Art: defining the word HONORS ART HISTORY What is Art?

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: defining the word HONORS ART HISTORY What is Art?

Transcript of Art: defining the word HONORS ART HISTORY What is Art?

Page 1: Art: defining the word HONORS ART HISTORY What is Art?

Art: defining the word

HONORS ART HISTORY

What is Art?

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Realism or Naturalism: Most students without a background in art would believe that the only real art is that which looks real. If it looks realistic, it must be good art. Right?

Is it true that all art that “looks real” is good art?

Does art need to look like a recognizable thing to be considered successful?

Audrey Flack“Marylin”, 1977

Acrylic on canvas

Art: defining the word

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Chuck Close“Self -Portrait”, 1967

Acrylic on canvas

Art: defining the word

Realism or Naturalism: Most students without a background in art would believe that the only real art is that which looks real. If it looks realistic, it must be good art. Right?

Is it true that all art that “looks real” is good art?

Does art need to look like a recognizable thing to be considered successful?

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Duane Hanson“Supermarket Shopper”, 1970

Mixed media

Art: defining the word

Realism or Naturalism: Most students without a background in art would believe that the only real art is that which looks real. If it looks realistic, it must be good art. Right?

Is it true that all art that “looks real” is good art?

Does art need to look like a recognizable thing to be considered successful?

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Evoke an Emotion: Some artists believe that art is only successful if it evokes an emotion from its audience. This definition of art opens the door for infinite possibilities.

Is art only truly successful when the viewer is emotionally moved in some way? By that measure, is art that evokes anger from its viewers considered good?

What emotion, if any, does this work evoke from you? Does that make it good art?

Jeff Koons“Pink Panther”, 1988

Porcelain

Art: defining the word

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How about Size?: Does the presence of this image change if it is viewed at 10 feet by 9 feet when compared to how you are viewing it on your computer screen?

When referring to modern art, it has been said, in a joking manner, by some art critics that “if you can’t make it big, make it red” .

Is this painting by Mark Rothko art in your opinion?

Mark Rothko“No.14”, 1961Oil on Canvas

Art: defining the word

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So, How Did You Define Art?

“Good Old Fashioned Art” - Zach Summers

Art: defining the word

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Conceptual Art

Joseph Kosuth “One and Three Chairs”, 1965

Museum of Modern Art, NYC

Later Twentieth Century

Challenging the Definition of ArtThe relentless challenges to artistic convention fundamental to historical avant-garde reach a logical conclusion with Conceptual Art in the late 1960s. Conceptual artists asserted that the “artfulness” of art lay in the artist’s idea rather than in its final expression. These artists regarded the idea, or concept, as the defining component of the artwork. Indeed, some Conceptual artists eliminated the object altogether.

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Figure 33-2

Conceptual artists regard the concept as an artwork’s defining component. To portray “chairness”, Kosuth juxtaposed a chair, a photograph of the chair, and a dictionary definition of “chair”.

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Conceptual Art

Joseph Kosuth “One and Three Chairs”, 1965

Museum of Modern Art, NYC

Later Twentieth Century

Joseph Kosuth“Like everyone else, I inherited the idea of art as a set of “formal” problems. So when I began to re-think my ideas of art, I had to re-think that thinking process……. The radical shift was that in changing the idea of art itself….. It meant you could have an artwork which was that “idea” of an artwork, and its formal components weren’t important. I felt I had found a way to make art without formal components being confused for an expressionist composition. The expression was the idea, not the form- the forms were only a device in the service of the idea.”

Quoted in “Joseph Kosuth: Art as Idea as Idea”, in Jeanne Siegel, ed., “Artwords :Discourse on the 60s and 70s”

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Figure 33-2

Kosuth’s work operates at the intersecion of language and vision, dealing with the relationship between the abstract and the concrete. By creating this work of art, Kosuth requires the viewer to ponder the notion of what constitutes “chairness”.

---- read Plato’s Theory of Forms to understand this better.

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Art of the Early 20th Century

Orgainic Sculpture:Seeking the Essence of Flight

Constantine Brancusi“Bird in Space”

1923

Romanian artist Constantin Brancusi (1867-1957) was one of many sculptors eager to produce works emphasizing the natural or organic. Often composed of softly curving surfaces and ovoid forms, his sculptures refer, directly or indirectly, to the cycle of life.

He sought to move beyond surface appearances to capture the essence or spirit of the object depicted. He claimed: “What is real is not the external form, but the essence of things. Starting from this truth is impossible for anyone to express anything essentially real by imitating its exterior surface”.

Brancusi’s ability to design rhythmic, elegant sculptures conveying the essence of his subjects is evident in Bird in Space. Clearly not a literal depiction of a bird, the work is the final result of a long process. Brancusi started with the image of a bird at rest with its wings folded at its sides and ended up with an abstract columnar form sharply tapered at each end.

