Aesthesis and Logos

Chapter one deals with the phenomenon of the avant-garde, drawing together various philosophical and aesthetic strategies involved in fathoming the world. Griakalov presents a coherent system of avant-garde cognition, centering on the specific aesthetic activity through which humanity is able to reconstruct itself and the whole of its world. As Griakalov formulates, “Only in the aesthetic function is the fullness of existence represented. A desire to be something more than merely art, science, or criticism … presupposes a particular vision of the world… Art is understood as a symbolic activity introducing order into the world, and at the same time as an experiment in philosophizing about existence itself.”
Chapter two develops the concept of “cognition of the world through art”, positing an interdependence between the work of art and the actual world, and defining the work within cultural space as a sign of some deep experience undergone by the artist.
Chapter three is devoted to semiotics, interpreting this as a science based on logic and linguistics, in which the “world” and the “text” form peculiar reflections of one another. Griakalov fully confirms Viktor Shklovsky’s statement that “art is a dispute – a dispute between consciousness and cognition of the world. Art is dialogic, and vital.” Griakalov continues by suggesting that when Roman Jakobson analyzed Baudelaire’s poem “Les chats”, he was talking not just about the inter-relation of rhythm, grammar, morphology, syntax, and the anthropological and existential aspects of an artistic structure, but also about a peculiar understanding of the work as an “event”.

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