Terytoria antyku. Paradoks powozu Platona?

Abstract

Ancient territories: the paradox of Plato’s chariot?

The legacy of Antiquity, both in Greek and Roman terms, is at the root of the subsequent development of art and artistic culture in Western Europe. Surveying all the eras and currents of art, researchers identify the reception of Antiquity, from medieval illuminated books, through essential academism to contemporary critical art. The subject of the presentation is an analysis of the painting Déjeuner sur l’herbe by Edouard Manet and an attempt to draw a specific map of the territories in which Antiquity took root or was (un)consciously and (in)effectively ousted. An important aspect of this hypothesis is an examination of the specificity of so-called naive art, in drawings of Nikifor Krynicki, an artist from outside the academic doctrine, creating outstanding works without any educational background, but working intuitively with the achievements of classical art. This places Antiquity in the position of both a style constructing the universal foundations of the iconographic and formal content of ancient and contemporary art, and at the same time a catalyst for shaping completely new means of expression. The presentation is a reflection on the theory and sociology of art. The starting point for reflections is the paradox of Plato’s chariot. This is a story in which the philosophers Socrates and Plato successively exchange parts of their chariots, until in the end Socrates’s chariot is made entirely of parts of Plato’s original chariot, while Plato’s chariot is made entirely of parts of Socrates’s original chariot. Does this mean that the two philosophers have exchanged chariots? And if so, at what point did this occur?