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IMAGE-DEPICTION AND LIVELY-DEPICTION AS TWO CONCEPTS OF VISION // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2022. Issue 4 (34). P. 166-181

This article analyzes a real situation that once happened with the famous artist and art theorist Johannes Itten and his students at one of the classes of his preparatory course (Vorkurs) at the Bauhaus, a school of design, architecture, and applied arts that operated in Germany from 1919 to 1933. The situation reveals the optical duality of the visual field of the still life. The aim of the study is to clarify the nature of two different concepts of vision – image-depiction and lively-depiction. The methodological basis of the research is set by the philosophy of language, the analytics of visual practices, the philosophy of action, practical philosophy with elements of Kantian aesthetics. The study shows that the image as a schematizing way of representation plays the role of a tool for seeing possible rather than real objects. On the contrary, in the lively-depiction experience, actions themselves become the source of vision. In the field of visual practices, it shifts the analytical priority from linguistic structures (as a universal way of ordering image elements) to the world of direct practical actions of artists, allowing them to go beyond the usual contemplative ways of representation. As a result of the study, the author revealed the characteristics and differences between the image-depiction and lively-depiction concepts as two different visual modes of modern artistic optics. Conclusions are formulated about the role of a practical resource in the reconstruction of vision as “what is”, and not “what may be”. In the field of visual practices, the concepts’ fluidity becomes an important object of study; its nature shows in various lively-depiction aspects, such as plasticity, variability, action, reaction, intention, state, as opposed to purely image-depiction aspects, such as contemplation, scheme, technique and observation. The process of lively-depiction vision is directly related to the mobility of the environment through which our eyes pass; therefore, the quality of the movement itself acquires special significance here, taking on the role of a sign of the changes taking place in the environment. Accordingly, lively-depiction is pure intention, or action itself, while image-depiction is rather a ready-made tool or a scheme for which the technique and accuracy of execution are of the greatest value. The emotional structuring of the visual field of a still life is not reduced to simple mechanical actions of agents (as was shown in the drawings of Itten’s students) but manifests itself as a heterogeneous dynamic set of their living reactions that can form tendencies of artists’ sensuality rather than strict rules for representing still life objects. The emphasis on the practical component of visuality provides interesting material for interdisciplinary research, helping to focus on the very process of formation of various types and forms of visibility.

Keywords: lively-depiction, image-depiction, tendencies, rules, visual practice