Viktor Shklovsky was a Russian formalist who developed theories of art and literature from 1916 to 1930 in Moscow with other formalists. He argued that the purpose of art is to make the familiar seem unfamiliar in order to combat habitualization and impart sensations, not convey known meanings. According to Shklovsky, art uses techniques like figures of speech and describing objects as if seen for the first time to create unusual perceptions rather than transmit meaning.

1. Viktor Shklovsky: Art as Technique Student: Johann Stoll Caracas, November 2011

2. Viktor Shklovsky and Russian Formalists thrived in Moscow from 1916 until 1930.

3. Parting from the statement “Art is thinking in images”, Shklovsky frameworks his ideas.

4. “ Poets are much more concerned with arranging images than with creating them”. Theory rises: “imagery equals symbolism”

5. Thus giving way to the introduction of figures of speech: metaphoric and metonymic.

6. Economy of mental effort: “a satis- factory style is…which delivers the greatest amount of thought in the fewest words”.

7. Habitualization and familiarizaton: “ And art…exists to make one feel things, to make the stone stony”.

8. So “the purpose of art is to impart the sensation of things as they are perceived and not as they are known”.

9. “ Tolstoy makes the familiar seem by not naming the familiar object. He describes an object as if he were seeing it for the first time”.

10. The purpose of an image is “not to make us perceive meaning, but to create a special perception of the object”.

11. References Con Davies, R. and Schleifer, R. (1994). Contemporarty Literary Criticism. Literary and Cultural Studies. New York and London: Longman.