COLEGIUL NATIONAL “IENACHITA VACARESCU”

ART AS QUEST

PROFESOR COORDONATOR :

Magdalena Iuliana Bucur

ELEV:

Bardasu Vlad- Mihai

2016

Contents

Introduction………………………………………………………………………………..........3

Chapter 1: What does art stand for?………….………………………………………………4

Chapter 2: Art is a journey of self discovery…………………………………….………….....6

Chapter 3 : Is art subjective? ………………………………………………………………......8

Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………………11

Bibliography…………………………………………………………………………………....12

Introduction

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I have chosen to write about art as quest because art, in all its various forms, is the single biggest source of my ability to feel connected to the world. It's easy to feel alone within the narrow circle of daily life. With rare exceptions I am surrounded mostly by people, things and activities that do not feel like a part of me, and I am separate from them. I often feel that I view the world differently and am solitary. The right book or music or photograph or anything else which reaches me can change everything and show me that, whether I know it or not, there are other eyes and voices and hearts that sing my song and tell my tales. Art can speak my truths and it is often more human to me than humanity is. Finally, I’ve learned that it’s impossible to separate the artist from the art, and for that reason, I love getting to know the artists. I love reading about the great artists, but, even more, I love meeting living artists and seeing what they are doing. I love talking to them about their lives and work. I like to think that by doing so, I’m seeing art history take shape, and maybe, I even get to be a small part of it.

In the first chapter “What does art stand for?” I have talked about the purpose of art in our life and what it means to us. I have explained whyart is language to me: it is the language of human greatness, both good and bad. Why it allows us to 'speak' of that which we aspire to. It raises us from the ordinary into excellence. It liberates us from our systematic lives into the fullness of being human. I have talked about it as a gift. It is reality seen, but not lived, yet brought to offer as life.

The second chapter “Art is a journey of self discovery” shows that art is the unique work of a human being, work that touches another. It is who we are and what we do and what we need. The chapter despicts that art isn’t a result; it’s a journey. The challenge of our time is to find a journey worthy of your heart and your soul. You will understand why creating art is a habit, one that we practice daily or hourly until we get good at it. Art isn’t about the rush of victory that comes from being picked. Nor does it involve compliance. Art in the post-industrial age is a lifelong habit, a stepwise process that incrementally allows us to create more art.”

Last but not least “Is art subjective?” illustrates the subjectivity of art in the perspective of ordinary people as opposed to those who study it. Most people buy art they can connect with in some way, due to a lifetime of personal experience. That is why art is subjective, our own personal experiences are perceived in different ways.

As with any question about art, there is a distinction, which many people seem to overlook, between the established institutions of "art" and art in its purest sense, which is an artifact or an act of expression. Art can be judged in two ways: by the technical skill which was required to create the art, and by the emotion that one feels when viewing, experiencing the art.

What does art stand for?

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This question pops up often, and with many answers. Many argue that art cannot be defined.Art is even proven to galvanize certain parts of our brains to make us giggle, cry, and all emotions in between.  What is art? Art is defined as the expression and application of one’s creativity, typically in the form of something visual. We could go about this in several ways. Art is often considered the process or product of deliberately arranging elements in a way that appeals to the senses or emotions.

Art is even proven to galvanize certain parts of our brains to make us giggle, cry, and all emotions in between.  What is art? Art is defined as the expression and application of one’s creativity, typically in the form of something visual.

It encompasses a diverse range of human activities, creations and ways of expression, including music, literature, film, sculpture and paintings. The meaning of art is explored in a branch of philosophy known as aesthetics. At least, that’s what Wikipedia claims.

Art is generally understood as any activity or product done by people with a communicative or aesthetic purpose—something that expresses an idea, an emotion or, more generally, a world view.It is a component of culture, reflecting economic and social substrates in its design. It transmits ideas and values inherent in every culture across space and time. Its role changes through time, acquiring more of an aesthetic component here and a socio-educational function there.The definition of art is open, subjective, debatable. There is no agreement among historians and artists, which is why we’re left with so many definitions of art. The concept itself has changed over centuries.

I think in order to fully understand the definition of art, one must picture what life would be like without art. The definition of art is in the eyes of the beholder. Many dig far too deep into the ambiguity of the actually definition of art itself that they forget to appreciate the significance of art in their lives. Consider the impact of life without your favorite pictures hanging above your bed; the cute little ceramic cow saltshakers on your kitchen table; your favorite computer game without graphics; that graffiti on the side of the bridge that you had grown so fond of; the song that you religiously replay on your iPod.

