Understanding the Visual Arts: Lecture Notes

What is Art?

Art has many purposes and can be made from almost anything.
It communicates sensations, ideas, and emotions visually and serves as a form of language.
Art can help us see the world in new ways.

Frank Obie: Performance Art

Frank Obie is a performance artist who uses himself as the focus of his shows.
I Miss You (2000-2005): Obie paints himself white, walks on a catwalk, slits his wrist, and walks until he collapses.
- Addresses repulsion to blood and the issue of self-harm.
- The white paint and catwalk can represent the invisibility felt by someone with a mental illness.
- The blood represents their escape and addition of color to their life.

Frederic Edwin Church: Niagara

Symbolizes America's territorial expansion and ambitions.
The viewer is positioned at the edge.
The beauty and power of the landscape symbolize God and nature.
Some interpret it as God's support for the country.

Definition of Art

The broadest definition: an expressive product made by an artist that communicates its expressiveness to the viewer.

Terms to Know

Subject: The what of a work of art – people, places, things, themes, processes, events, ideas.
Genres: Categories of art, such as religious, mythological, historical, portraits, still life, landscape, etc.
Abstract Art: May be difficult to discern the subject.
Non-Objective Art: Makes no reference to the natural world.

Learning About Art

Look closely at images and think about your reaction and meaning.
Consider connected ideas, appealing senses, and whether it expresses something significant.

Bronze, Xenos, Venous, Cupid, Folly, and Time

A didactic piece meant to teach a lesson.
Father Time unveils a scene, conveying that "time reveals all."

Bronzino: Elanora of Toledo and Her Son, Giovanni

A commissioned piece depicting the Duke of Florence, his wife, and son.
Demonstrates the artist's great skill in texture, flawless skin, and composed features.
Communicates wealth and power.

Art Criticism

Responding to, interpreting meaning, and making critical judgments about specific works of art.
Critics help viewers perceive, interpret, and judge artworks.
Critics focus more on modern and contemporary art.
Art historians study works from cultures distant in time and space.

Damien Hurst: The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Who Is Living

Julian Spaulding looking at Damien Hurst's piece.

Art Theory

Art institutions (museums, galleries) and agents within them dictate what is art and what is not.
A work of art is defined by being deemed so by authorized members of the art world.
Social constructivist view faces difficulty when experts debate whether something is art.

Aesthetics

It means having an artistic quality.
A branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of art, beauty, and taste.
The creation and appreciation for beauty.
Scientifically, the study of sensory or sensory-emotional values.
More broadly, critical reflection on art, culture, and nature.
Having visual value.

Andy Warhol

Does wealth and socioeconomics influence what is considered art?
Do they make it into the art history books or the art historical canon?

Art Centers and Wealth

Wealthiest countries with art centers have more say in defining art.
Major art centers: New York City, London, Paris, Berlin are Western civilizations that are economically privileged.

Dependence on Art Critics, Historians, and Theorists

Definitions of art are influenced by art critics, historians, and art theorists.
Many of these figures are great intellectuals and thinkers.

How Art is Assessed: Formalism

Formalism is the study of art by analyzing and comparing form and style.
Emphasizes compositional elements like color, line, shape, and texture.
De-emphasizes iconography or historical and social context.
Extreme formalism: everything needed to comprehend a work of art is contained within that work of art itself.
Context, reasons for creation, historical background, and the life of the artist are of secondary importance.

Bananas

If we applied the formalist method, we don't have to ask the deep questions.

Formalist Point of View

Form or shape is right.
The color is right.
It looks three-dimensional.
It looks are realistic or representational.
We do not need to know if the artist was an agonized genius.
We don't need to know if there was a war raging during this time period.
Meant to depict a cluster of bananas.

Formalism in Representational Art

A means of replicating something that already exists in a realistic way.
Readable without needing information beyond the image.
We understand and can read the painting of bananas for what it is without any supplementary information.
It's a still life of bananas.

Abstract Art and Formalism

Response or emotions elicited without outside information.
Vertical lines communicate strength, stability, and authority.
Horizontal lines communicate calm, peace, and passiveness.
Diagonal lines communicate movement, action, and drama.

