Art as Technique by Victor Shklovsky

Victor Shklovosky, a founder of the OPAYAZ group in Russia, occupies a significant position in Russian Formalism by introducing his literary concept of art as technique, thereby making the notion of defamiliarization as a central tenet of the Russian Formalism.

His emphasis lies on the exploration of new literary techniques and devices in a work of art for its renewed perception and literariness.

He refutes the theory of the work of art as an art that exploits no more new devices and techniques; instead he put forward that if art uses the same device repeatedly it only gives a stale taste.

He rejects Potebnya, who emphasizes on the use of imagery in every literary art and symbols and images are in the fundamental defining elements of poetry.

He argues that literariness lies in the deviant use of language, but not the symbols and imagery. He takes habitual perception as automatic as it automatizes sense perception. But poetic trends renews our sense perception through defamiliarization by virtue of their constructed quality.

Shklovosky reminds the writers must envision a work of art as technique. The technique for him is not automatic and static. Instead, technique is always unlimited, dynamic and volatile.

In this sense, the work of art is an artistic use of language where in we can invent newer and newer literary devices to create defamiliarization in literary devices to create defmilarization in literature so that the result in literary work is the experience of new satisfactions and perspectives.

Thus, Shklovosky’s concept of art as technique is directed to his vision of how to make a work of art more artistic by making the automatic and habitual perceptions deautomatized and renewed.

The exploration of art as technique helps writers to achieve artistic estrangement by innovating new devices and deviating the common and habitual devices. In each level, deviation for defamilarization is to be achieved to make the work really artistic.