Art is even proven to galvanize certain parts of our brains to make us giggle, cry, and all emotions in between.  What is art? Art is defined as the expression and application of one’s creativity, typically in the form of something visual.

The very notion of art continues today to stir controversy, being so open to multiple interpretations. It can be taken simply to mean any human activity, or any set of rules needed to develop an activity. This would generalize the concept beyond what is normally understood as the fine arts, now broadened to encompass academic areas. The word has many other colloquial uses, too.

Maybe it is merely a “sign of the times”- that what art those who dwelled during the time of the

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Renaissance once deemed scandalous, we are very much tolerant and appreciative of now. If it were not for those humanists who created this art we look back at now, art would not have evolved into what it is now- the shoes you are wearing would have never been designed; the table your computer is resting on would have never been created; all the things we come across in our everyday lives would simply not have been created.

Sir Thomas Lawrence was a leading English portrait painter and the second president of the Royal Academy. Lawrence enjoyed his great success. He lived for his work, never married, and was a prodigious worker. He was of an exceptionally generous nature, as an artist and as a man, with a rare talent for appreciating and encouraging the talents of others. He was an ardent collector of Old Master drawings; his collection, which was dispersed after his death, was the largest and best that has ever been formed in England. I've been & am absurdly over-estimated. He didn’t considered himself to be an artist, but a honest man. He said that: “ There are no supermen; I'm quite ordinary, and will say so whatever the artistic results. In that point I'm one of the few people who tell the truth about myself.”

Lev Tolstoy said that in order to correctly define art, it is necessary, first of all, to cease to consider it as a means to pleasure and to consider it as one of the conditions of human life. Viewing it in this way we cannot fail to observe that art is one of the means of intercourse between man and man. Every work of art causes the receiver to enter into a certain kind of relationship both with him who produced, or is producing, the art, and with all those who, simultaneously, previously, or subsequently, receive the same artistic impression.

Speech, transmitting the thoughts and experiences of men, serves as a means of union among them, and art acts in a similar manner. The peculiarity of this latter means of intercourse, distinguishing it from intercourse by means of words, consists in this, that whereas by words a man transmits his thoughts to another, by means of art he transmits his feelings.

The activity of art is based on the fact that a man, receiving through his sense of hearing or sight another man’s expression of feeling, is capable of experiencing the emotion which moved the man who expressed it. To take the simplest example; one man laughs, and another who hears becomes merry; or a man weeps, and another who hears feels sorrow. A man is excited or irritated, and another man seeing him comes to a similar state of mind. By his movements or by the sounds of his voice, a man expresses courage and determination or sadness and calmness, and this state of mind passes on to others. A man suffers, expressing his sufferings by groans and spasms, and this suffering transmits itself to other people; a man expresses his feeling of admiration, devotion, fear, respect, or love to certain objects, persons, or phenomena, and others are infected by the same feelings of admiration, devotion, fear, respect, or love to the same objects, persons, and phenomena.

Art is a journey of self discovery

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Art is a vital part of society. Without it, how would we survive as a race? Humanity demands to express itself and establish what it’s own cultural identities in tale. Being exposed to art helps people, especially as children, grow in their abilities to decipher symbolism as well as to gain the empathetic knowledge needed to communicate and correlate with the rest of society.

For me, a sound engineer, art provides a refuge from the harsh face history has turned on us. But that’s not saying much: artists will always make art for themselves and each other, even if times are bad.

Studying and part taking in art is like learning another language; and by doing so, the connectivity within a child’s brain grows, leading to better understanding (or higher intelligence). If art was eradicated from human history, humanity would know nearly nothing about it’s rise to it’s current stand point; no one would be able to understand the lives of our ancestors without art. From poetry to sculptures to music and dance, humans of the past and present give themselves the ability to express who they are and where they come from. Imagine a world without music. Imagine a world without dance.

That is a world where our youth stop learning about art. It should be understood that art is more than a teaching mechanism, it is a language of freedom. I believe in self-expression. For me, self-expression can mean any number of things; whether it is creating art, playing sports, writing, or even collecting stamps. I believe it is important, because when people find ways to open their minds to others, we as human beings are able to distinguish ourselves from one another. And at the same time we also find the people we fit in with the most. In a sense, self-expression becomes an intuitive path that guides us through life.

Art is a perpetually self-renewing source of energy: that is the best definition of art, as opposed to decoration or illustration, that I have ever found. We need that source of energy as we face this challenging political and economic world. And that need goes far beyond the visual arts; different people find energy in different places, so we need poetry, drama, music, architecture, dance, film, literature, just as much as painting. Art is a journey to be had; something to be experienced and learned from fully. Remember what drove your soul to create and why you chose to dedicate your life to this. Art heals and reveals; is the purveyor of harsh realities, exhibitor of hidden strife and the proprietor of passion for life.