Figure 33-70

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Art of the Early 20th Century

Orgainic Sculpture:Seeking the Essence of Flight

Constantine Brancusi“Bird in Space”

1923

Despite the abstraction, the sculpture retains the suggestion of a bird about to soar into free flight though the heavens. Even further, Brancusi succeeded in capturing the essence of flight. The highly reflective surface of the polished bronze does not allow the eye to linger on the sculpture itself. Instead, the viewers’ eyes follow the gleaming reflection along the delicate curves light off the tip of the work, thereby inducing a feeling of flight.

Brancusi stated: “All my life I have sought the essence of flight. Don’t look for the mysteries. I give you pure joy. Look at the sculptures until you see them. Those nearst to God have seen them.”

Despite the seeming grandiosity of those claims, Brancusi was deeply immersed in exploring the emotional chords sculpture could strike in its viewers. Indeed, he envisioned many of his works, including this one, enlarged to monumental scale. The subtitle for this work was Project of Bird Which, When Enlarged, Will Fill the Sky, and the sculptor spoke of the work’s ability at that scale to fill the viewers with comfort and peace.

Figure 33-70

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Art of the Early 20th Century

Organic Sculpture

Constantine Brancusi“Bird in Space”

1923

This particular conception of “Bird in Space” is the first in a series of seven sculptures carved from marble and nine carved from bronze, all which were smooth and polished.

Two organic shapes predominate Brancusi’s work-the egg and the elongated cylinder such as in “Bird in Space”.

While never entirely rejecting the natural world, Brancusi undoubtedly succeeds in conveying a sense of gravity by reducing his work to a few basic elements.

He made sculptures out of wood, marble stone, and bronze. In each medium, he tried to create forms that respected and worked with the nature of the material, extracting from its maximum expressive effect.

Brancusi’s spiritual aspirations, his longing for transcendence of the material world and its constraints, are verbalized in his descriptions of “Bird in Space” as a “project before being enlarged to fill the vault in the sky”.

Figure 33-70

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The High Renaissance

Subduing a Giant

Michelangelo“David”

1501-1504

In 1501, the city of Florence asked Michelangelo to work a great block of marble, called “The Giant,” left over from an earlier aborted mission.

From this stone, David was sculpted, the defiant hero of the Florentine republic and, in so doing, assured his reputation then and now as an extraordinary talent.

David’s formal references to classical antiquity appealed to Julius II, who associated himself with humanists and with Roman emperors. Thus, this sculpture and the fame that accrued to Michelangelo on its completion called the artist to the pope’s attention, leading to major papal commissions.

Michelangelo used the themes of Donatello and Andrea del Verrocchio, but with his own original resolution.

The artist chose to depict David not after victory, but turning his head to his left, sternly watchful of the approaching foe. His whole muscular body, as well as his face, is tense with gathering power. Figure 22-9

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David exhibits the characteristic representation of energy in reserve. His rugged torso, sturdy limbs, and large hands and feet, alerting viewers to the strength to come, do not consist simply of inert muscle groups, nor did the sculptor idealize them by simplification into broad masses.

Each swelling vein and tightening sinew amplifies the psychological energy of the monumental David’s pose.

The artist, without strictly imitating the antique style , captured the tension of Lysippan athletes and the psychological insight and emotionalism of Helenistic statuary.

This larger than life sculpture reaches over 13 feet in height. Sculpted in perspective (top heavy), this image retains perfection when viewed from below, as the figure looks proportional from the vantage point of the onlooker. Contrapposto (weight shift), yet another allusion to antiquity, is also apparent in this sculpture.

This sculpture became the immediate symbol of Florence, a wealthy but small nation at war with a much larger foe.

The High Renaissance

Subduing a Giant

Michelangelo“David”

1501-1504

Figure 22-9

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Salon Culture: Prefacing the Rococo

A Knowledge of Taste and Refinement

The feminine look of the Rococo style suggests that the age was dominated by the taste and social initiative of women- and , to a large extent, It was.

Women..... Madame de Pompadour in France, Maria Theresa in Austria, and Elisabeth and Catherine in Russia....... held some of the highest positions in Europe, and female influence was felt in numerous smaller courts.

The Rococo salon was the center of early-eighteenth- century Parisian society, and Paris was the social capital of Europe.

Wealthy, ambitious, and clever society hostesses competed to attract the most famous and most accomplished people to their salons.

The medium of social intercourse was conversation spiced with wit, repartee as quick and deft as a fencing match.

Artifice ( cleverness or skill; ingenuity) reigned supreme, and participants considered enthusiasm or sincerity in bad taste.

