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PART ONE
Chapter 2: What is Art?
Key Topics for this chapter include:
• Artist and Audience
• Art and Beauty
• Art and Appearances
• Art and Meaning
• Art and Objects
© 2013, McGraw-Hill Higher Education. All rights reserved.
Key Terms for this chapter include:
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•
•
•
•
•
•
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outsider/folk art
disinterested contemplation
representational (Naturalistic, trompe l’oeil)
abstract (stylized)
nonrepresentational/nonobjective art
embodied meaning
form, content, and context
installation
© 2013, McGraw-Hill Higher Education. All rights reserved.
Wheat Fields and Cypress
Tree, Vincent Van Gogh,
1889
Mona Lisa, Leonardo da Vinci,
1503-1506
ABOUT ANDY WARHOL
Thirty are Better Than One, Andy Warhol,
1963
Artist and Audience
Our modern world of art includes schools, galleries, critics,
collectors and museums. It features individual artists working
independently expressing their own ideas.
Insert visual(s).
Suggestions:
2.8 Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nation’s
Millennium General Assembly, James Hampton
1950-64
© 2013, McGraw-Hill Higher Education. All rights reserved.
2.7 Badi’uzzaman Fights Iraj to a
Draw, Dasavanta, Shravana,
Madhava Kurd
Artist and Audience
In the past, an artist typically worked for a
client, patron, or collaboratively in a
workshop. Rarely were individual artists
known.
• Outsider/Folk Art: Refers to artwork that
is created by the nonprofessional artist.
© 2013, McGraw-Hill Higher Education. All rights reserved.
David,
Michelangelo,
1501-1504,
marble, 17’.
Art and Beauty
• Aesthetics: A philosophy of the nature
and meaning of beauty, as it pertains to
art.
• Disinterested Contemplation: Refers to
looking beyond the actual, practical, and
personal in search of beauty and
pleasure.
© 2013, McGraw-Hill Higher Education. All rights reserved.
2.9 Cabbage Leaf, Edward Weston,
1931
2.11 Saturn Devouring One of His
Children, Francisco de Goya, 182022
Pieta, Bellini, 1505.
The Pietà is a subject in Christian art depicting the Virgin Mary cradling the dead body of Jesus, most
often found in sculpture.
Art and Appearances
Art is represented in a variety of ways
in the Western art world. The
following terms are used to help
describe the visual appearance of
artwork:
• Representational
• Abstract
• Nonrepresentational
© 2013, McGraw-Hill Higher Education. All rights reserved.
Art and Appearances
Representational art resembles forms
found in the natural world. The result is a
recognizable likeness of objects and
forms.
• Trompe l’oeil: French for “fool the eye”
• Naturalistic: Artwork that is very faithful to
visual experience
© 2013, McGraw-Hill Higher Education. All rights reserved.
2.12 First Communion, Pablo Picasso,
1895-96
2.13 Seated Woman Holding a Fan,
Pablo Picasso, 1908
Art and Appearances
Abstract art distorts, exaggerates, or
simplifies the natural world to
provide essence.
• Stylized: Artwork that conforms to a
preset style or set of conventions for
depicting the world.
© 2013, McGraw-Hill Higher Education. All rights reserved.
2.14 Woman with Packages,
Louise Bourgeois, 1949
,
2.15 House Painter III Duane
Hanson, 1984/1988
2.16 Head of a King,
Yoruba 13th century
2.17 Cylindrical Head,
Yoruba, 13th-14th century
Art and Appearances
Nonrepresentational art contains no
reference to the natural world as we
see it. This art is also referred to as
nonobjective.
• Style: refers to characteristics recognized
as constant, recurring, or coherent.
© 2013, McGraw-Hill Higher Education. All rights reserved.
2.19 Melodious, Vasily Kandinsky,
1924
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o
5wqlj2nmcs
Chin Up, Rebecca Purdum, 1990
Art and Meaning
Understanding art is a cultural skill
and must be learned.
• Embodied Meaning: Art is always about
something.
• Form: The way a work looks.
• Content: What a work of art is about or its
subject matter.
© 2013, McGraw-Hill Higher Education. All rights reserved.
2.24 Piano Lesson, Henri Matisse, 1916
2.25 Music Lesson, Henri Matisse,
1917
Art and Meaning
Form is the way a work of art looks
and includes:
• Media: Materials used
• Style: Constant, recurring or coherent
traits
• Composition: The organization of design
elements & principles
© 2013, McGraw-Hill Higher Education. All rights reserved.
DIFFERING STYLES
Hairdressing, from
Twelve Types of
Women’s Handicraft,
Kitagawa Utamaro,
Maggie’s Ponytail
Susan Rothenberg,
Nude Woman Having Her
Hair Combed, Edgar
Degas
Art and Meaning
Content is what a work of art is about
and includes:
• Subject Matter: general idea
• Message: more specific meaning
• Iconography: The story of a work of art
including symbols or references, people,
events, etc.) requires knowledge of a
specific time, beliefs or culture.
© 2013, McGraw-Hill Higher Education. All rights reserved.
Art and Meaning
To understand a work of art as
created by an artist, at a specific
time, and in a particular culture is
referred to as context.
© 2013, McGraw-Hill Higher Education. All rights reserved.
Finial of a linguist’s staff, Ghana.
20th century
Assumption, Titian, 1518.
Church of the Frari
ICONOGRAPHY
Arnolfini Double Portrait,
Jan van Eyck
FORM AND
CONTENT
The Kiss, Auguste Rodin,
1886-98. 5’11”
Gnaw, Janine Antoni, 1992
600 lb cubes of chocolate and
lard
Gap between prettified, commercial world of
romance and private, more desperate cravings it
feeds on and causes.
Art and Objects
During the 20th century, artists began to
question the purpose and role of art in
contemporary society. A greater emphasis
was placed on the meaningfulness of the
art making process.
• Installation: A work of art meant to be
entered, explored, experienced and reflected
upon.
© 2013, McGraw-Hill Higher Education. All rights reserved.
How to explain pictures to a dead hare, Joseph Beuys,
performance piece enacted by German artist Joseph Beuys, 1965,
At the beginning of the performance
Beuys locked the gallery doors from the
inside, leaving the gallery-goers outside.
They could observe the scene within only
through the windows. With his head
entirely coated in honey and gold leaf, he
began to explain pictures to a dead hare.
Whispering to the dead animal on his arm
in an apparent dialog, he processed
through the exhibit from artwork to
artwork. Occasionally he would stop and
return to the center of the gallery, where
he stepped over a dead fir tree that lay on
the floor. After three hours the public was
let into the room. Beuys sat upon a stool
in the entrance area with the hare on his
arm and his back to the onlookers.
2.40 Mantle, Ann Hamilton, 1998
Miami Art Museum, 8 tables, 11shortwave radio receivers, voice, chair,
figure, steel block, sewing implements, 33 wool coats, and 60,000 fresh
cut flowers.
What is Art?: Summary
Key Topics
• Artist and Audience
• Art and Beauty
• Art and Appearances
• Art and Meaning
• Art and Objects
© 2013, McGraw-Hill Higher Education. All rights reserved.
Key Terms
• outsider/folk art
• disinterested
contemplation
• representational
• abstract
• nonrepresentational
• embodied meaning
• form, content, and
context
• installation