“You can't get there by bus, only by hard work, risking, and by not quite knowing what you're doing. What you'll discover will be wonderful: yourself.” - Alan Alda

Yes, I thought -- and this Art is the one form of human energy in the whole world, which really works for union, and destroys the barriers between man and man. It is the continual, unconscious replacement, however fleeting, of oneself by another; the real cement of human life; the everlasting refreshment and renewal. And to be stolen away from ourselves by Art is a momentary relaxation from that itching, a minute's profound, and as it were secret, enfranchisement. The active amusements and relaxations of life can only rest certain of our faculties, by indulging others; the whole self is never rested save through that unconsciousness of self, which comes through rapt contemplation of nature or of art.

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And suddenly I remembered that some believe that Art does not produce unconsciousness of self, but rather very vivid self-realisation. That is not the first and instant effect of Art; the new impetus is the after effect of that momentary replacement of oneself by the self of the work before us; it is surely the result of that brief span of enlargement, enfranchisement, and rest.

“Art is the desire of a man to express himself, to record the reactions of his personality to the world he lives in,” said by Amy Lowell; a nineteenth century poet. Art is all around us, and impacts every aspect of who we are. Art is anything from Eminem, to Beethoven, the Mona Lisa, to graffiti. Art has been a part of mankind before we could even speak; charcoal paintings in cave walls and design covered pottery have shown us this.

Sonnet 50 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare:

“How heavy do I journey on the way,

When what I seek, my weary travel's end,

Doth teach that ease and that repose to say

'Thus far the miles are measured from thy friend!”

The poet finds the journey which he is taking tedious and wearisome. The ease and repose looked for at the end of each day's travel are lost in the thought that every stage marks so many miles farther away from his friend. The very beast on which he rides sympathises with his rider, as if by instinct, and plods heavily on, answering, when spurred, with a groan, a groan which reminds his rider of his own sorrow.

Making art and seeking to create beauty are acts of faith in the future, in the survival of the values of humanism—faith that we will get through the threats facing us, the crumbling of the economic and political world we’ve known, the dying forests and rising seas due to climate change. Art demands recognition that human lives matter, that chaos can be transmuted into beauty and courage.We make art,we turn to art as a source of the energy we need in good times and bad because we’re human, and art is one of the essential things we do to be human.

Is art subjective?

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England is a land of creativity and innovation. Locals and visitors are assured of new and exciting elements that are continuously being refreshed. This is especially true of epicentres such as London and Manchester. There are even specific projects that are designed to engender such creativity amongst the local population. Examples of this type of initiative are the Tate Liverpool and the Tate Modern in London. But museums and galleries are not the only homes of art. Sculptures and art festivals also testify to the creative genius of England. Sculptures range from ancient figures of historical import to life-size bronze carvings of human beings (such as exist on the roof of De la Warr Pavilion in Bexhill or the Another Place exhibition on Crosby Beach, Liverpool).

Theatre is another very important part of the English culture and is, in fact, one of the reasons people visit the country. Theatrical shows, such as Cats, The Lion King and The Phantom of the Opera, are modern reflections of the ancient Shakespearean productions that once graced the English stages. Today, shows in London remain one of England.s primary tourist attractions.

England has been the birthplace of a number of incredible musical artists too. Music remains a very important part of this country.s culture. Styles range from the orchestral genius of Manchester, Birmingham and Bournemouth to timeless favourites like Blur, Oasis, David Bowie, The Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, The Beatles, Led Zeppelin and Lily Allen. The Birmingham International Jazz Festival continues to lure music enthusiasts to come and witness the world.s greatest jazz artists like Incognito band.

I grew up believing that taste is just a matter of personal preference. Each person has things they like, but no one's preferences are any better than anyone else's. There is no such thing as good taste.

Like a lot of things I grew up believing, this turns out to be false, and I'm going to try to explain why.

One problem with saying there's no such thing as good taste is that it also means there's no such thing as good art. If there were good art, then people who liked it would have better taste than people who didn't. So if you discard taste, you also have to discard the idea of art being good, and artists being good at making it. When you're trying to make things, taste becomes a practical matter. You have to decide what to do next. Would it make the painting better if I changed that part? If there's no such thing as better, it doesn't matter what you do. In fact, it doesn't matter if you paint at all. You could just go out and buy a ready-made blank canvas. If there's no such thing as good, that would be just as great an achievement as painting queen Elizabeth's portrait. Less laborious, certainly, but if you can achieve the same level of performance with less effort, surely that's more impressive, not less.

