Artisticity as an Essential Principle of Art

Abstract

Artisticity in art, which is conceptualized as an aesthetic quality of an artwork, consists in the sort of organization of a work that pertains both to form and content and provokes a rich process of aesthetic perception in a recipient, or, to put this differently, provokes an event of aesthetic experience. Art in this case is conceptualized as the quintessence and concentration of human aesthetic experience at a particular stage in culture. The author conceptualizes ‘aesthetic’ as the heightened experience of the universal harmonization and anagogical orientation of the human being in the process of one’s perception of an artwork. It is accompanied by spiritual joy and a high degree of aesthetic pleasure that the recipient experiences at the moment of perception. The study shows that the artistic canon in cultures of a canonical type contributes to the exponential growth of artisticity. This confi rms that artisticity at the metaphysical level is the only essential principle of art and its criterion of authenticity, no matter which historically conditioned forms an artwork might take. The absence of artisticity indicates that a given work is not art.