Colors

Colors can give us a clue.
Yellow is usually considered the happiest color.
Warmer colors are often considered happier because they remind us of warmth and good weather.
Yellow reminds us of the sun.
Yellow is also the most striking of the colors on the color spectrum.

Carolyn Davidson's Nike Company Logo

Represents a diagonal line, symbolizing action, motion, or fast movement.
Almost reminds us of the wings on the sandals of Hermes or Mercury.
Diagonal lines express the excitement of athletic activity.
A stylized diagonal line conveys action.

Art and Truth

Concept of truth in art is subjective and can mean different things to each viewer.
Artists express universal truth by expressing their own experiences.
Sometimes their pursuits lead them to beauty, at other times to shame and outrage.
The ugly truth, just like the beautiful truth, provides a valid commentary on the human condition.

Vincent van Gogh: Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear

Ahead of its time; could be considered a confessional piece.
Confessional art has been popular for the last 30 years.
Vincent van Gogh was already producing confessional art in the late 1800s in her self portraits.

Frida Kahlo

Used her tragic life as an emblem for human suffering.
Injured at age 18 in a streetcar accident, left with a fractured pelvis, vertebrae, and chronic pain.
Marriage to Diego Rivera was also painful.
Expresses pain to the viewer in her self-portraits.

Jane Giles: James Big Family

Features a passage of bright red in a sea of monotonous beige and gray tones.
The uniformity of this drab pallet reflects the appearance of what he calls a typical revolutionary family.
Asexual, dressed in mouse suits, their gaze glassy and dismal they could be clones.
Red signifies Chinese communist culture and creates narrative and visual emphasis.
Addresses the truth of contemporary Chinese life.
Big family reflected the one-child policy (later two-child).
Sexism led to abortions of female fetuses, raising concerns about a surplus of males.

Contextual Art

Opposes the stabilization of meanings, rejects definitions of art.

Greek Utilitarian Vase vs. Modern Utilitarian Object

Greek vase was meant to be utilitarian; contemporary object is also utilitarian.
What is, and is not art can change over time.
Ancient factory-made Greek urn is considered art because the factory system was evolved for that time.
Workmanship involved more hands-on methods.
The Greek vessel is considered more aesthetically pleasing.

Art and Beauty

Standards of beauty are not universal.

Sandra Botticelli: Birth of Venus

Considered a masterwork and representation of beauty at this particular time period.
Like art, beauty is not static and is changeable.
Beauty standards vary across cultures.

Leonardo da Vinci: Mona Lisa

Enchanted viewers with its external beauty and mysteriousness.
Appreciation tied to Western concept of beauty, may seem alien elsewhere.
Non-Western societies have different standards of beauty (scarification, body painting, tattooing, adornment).

Art Does Not Have to Be Beautiful

Can be ugly, disturbing, or frightening.

Co Caravaggio: Medusa

Disturbing.

George Condo: The Apparition

Frightening; plays on fears of disfigurement.
Subversion of a long-standing association of art with beauty and is a challenge to conventional theories of aesthetics.
Art arouses the imagination of the viewer, hints the term image.

Categories of Art

Architecture, painting, sculpture, printmaking, photography, crafts, performances, and digital images.
Distinction in Western tradition since the Renaissance: fine arts (aesthetic appeal, statements about the human condition) vs. applied art (graphic or industrial design).
Non-Western cultures often don't make this distinction.
Modern and contemporary artists often blur these boundaries.

Basket Weaving in Japan

Extremely revered there.

Quilt Making

Example of how utilitarian/applied arts can transcend status as American folk art.

The Names Project

The value lies in its social value/addressing the AIDS epidemic.
Size and weight attest to that.
Warehouse rent in Atlanta paid by Tyler Perry.

Creative Impulse

Comes to us as children, as we play and create.
Constantine Brancusi: "When we cease to be as stubby children, we are dead."

Brancusi: Bird in Space

Some don't immediately recognize it as a bird.
More likely to question a work of art if we dislike it, question the artist's skills, or find it confusing.
Always want to keep an open mind when it comes to looking at art.

