Artistic techniques

Ars sine scientia nihil est

Artistic techniques

The materials and processes

The artistic techniques used by the great masters: the drawing, the preparation of the support, the painting technique, the gilding.

Intentionality and Art

Every artistic product presupposes or implies a technique, that is, a plethora of manual or instrumental operations, which act on the raw material and organize it, shape it, model it, they qualify it according to precise intentionality that is called artistic.
In order for human action to qualify as technical, it is necessary that this intentionality is applied and the implicit notion of value is given.
Paolo Mora and Giorgio Torraca, item Tecnica, EUA

Technique and style are correspondent

The artistic techniques are intended as a code of rules, of instrumental practical acquisitions inherent to the craft, of more or less empirical experiences, available but independent of the use that the artist makes of them, but the artistic techniques are also the result of the ineliminable relationship between the artist and his medium of expression.
The artist’s technique is therefore a fact of awareness of the moment in which the work of art is manifested.
In the formative process of the work, the moment of the technique is usually distinguished from the result of the style. However, if we talk about Tiziano’s or Caravaggio’s technique, even with the intention of placing the accent on the procedures and methods used by those great painters, we actually get to the heart of their style.
Basically, the technique and the style, in the structure or synthesis of the work, coincide.
Luigi Grassi, Mario Pepe – Dizionario della critica d’arte (Dictionary of art critique), Utet 1978