Cultural Diversity

Cultural Diversity Meaning #1

the quality of diverse or different cultures, as opposed to monoculture, akin to cultural decay.

Cultural Diversity Meaning #2

having different cultures respect each other's differences.

Cultural Diversity Meaning #3

The phrase "cultural diversity" is also sometimes used to mean the variety of human societies or cultures in a specific region.

Fosso
The Chief

20th century
Chromogenic print

Universal Human Activity

Making art

What do artists do?

1. create places for some human purpose

2. create extraordinary versions of

ordinary objects

3. to record and commemorate

4. to give tangible form to the unknown

5. to give tangible form to feelings and ideas

6. to refresh our vision and help us see the

world in new ways

Unknown

Kente Cloth

20th century

Cotton

Royal Kente Cloth

Woven in hundreds of patterns, used for ceremonial occasions

Unknown

Shiva Nataraja
10th century C.E.

Bronze

The imagined here are the four arms of the Lord of Dance meaning “fear not.”

Artists…

Portray what can only be imagined

When was Maya Lin born?

1959

What Do Artists Do?

Artists create places created for some human purpose and to bridge communities together

Lin

Vietnam Veterans Memorial

20th century

Black Granite

58,000 names

Maya Lin Quote #1

“Water is an amazing element because it can occur in three states. It can be a solid (ice), a liquid, or it can be a gas (steam). And, again, going back to science, it’s probably why I wanted to become a scientist early on. The ability for water to transform or transmute itself, the fact that it can constantly be in flux as to what it is, is probably why I’m drawn to it. So, that the Grand Rapids park uses ice, vapor, and liquid—water in all its three stages—is absolutely the core idea behind that piece.”

Lin

Marble Han River Dam

21st century

Glass marbles and adhesive

Lin’s Type of Art

Maya Lin’s acclaimed work encompasses large-scale environmental installations, intimate studio artworks, architectural projects and memorials. Her artwork interprets the world through a twenty-first century lens, using technological methods to study and visualize the natural environment.

Maya Lin Quote #2

“Each of my works originates from a simple desire to make

people aware of their surroundings, not just the physical world

but also the psychological world we live in. I create places in

which to think, without trying to dictate what to think.”

What is the NEA

National Endowment for the Arts

Most important thing for art

Works of art come to mean something for YOU, that your own experiences, thoughts and emotions find a place in them, for then you will have made them live

Vanitas Meaning

Latin for Vanity

Alludes to biblical Book of Ecclesiastes, fleeting nature of earthly life and happiness which reads in the end “all is vanity”

Leal

Vanitas

17th century

Oil on canvas

What is a work of art?

The visual expression of an idea or experience formed with skill through the use of a medium

Medium

A particular material, along with its accompanying technique

Media

Plural of “medium”

Mixed Media

Art made with a combination of different materials.

De Goya

Saturn Devouring One of His Children

19th century

Wall painting in oil on plaster

Who was De Goya?

An official Spanish painter working for court during the decades around the turn of the 19th century, de Goya lived through tumultuous times and witnessed terrible acts of cruelty, stupidity, warfare and slaughter

What emotions can art produce?

Pleasure, sadness, horror, pity, awe and more

Can art be grotesque?

Art can be beautiful, but not all art tries to be beautiful, and beauty is not a requirement for art.

Representational Art

Descriptive of a work of art that depicts forms in the natural world

Picasso

First Communion

19th century

Oil on canvas

Abstract Art

Descriptive of art in which the forms of the visual world are purposefully simplified, fragmented, or otherwise distorted

Picasso

Seated Woman Holding a Fan

20th century

Oil on canvas

Picasso Quote

“Why should the artist persist in treating subjects that can be established so clearly with the lens of a camera?”

Nonrepresentational Art

nonobjective, descriptive of art that does not represent or otherwise refer to the visible world outside itself

Delaunay

Electric Prisms

20th century

Oil on canvas

Aesthetics

The branch of philosophy concerned with the feelings aroused in us by sensory experiences such as seeing and hearing. Aesthetics examines, among other things, the nature of art and the nature of beauty.

Wabi

Embraces such concepts as naturalness, simplicity, understatement, and impermanence.

Sabi

Adds overtones of loneliness, old age and tranquility.

What are Wabi and Sabi key to

Zen and Buddhism

Connected to practice known as tea ceremony

Koetsu

Teabowl

Late 16th early 17th century

Raku ware

Installation Art

A space is presented as a work of art that can be entered, explored, experienced, and reflected upon.

What was special about Walker’s Subtlety

Walker’s installation allowed the public to enter the warehouse for the first and last time before it disappeared.

What was the importance of sugar in a Subtlety

its historical reliance on slavery: the vast sugar plantations founded by European colonists in Brazil and the Caribbean were worked by African slaves.

