Inner Form as an Artistic licentia poetica

Tomislav Čeranić’s Series of Drawings Plein Air

Abstract

The article focuses on the distinctive artistic poetics used by the contemporary Croatian artist Tomislav Čeranić in conceiving and creating his works. His drawings are characterized by heterogeneous iconic components, interconnected by two strategic links. One is the strategy of mimesis (imitating the objective reality and the graphic imprint performed in the technique of copperplate engraving/etching), while the other is the strategy of combining different objective phenomena without a visible logical link. The author discusses the poetic means by which Čeranić unifies the said links as the inner form. This notion is presented in an aesthetic perspective, then in the context of linguistics, and finally as an aspect of artistic poetics, exemplified by Čeranić’s drawings. The appendix succinctly presents the phenomenon of pareidolia, which as such is related to the appearance of the inner form in some of Čeranić’s works. Finally, the author considers the fundamental cognitive assumptions on the basis of which the inner form, as a carefully chosen poetic means, reaches the desired meaning. For this purpose, the final part of the paper refers to the ancient theory of phantasmatic cognition.