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Artists have often had an uneasy relationship with their critics. Artists usually need positive opinions from critics for their work to be viewed and purchased; unfortunately for the artists, only later generations may understand it.

Art is an important part of being human and can be found through all aspects of our lives, regardless of the culture or times. There are many different variables that determine one's judgment of art such as aesthetics, cognition or perception. Art can be objective or subjective based on personal preference toward aesthetics and form. It can be based on the elements and principle of design and by social and cultural acceptance. Art is a basic human instinct with a diverse range of form and expression. Art can stand-alone with an instantaneous judgment or can be viewed with a deeper more educated knowledge. Aesthetic, pragmatic, expressive, formalist, relativist, processional, imitation, ritual, cognition, mimetic and postmodern theories are some of many theories to criticize and appreciate art. Art criticism and appreciation can be subjective based on personal preference toward aesthetics and form, or it can be based on the elements and principle of design and by social and cultural acceptance.

Art criticism as a genre of writing, obtained its modern form in the 18th century. The earliest use of the term art criticism was by the English painter Jonathan Richardson in his 1719 publication An Essay on the Whole Art of Criticism. In this work, he attempted to create an objective system for the ranking of works of art. Seven categories, including drawing, composition, invention and colouring, were given a score from 0 to 18, which were combined to give a final score. The term he introduced quickly caught on, especially as the English middle class began to be more discerning in their art acquisitions, as symbols of their flaunted social status.

I think the key to this puzzle is to remember that art has an audience. Art has a purpose, which is to interest its audience. Good art (like good anything) is art that achieves its purpose particularly well. The meaning of "interest" can vary. Some works of art are meant to shock, and others to please; some are meant to jump out at you, and others to sit quietly in the background. But all art has to work on an audience, and—here's the critical point—members of the audience share things in common.One reason it's easy to believe that taste is merely personal preference is that, if it isn't, how do you pick out the people with better taste? There are billions of people, each with their own opinion; on what grounds can you prefer one to another?

But if audiences have a lot in common, you're not in a position of having to choose one out of a random set of individual biases, because the set isn't random. And so having a notion of good art, in the sense of art that does its job well, doesn't require you to pick out a few individuals and label their opinions as correct. No matter who you pick, they'll find faces engaging.

So could we figure out what the best art is by taking a vote? After all, if appealing to humans is the test, we should be able to just ask them, right? Well, not quite. For products of nature that

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might work. I'd be willing to eat the apple the world's population had voted most delicious, and I'd probably be willing to visit the beach they voted most beautiful, but having to look at the painting they voted the best would be a crapshoot.

One of the prominent critics in England at the time was William Hazlitt, a painter and essayist. He wrote about his deep pleasure in art and his belief that the arts could be used to improve mankind's generosity of spirit and knowledge of the world around it. He was one of a rising tide of English critics that began to grow uneasy with the increasingly abstract direction J. M. W. Turner's landscape art was moving in.

One of the great critics of the 19th century was John Ruskin. In 1843 he published Modern Painters in which he robustly defended the work of J. M. W. Turner from his critics, who charged Turner with being unfaithful to nature. Through painstaking analysis and attention to detail, Ruskin was able to demonstrate the very opposite, in what the art historian E. H. Gombrich called "the most ambitious work of scientific art criticism ever attempted." Ruskin became renowned for his rich and flowing prose, and later in life he branched out to become an active and wide-ranging critic, publishing works on architecture and Renaissance art, including the Stones of Venice.

A great painting is called “Belshazzar's Feast” by Rembrandt.The story of Belshazzar and the writing on the wall originates in the Old Testament Book of Daniel. The Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar looted the Temple in Jerusalem and has stolen the sacred artefacts such as golden cups. His son Belshazzar used these cups for a great feast where the hand of God appeared and wrote the inscription on the wall prophesizing the downfall of Belshazzar's reign. Rembrandt's handling of painting materials and his painting technique in Belshazzar's Feast are both exceptional and do not compare to any of his other works.The palette of this painting is unusually rich

Although, if you found people who'd never seen an image of it and sent them to a museum in which it was hanging among other paintings with a tag labelling it as a painting by an unknownseventeenth century artist, most would walk by without giving it a second look.

