at the same time, they are fundamental for
man, for meaning and vital experiences. Art, together with language and with all the broad consistency of the so-called sciences of the spirit, constitutes a typical extra-methodical experience of knowledge that, due to a “methodological break” calls into question the idea of knowledge as interpretation. Art theory, thus brings us into the heart of hermeneutics.
It therefore happens that the meanings of which our existence is woven are drawn into a dimension that lies beyond the true and false, beyond truth as correspondence, to place itself on the level of truth as an invention and interpretation. A truth on an aesthetic basis entails two relevant aspects:
the need to be tolerant or rather to recognize legitimacy as well as our own, the need to be tolerant, that is to say, to recognize legitimacy as well as our own, to other representations of the world, and to be, at the same time, ironic: from the moment that no representation can demand an unconditional assent, even ours cannot have it, towards which we should have an attitude of adhesion and at the same time of taking distance.
This leads to the conviction of the utopian value of art, because in it we meet with possible worlds.
We place ourselves in front of an excess that projects us towards problematic scenarios, new lifestyles and new perceptive modalities that turn into questions and allow us to keep alive the awareness of the enigmatic reality. Even Immanuel Kant, in his masterful and fundamental Critique of Judgment (1790), had given an account of the creative energy of art and referring to poetry – but
the consideration can also be extended to other forms of art, including the figurative and music – he states: “…the poet promises little and announces a mere play with ideas; but he supplies something which is worth occupying ourselves with, because he provides in this play food for the understanding and, by the aid of imagination, gives life to his concepts…”.
What has been called “art” is a particular specialization of human creativity and it is the same creativity that generally regulates the cultural production. In this it expresses the specific characteristics of human adaptation, its specific ability to choose under intellectual conditions that can be specified in the most diverse and appropriate means. It is a constructive, practical activity, as well as a cognitive activity, an operation and a message of life. The practical finalization and the
communicative character are therefore essential aspects of the artistic activity, even if they do not exhaust its “conditions of possibility” and its fundamental explanatory framework referring to sentiment, pleasure and desire as equally essential components.
We can say that in the construction of the human world of history the creative power of art allows us to turn dreams into works, imagination into reality, which represents a testimony of love for life aimed at achieving ever more life. And that in it lies one of the most significant forms of our identity as men, essential for being able to transmit over the centuries the values of culture and society,
those already experienced and those that ask to be pursued in the time that awaits us.

Galliano Crinella
The University of Urbino “Carlo Bo”