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CHAPTER 1: ART & ART MAKING

function

When you look at any work of art, one first question is “For what purpose was this originally made?” At the time it is created, a work of art is intended to do a job within a culture. Here are some of its many functions:

  • Art reflects customs and concerns related to food, shelter, and human reproduction (Chapter 5 and 6).

  • Art gives us pictures of deities or helps us conceive of what divinity might be. It is also used to create a place of worship (Chapter 7).

  • Art serves and/or commemorates the dead (Chapter 8).

  • Art glorifies the power of the state and its rulers. It celebrates war and conquest—and sometimes peace (Chapter 9).

  • Art reveals political and social justice and injustices (Chapter 10).

  • Art records the likenesses of individuals and aids us in understanding ourselves, our bodies, and our minds, thoughts, and emotions (Chapter 11).

  • Art promotes cohesion within a social group and helps to define classes and clans (Chapter 12).

  • Art educates us about who we are within the world around us (Chapter 13).

  • Art entertains us (Chapter 14).

Finally, the art of the past serves to educate us about earlier cultures, while contemporary art is a mirror held up to show us our current condition.

visual form

Another primary question to ask about a work of art is “What elements compose it, and how are they arranged?” Almost all artwork has physical attributes, so it can be seen or touched and so ideas can be communicated. For any work of art, its materials have been carefully selected and organized, as have its line, shape, color, texture, volume, and so on. Chapters 2 and 3 are all about visual form, but refer to your textbook where it compares two artworks, Figure 1.2 and Figure 1.3, to introduce the basic ideas.

content

Art has content, which is the mass of ideas associated with each artwork. Content is communicated through the following:

  • The art’s imagery

  • Its symbolic meaning

  • Its surroundings where it is used or displayed

  • The customs, beliefs, and values of the culture that uses it

  • Writings that help explain the work

Content can be both immediately apparent and require considerable study. Refer to the discussion in your textbook about Figures 1.4 and 1.5.

aesthetics

The last basic question regarding any artwork is “What are its aesthetic qualities?”Aesthetics involve the look and feel of an artwork and the attributes that elevate it above other objects. These change from age to age and from place to place. While some cultures may value the look and feel of a well-executed oil painting, others may value the intricacy and pattern of finely woven natural materials. Aesthetics is also a body of written texts that deal with art, taste, and culture or that examine the definition and appreciation of art.

art & style vocabulary

Below are some basic terms to describe art and art styles. These will be helpful for the rest of this chapter and throughout the book.

Art is:

  • representational when it contains entities from the world in a recognizable form

  • naturalistic when recognizable imagery is depicted very much as seen in nature

  • idealized when natural imagery is modified in a way that strives for perfection within the bounds of the values and aesthetics of a particular culture

  • Expressionism or expressionist art communicates heightened emotions and often a sense of urgency or spontaneity

  • Surrealism or surreal refers to art with a bizarre or fantastic arrangement of images or materials, as if tapping into the workings of the unconscious mind

  • In contrast to representational art is nonobjective (nonrepresentational) art, which contains forms that are completely generated by the artist.

  • Abstracted imagery has been derived from reality by distorting, enlarging, and/or dissecting objects or figures from nature

  • A cultural style consists of recurring and distinctive features that we see in many works of art emanating from a particular place and era

art within visual culture

Art is part of visual culture; that is, it is part of the vast amount of imagery that humans create and proliferate, that comes to us through all kinds of media, and that is so important in our everyday lives. Refer to your book for further discussion and explanation of Visual Culture.

There are three categories of visual culture in the United States today: fine art, popular culture, and craft.

  • Fine art is a category of refined objects considered to be among the highest cultural achievements of the human race. Fine art is believed to transcend average human works and is produced by artists with unique sensibilities. Museums and galleries are institutions closely associated with fine art.

  • Popular culture in Western nations consists of magazines, comics, television shows, advertising, folk art, tattoos, customized cars, graffiti, video games, posters, websites, calendars, greeting cards, dolls, souvenirs, toys, movies (as opposed to art films), snapshots, and commercial photography (as opposed to fine photography). This category also encompasses graphic design, product design, and information design. Popular art is often perceived as being more accessible, inexpensive, entertaining, commercial, political, naive, or colorful than fine art. Among all categories of visual culture, this one is growing the fastest.

  • Craft refers to specific media, including ceramics, glass, jewelry, weaving, and woodworking. Craft usually involves making objects rather than images, although craft may involve surface decoration. Often, craft objects have a utilitarian purpose or perhaps evolved from a utilitarian origin. In addition, however, they display aesthetic and/or conceptual attributes that go beyond mundane use. Like the distinction between fine art and popular culture, the art/craft distinction is culturally specific and in flux.

about artists

As discussed in the textbook, a discussion of art would not be complete without looking at artists, their training, and the roles they play in society.

  • Context for Making Art

    • Artists make art, but there are also many other people who contribute to the process of making art. These include patrons, technicians, skilled workers, craftspersons, laborers, members of institutions, and the regular person on the street.

  • Training Artists

    • Artists need to acquire skills. Refer to you textbook on the various methods for training artists, including, but not limited to apprenticeships and guilds.

  • Making the Art Object

    • How does an artwork get made? By the individual artist or sometimes art objects are made by workshops, by communities, in collaborations, and through group commissions.

  • Innovation and Self Expression

    • Innovation is the making of something that is new. Self-expression refers to individual artists’ own personal ideas or emotions, embedded in the works of art they make.

  • The Role of Artists in Various Cultures

    • Depending on the culture, artists may be considered ordinary people, skilled workers, priests, or people with special or prized skills.