These salon women referred to themselves as “femmes savantes” or “learned women”. Among these learned women was Julie de Lespinasse (1732-1776), one of the most articulate, urbane (polite, refined, and often elegant in manner), and intelligent French women of the time. She held daily salons from five o’clock until nine in the evening. The “Memoirs de Marmontel” documented the liveliness of these gatherings and the remarkable nature of the hostess:

The circle as formed of persons who were not bound together. She had taken them here and there in society, but so well assorted were they that once there they fell into harmony like the strings of an instrument touched by an able hand. Following out that comparison, I may say that she played the instrument with an art that came of genius; I mean to say that our minds and our natures were so well known to her that in order to bring them into play she had but to say a word. Nowhere was conversation more lively, more brilliant, or better regulated than at her house. It was a rare phenomenon indeed, the degree of tempered, equable heat which she knew so well how to maintain, sometimes by moderating it, sometimes by quickening it. The continual activity of her soul was communicated to our souls, but measurably’ her imagination was the mainspring, her reason the regulator. Remark that the brains she stirred at will were neither feeble nor frivolous......... Her talent for casting out a thought and giving it for discussion to men of that class, her own talent in discussing it with precision, sometimes with eloquence, her talent for bringing forward new ideas and varying the topic- always with the facility and ease of a fairy..... These talents, I say, were not those of an ordinary woman.

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An Intriguing FlirtationJean-Honré Fragonard

“The Swing”, 1766

Figure 24-86

Fragonard was a student of Boucher and is considered by many to have surpassed the genius of his master.

This is a typical “intrigue” picture. A young gentleman has managed an arrangement whereby an unsuspecting old bishop swings the young man’s pretty sweetheart higher and higher, while her lover (and the work’s patron), in the lower left-hand corner, stretches out to admire her ardently from a strategic position on the ground.

The young lady flirtatiously and boldly kicks off her shoe at the little statue on the god of discretion, who holds his finger to his lips.

The landscape setting is out of Watteau--- a luxuriant perfumed bower in a park that very much resembles a stage scene for the comic opera. The glowing pastel colors and soft light convey, almost by themselves, the theme’s sensuality..

Rococo: The French Taste

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Pop ArtRobert

RauschenbergCanyon, 1959

America After 1945

Robert Rauschenberg began using mass-media images in his work in the 1950s. He set out to create works that would be open and indeterminate, and he began making “combines”, which intersperse painting passages with sculptural elements. Combines are, in a sense, Rasuchenberg’s personal variation on “assemblages”, artworks constructed from already existing objects. At times, these combines seem to be sculptures with painting incorporated into certain sections. Others seem to be paintings with three-dimensional objects attached to the surface. In the 1950s, assemblages usually contained an array of reproductions, magazines and newspaper clippings, and passages painted in an Abstract Expressionist style. In the early 1960s, Rauschenberg adopted the commercial medium of “silk-screen printing first in black and white and then in color, and began filling entire canvases with appropriated news images and anonymous photographs of city scenes.

Figure 36-32

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Horses as Metaphors for HumanitySusan

Rothenberg Tattoo, 1979

Postmodern Painting

She produced a major series of large paintings with the horse as the central image. The horse theme resonates with history and metaphor- from the Parthenon frieze and Roman and Renaissance equestrian portraits to the paintings of German Expressionist Franz Marc. Like Marc, Rothenberg saw horses as metaphors for humanity: “The horse was a way of not doing people, yet it was a symbol of people, a self-portrait, really”

Figure 36-30

Susan Rothenbergs work falls in the nebulous area between representation and abstraction. In paintings such as Tattoo, the loose brushwork and agitated surface contribute to the image’s expressiveness and account for categorization as a Neo-Expressionist. The title refers to the horse’s head drawn within the outline of its leg. “A tattoo or memory image.”- Rothenberg.

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Neo-ExpressionismAnselm Kiefer

Nigredo, 1984Philadelphia Museum of Art

Postmodern Painting

Neo-Expressionism was by no means a solely American Movement. German artist Anselm Keifer has produced some of the most lyrical and engaging works of the contemporary period. His works are monumental in scale, recalling Abstract Expressionist canvases, and draw the viewer to their textured surfaces, made more complex by the addition of materials such as straw and lead.

Figure 36-32

It is not merely the impressive physicality of Kiefer’s paintings that accounts for the impact of his work, however. His images function on a mythological or metaphorical level as well as on a historically specific one. Kiefer’s works of the 1970s and 1980s often involve a reexamination of German history, particularly the painful Nazi era of 1933-1945, and evoke the feeling of despair. Keifer believes that Germany’s participation in WWII and the Holocaust left permanent scars on the souls of the German people and on the souls of all humanity.

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Neo-ExpressionismAnselm Kiefer

Nigredo, 1984Philadelphia Museum of Art

Postmodern Painting

“Nigredo” (blackening), pulls the viewer into an expansive landscape depicted using Renaissance perspectival principles. This landscape, however, is far from pastoral or carefully cultivated. Rather, it is bleak and charred. Although it makes no specific reference to the Holocaust, this incinerated landscape indirectly alludes to the horrors of that event.

Figure 36-32

More generally, the blackness of the landscape may refer to the notion of alchemical change or transformation, a concept of great interest to Kiefer. Black is one of the four symbolic colors of the alchemist- a color that refers both to death and to the molten, chaotic state of substances broken down by fire. The alchemist, however, focuses on the transformation of substances, and thus the emphasis blackness is not absolute but can also be perceived as part of a process of renewal and redemption. Kiefer thus imbued his work with a deep symbolic meaning that, when combined with the intriguing visual quality of his parched, congealed surfaces, results in paintings of enduring power.