Walker

A Subtlety or the Marvelous Sugar Baby

21st century

Styrofoam, resin, sugar, molasses

How does fantasy relate to reality

Kusama created a space that we experience as a fantasy, though in fact it has its origins in her mental reality

Infinity Mirrored Room

a room lined with mirrors so that anything in it multiplies in endless reflections

Kusama Quote

“Polka dots are a way to infinity. When we obliterate nature and our bodies with polka dots, we become part of the unity of our environment. I become part of the eternal, and we obliterate ourselves with Love”

Kusama

Love is Calling

21st century

Mixed Media (mirrors)

Why did Kahlo make self portraits?

Self-portraits throughout her career expressing her experience as a woman, as an artist, as a Mexican, affirming that she still exists.

Kahlo Quote

“I never painted my dreams. I painted my own reality.”

Kahlo

Self-Portrait with Monkeys

20th century

Oil on canvas

The Sacred Realm

From earliest times, art has played an important role in our relationship to the sacred, helping us to envision it, to honor it, and to communicate with it.

What is a Hataali?

A religious specialist singer in sand painting

What is sand painting?

Sand painting is part of a ceremony in which a religious specialist known as a singer, hataali, calls upon spirit powers to heal and bless someone who is ill.

Unknown

Navajo Men Creating a Sand Painting

20th century

Photograph

Bodhisattvas

Enlightened beings who have deferred their ultimate goal of nirvana (freedom from the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth) in order to help others attain this goal

What does Picasso condemn in his work Guernica?

Picasso condemns the violence and fascism unleashed against
ordinary citizens during the Spanish Civil War

Picasso

Guernica

20th century

Oil on canvas

Unknown

Stone and Gravel Garden

15th century

Earthwork

Meaning of Stone and Gravel Garden

This garden is a place of meditation, and viewers find their own meaning in it.

Gonzalez-Torres

Titled: “Untitled”

20th century

Billboard

What was Torres’ hopes for the piece?

He hoped only that people might notice, might wonder, might bring their own meanings to this unexpected encounter. (blank billboard with tiny bird on it)

Visual Elements

Line, Color, Light, Shape and Mass, Texture and Pattern, Space, Time and Motion

Visual elements help us…

Perceive and respond to a work’s form. They help us analyze our visual experience and are the ingredients that an artist has available in making any work of art.

What Makes Sze Unique

Sze assembles her works from commonplace industrial products such as measuring sticks, string, lamps. In her hands, we become aware of them as visual elements, bits of ready-made line, mass, color and shape.

Sze

Hidden Relief

21st century

Mixed Media

Complementary color examples

red and green

orange and blue

yellow and purple

Color Harmonies/ Color Schemes

the selective use of two or more colors in a single composition

Monochromatic Color Scheme

harmonies composed of variations on the same hue, often with differences of value and intensity.

Kara Walker

Untitled

20th century

Watercolor on paper

Complementary color scheme

harmonies involve colors directly opposite each other on
the color wheel

Marshall

Me

21st century

Linocut

Values

shades of light and dark

Chiaroscuro

Italian for light/dark where artists employ values to record contrasts of light and shadow in the natural world, contrasts that model mass for our eyes

Charles White

American artist known for his chronicling of African American related subjects in paintings, lithographs, and murals

White

Untitled

20th century

Etching

Shape

a two-dimensional form that occupies an area with identifiable boundaries

Mass

a three-dimensional form that occupies a volume of space

Figure

a shape we detach and focus on

Ground

the surrounding visual information that the figure stands out from, the background

What is Whitehorse inspired by?

A Navajo artist, Whitehorse is inspired in part by the signs and symbols carved centuries ago into the cliffs of her native region

Whitehorse

Chanter

20th century

Oil on paper, mounted on canvas

Positive shapes

Shapes we perceive as figures

Negative shapes

Shapes on the ground

Space

“space” sometimes conveys the idea of nothingness. But the space in and around a work of art is not a void, and it is very much there.

Suh

Reflection

21st century

Nylon and stainless steel tube

What does Reflection exhibit?

produces a heightened awareness of the shaped space it occupies by modifying that space in an unexpected and disorienting way

Meaning of Reflection

Two identical replicas of the traditional Korean entry gate that stood before the artists childhood home, Reflection is about memory-a gate and the memory of a gate, time present and time past

Texture

the surface quality-a perception of smooth or rough, flat or bumpy, fine or coarse

Pattern

any decorative, repetitive motif or design

What can pattern do

Pattern can create visual texture

“Buzz”

Wiley illustrates the visual “buzz” and spatial ambiguity that patterns can produce

Wiley

Portrait of (Alicia Keys Deans)

21st century

Oil on linen

Cave and Watt

This Land, Shared Sky

21st century

Hand-strung, beaded shoelaces, textiles, jingles.

Where is Nick Cave from and describe This Land, Shared Sky

Chicago native, Nick Cave collaborates with Seneca Nation artist Marie Watt. The piece weaves together Black and Indigenous material traditions.

Where does the artwork draw inspiration

The artwork draws inspiration from Woody Guthrie’s classic song ”This Land Is Your Land”, reflecting themes of migration, community and opportunity

Cave

Soundsuits

21st century

Mixed media: knits and applique, dolls, black bugle beads, vintage mammy’s cozy, hand mirrors

Cave

Soundsuits

21st century

Textiles and found objects