The four discourses of the logic of art — creating artist’s own language

Abstract

The aim of this article is to transcribe Jacques Lacan’s psychoanalytical theory of four discours-es into a logic of art. The four discourses — the master’s discourse, the hysteric’s discourse, the analyst’s discourse and the university discourse — are rewritten as the four discourses of the logic of art: the recipient’s discourse, the artist’s discourse, the discourse of the act of creation and the discourse of the artisan/formalist. The four algebraic Lacanian signs are substituted with counterparts from the realm of art. The interpretation of Lacan’s theory is based on work of Lacanian thinkers, especially Slavoj Žižek and Jacques-Alain Miller. The article poses a question about how the artist, the recipient, the work of art and the artistic process are related to one another in several situations characteristic of artistic production in modernity. An important issue that is considered in the article is the artist’s enjoyment accompanying the act of artistic creation — linked to the Lacanian concept of surplus jouissance. At stake is the problem of inventing the artist’s own language. Moreover, the article is an attempt to concep-tualise the instability of the phenomenon of the work of art and its reception. Author’s aim is to develop a psychoanalytical and dynamic conception of artistic creation and the functioning of the work of art.