The Communication and Analogies between Music and Image: Dragutin Gostuški’s Theory of the Screen

Abstract

In his doctoral dissertation (Vreme umetnosti, 1968), Dragutin Gostuški argues that one of the most important missions for the contemporary theory of the arts to partake in is to systematically examine matters through the methodology of comparative aesthetical morphology. Later, he proposes the theory of screen as a predetermined constructed system that enables the processing and decoding of “the data received from the real world and their interpretations through art, language and science”. In this paper, I will look into the mechanisms of Gostuški’s theory and the use of holography as an interpretative technique that he proposes, as well as the

In this paper I examine the mechanisms of Dragutin Gostuški’s theory of screen, as well as holography – an interpretative technique he proposes. Likewise, the question is raised about the possibility and the nature of transpositions between music and the visual arts through this technique. The goal of this paper is to acknowledge the important features of Gostuški’s idea and to discuss the application of the theory in the correlation of music and the visual arts, as presented in Gostuški’s book Vreme umetnosti. Prilog zasnivanju jedne opšte nauke o oblicima (1968). The first part of this article represents the analysis of the theory itself, as presented in Gostuški’s paper Realnost, muzika, jezik. Prilog proučavanju problema značenja (1973). Given the fact that some important settings of the theory were made in his book (Vreme umetnosti) from a few years before, the second part of the text looks into examples of the comparative overview of arts presented in this study, most notably, the issues of the musical Gothic and Renaissance period timeframes, and transposing the ideas, techniques, and principles in the different artistic fields of the time.