Techne Theory

Only since the Romantic period has art been understood in terms of an ineffable aesthetic quality of things like poems, paintings, and sculptures, and the art-maker as endowed with an inexplicable power of creation. From the Greeks to the 18th century, art was conceived as techne--the skill and know-how by which things and states of affairs are ordered. Techne Theory shows how to use this concept to cut through the Romantic notion of art as a kind of magic by returning to the original sense of art as techne, the standpoint of the person who actually knows how to make a work of art.

Understood as techne, art-making, like all other cultural accomplishments, is a form of work performed by an artisan who has inherited the know-how of previous generations of artisans. Along the way, Techne Theory cuts through the humanist-structuralist impasse over the question of artistic agency and explains what 'form' really means.

Acknowledgements

Part One: Fundamentals
Chapter 1: Introduction: The Techne Standpoint
Chapter 2: Art and Evolution
Chapter 3: The Artist's Touch

Part Two: Origins in Greek Philosophy
Chapter 4: How Plato (Despite Himself) Invented Techne Theory
Chapter 5: From Aristotle to Extended Mind

Part Three: Where Do Poems Come From?
Chapter 6: A Romantic View: Seamus Heaney
Chapter 7: Excursus on the Nature of Language
Chapter 8: An Anti-Romantic View: Paul Valé ry

Part Four: Studies in Modernist Techne
Chapter 9: T. J. Clark's Picasso
Chapter 10: What's Radical About Radical Painting?
Chapter 11: The Techne of Kafka's Metamorphosis

Part Five: Techne Metatheory
Chapter 12: Universal Design Space and the Lines of Force
Bibliography
Index