Art: defining the word

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Art defining the word
HONORS ART HISTORY
What is Art?
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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?
Audrey Flack Marylin, 1977 Acrylic on canvas
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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?
Chuck Close Self -Portrait, 1967 Acrylic on
canvas
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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?
Duane Hanson Supermarket Shopper, 1970 Mixed
media
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Art defining the word
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
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Art defining the word
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 cant make it big, make it
red . Is this painting by Mark Rothko art in
your opinion?
Mark Rothko No.14, 1961 Oil on Canvas
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Art defining the word
So, How Did You Define Art? Good Old Fashioned
Art - Zach Summers
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Later Twentieth Century
Joseph Kosuth One and Three Chairs, 1965
Museum of Modern Art, NYC
Conceptual Art
Figure 33-2
Challenging the Definition of Art The 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 artists 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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Conceptual artists regard the concept as an
artworks defining component. To portray
chairness, Kosuth juxtaposed a chair, a
photograph of the chair, and a dictionary
definition of chair.
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Later Twentieth Century
Joseph Kosuth One and Three Chairs, 1965
Museum of Modern Art, NYC
Conceptual Art
Figure 33-2
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 werent 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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Kosuths 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 Platos
Theory of Forms to understand this better.
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Art of the Early 20th Century
Constantine Brancusi Bird in Space 1923
Orgainic Sculpture Seeking the Essence of Flight
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. Brancusis 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
Constantine Brancusi Bird in Space 1923
Orgainic Sculpture Seeking the Essence of Flight
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. Dont 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 works 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
Constantine Brancusi Bird in Space 1923
Organic Sculpture
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 Brancusis 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.
Brancusis 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
Michelangelo David 1501-1504
Subduing a Giant
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. Davids 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 popes
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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The High Renaissance
Michelangelo David 1501-1504
Subduing a Giant
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 Davids 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.
Figure 22-9
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A Knowledge of Taste and Refinement
Salon Culture Prefacing the Rococo
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 oclock 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.
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.
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Rococo The French Taste
Jean-Honré Fragonard The Swing, 1766
An Intriguing Flirtation
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 mans pretty sweetheart higher
and higher, while her lover (and the works
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 themes sensuality..
Figure 24-86
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America After 1945
Robert Rauschenberg Canyon, 1959
Pop Art
Figure 36-32
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, Rasuchenbergs 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.
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Postmodern Painting
Susan Rothenberg Tattoo, 1979
Horses as Metaphors for Humanity
Figure 36-30
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
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 images
expressiveness and account for categorization as
a Neo-Expressionist. The title refers to the
horses head drawn within the outline of its leg.
A tattoo or memory image.- Rothenberg.
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Postmodern Painting
Anselm Kiefer Nigredo, 1984 Philadelphia Museum
of Art
Neo-Expressionism
Figure 36-32
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.
It is not merely the impressive physicality of
Kiefers 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. Kiefers 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 Germanys
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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Postmodern Painting
Anselm Kiefer Nigredo, 1984 Philadelphia Museum
of Art
Neo-Expressionism
Figure 36-32
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.
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.