Philosophy uses generalisations and its generalisations are of an extremely broad, virtually universal character. Its categories of the general, the particular and the unique are both interconnected and yet separate concepts. In art, on the other hand, the general, the particular and the unique are alloyed in the very fabric of the artistic image. Philosophy is theoretical from beginning to end, whereas art is sensuous and imaginal. Philosophical thought reflects its subject-matter in concepts, in categories; art is characterised, on the other hand, by emotional and imaginal reflection and by transformation of reality. This is not to say, of course, that art, particularly in its verbal form, in belles lettres, and even more so in the intellectual type of novel, contains no concepts.

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An experience occurs when a work is finished in a satisfactory way, a problem solved, a game is played through, a conversation is rounded out, and fulfillment and consummation conclude the experience. In an experience, every successive part flows freely. An experience has a unity and episodes fuse into a unity, as in a work of art. The experience may have been something of great or just slight importance.

For the average person, brand dominates all other factors in the judgement of art. Seeing a painting they recognize from reproductions is so overwhelming that their response to it as a painting is drowned out.Without a certain degree of intellect there can be no subtle feelings and from this it follows that art, which aesthetically expresses man's emotional-intellectual world in his relationship to the environment, is bound to feel the impact of philosophy and the other sciences. A world-view may come into art but not as an intrinsic part of it.

We can speak of the philosophical content of art, just as we can speak of the philosophical content of science, when the scientist begins to consider the essential nature of his science, its moral value, social responsibility, and so on. These are actually philosophical questions and they do not form part of the specific nature of the given science. Rather they are the self-awareness of the science, just as the artist's reflections on the nature of art, its social meaning, and so on, are the self-awareness of art. And this is in fact philosophy, whose categories permeate all forms of thought, including that of the artist. Without them no artist could generalise, identify the typical in the particular fact, assess the quality of his subject-matter, preserve proportion, the most vital element in aesthetic imagination, or comprehend the contradictions of life in such a way as to give them full expression.

What happens in practice is that everyone gets really good at talking about art. As the art itself gets more random, the effort that would have gone into the work goes instead into the intellectual sounding theory behind it.

Incidentally, I'm not saying that good art is just the fifteenth century European art. I'm not saying we should make what they made, but that we should work like they worked. There are fields now in which many people work with the same energy and honesty that fifteenth century artists did, but art is not one of them.

I don't have any illusions that being able to talk about art being good or bad will cause the people who talk about it to have anything more useful to say. Indeed, one of the reasons "taste is subjective" found such a receptive audience is that, historically, the things people have said about good taste have generally been such nonsense.

Conclusion

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This paper has been a study of art as experience and self-knowlegde . I covered the biggest questions about art, more precisely: what it stands for, how can it help us and its subjectivity.

In the first chapter “What does art stand for?” I explained what art means to me and what it means in general. As it was said, when people ask, “What is art?” or state that something “is not art,” they usually are not seeking a philosophical definition but are instead expressing an opinion that a painting is not realistic enough, that it is offensive, or that it does not use traditional materials. This also shows that people not only make art, but also choose which objects should be called art.

In the second chapter “Art is a journey of self discovery” art was compared with a part of mankind. Art is a journey to be had; something to be experienced and learned from fully. Remember what drove your soul to create and why you chose to dedicate your life to this. Art heals and reveals; is the purveyor of harsh realities, exhibitor of hidden strife and the proprietor of passion for life. Shakespear’s Sonet 50 tought us why art is a journey. He suggested that human lives matter, that chaos can be transmuted into beauty and courage.We make art,we turn to art as a source of the energy we need in good times and bad because we’re human, and art is one of the essential things we do to be human.

The last chapter “Is art subjective?” we understood why art is a basic human instinct with a diverse range of form and expression.I have talked about art criticism as a need in art. It is a genre of writing, who obtained its modern form in the 18th century. We learned about a man who made art’s subjectivity less probable. It is the English painter Jonathan Richardson and his publication: An Essay on the Whole Art of Criticism. Art criticism and appreciation can be subjective based on personal preference toward aesthetics and form, or it can be based on the elements and principle of design and by social and cultural acceptance.

This paper presented art as a way of living, of understanding the world but most important a way of reaching full self-conciousness.

To conclude, great art wakes us up and makes us most alive; like great music, literature, science.To be with people who share that enthusiasm and build upon our appreciation makes life so much the better.

Bibliography

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1. Art movements -Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_movement)

2.Art criticism- Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_criticism#History)

3.English art – Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_art)

4.William Shakespeare- “ Shakespeare's Sonnets” , Publisher: Thomas Thorpe, Publication date:1609, England

5.English art and culture- http://www.englandforever.org

6.Terry Barrett- “Criticizing art: Understanding the contemporary”, Publisher: Mayfield Publishing Company, Publication date: December 3rd 1999

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