Customs and Import Taxes

No import taxes levied on works of art.
Edward Strike purchased bird in space in Europe and attempted to bring it into the United States.
The customs office attempted to charge him a 600 import fee.
The work was produced by a professional artist, the medium and technique also came into play.
Medium: bronze and marble.
Sculptural process in the traditional vein of art making.
Customs officer categorized it as kitchen utensils and hospital supplies.
Size 54 inches high.

Judge's Decision

Emphasizes clean geometrical lines and balanced forms reminiscent of kitchen/hospital utensils.
Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney hired lawyers to take the issue to court.
The court established that Brancusi was a professional sculptor.
Even though the bird in space is not truly identifiable as a bird it does express a sense of a bird soaring in space.
The judge asserted that he knew of no law stating that an article should represent the human form or any particular animal form or an inanimate form.
One critic stated it has a suggestion of flied. It suggests grace aspiration and vigor coupled with speed and in the spirit of strength, potency and beauty just as a bird does, but the title of this word does not affect at all the aesthetic quality of the work as a work of art, as it has proportioned balance workmanship and design, the work was declared as a legitimate work of art by the judge because of the development of modernism and recognizing that abstraction was being pursued my mini contemporary artist.
Did not want the art world in the United States falling behind the art world in Europe.
Concluded that bird in space was beautiful and symmetrical and outline and pleasing to look at. So burdened space received free entry into the United States.

Personal Taste and Art

Most people don't generally use strict definitions of art, but like how something looks or the idea expressed.
Be open to different forms of expression to connect to artistic ideas around the world.
Need to have an open mind when it comes to heart.
Art can provide bonds between ourselves and people, a very different times and people of different places.

Expression in Art

Bird in Space was Brancusi's expression of a bird.
Many forms that expression can take, depending on:
- The taste of the artist.
- The idea he or she wishes to communicate.
- The cultural content.
- The purpose of the work.
- The time it was created.

John James Audubon

More realistic approach to bird imagery.
Accurately depicts their physical appearance in wild Turkey.
The bird is shown in its natural environment.
The bird and its habitat are precisely delineated.
The bird and its habitat look like what we would see in reality.
The depiction is so precise, the feathers neck, and he had that wine can identify the species from just looking at the image here.
His work is considered representational during the Renaissance.

Flight has mesmerized humans from diverse cultures.

Leonardo DaVinci

Interested in solving the problem of full flight.
He felt mini notebook pages with drawings of bird accompanied, by descriptions of the physics of their wing movements.
His drawings were scientifically precise, as well as having a static quality and exemplified that his view was that art is also a science or at least connected to science.
Although he never succeeded in producing a machine that could fly. He did try to invent a flying machine as well.
It was, if we look at drawings, it was, uh, close to the idea of what we would recognize is a helicopter.

Scythians

Nomadic people who lived in Russia (4th-8th centuries).
Created portable animal art (bronze and gold).
The object was placed on top of a pole with bells attached to announce the approach.
If it's owner, the owner was probably a shaman. A shaman is an important member of certain societies believed to have spiritual qualities.
Shamans were believed to be able to cure disease diseases and to transformed themselves sometimes into animals. Shamans were hints considered to have access to the animal world.
The shaman carrying the pole would have been associated with the birds power of flight as a work of art, the Scythian bird more closely resembles bran expressive qualities than Audubons.
Image has clear bird features (beak and crest).
Stylization: depicted as simplified/simple geometry.
Evokes a general sense of burdenous rather than precisely delineating every feature of the bird.

Benin Art

African kingdom west of Nigeria.
Artists represented birds as signs of Royal power.
First brought to the attention of the European world in the late 15th century, by the Portuguese missionaries and mercenaries.
Beneen artists produce works in metal and ivory.
Cannot be fully understood/appreciated out of context.

Royal Spirit Head

Crowned by three birds (two in profile, one frontal).
The appearance and arrangement of the birds echo the natural symmetry of the human head.
Because they can fly the bird symbolize the King's control of nature in the early 19th century, among the clean-cut of the American Northwest coast.

Raven

Used in crest art to denote the lineage of a family clan.
Crest: the right to display the image of a supernatural totem or ancestor.

Raven Barbecuing Hat

Elaborately carved, colorful wood hat worn by the lineage chief at ceremonial feasts.
Identifies the Raven clan as legitimately entitled to its clan names, its origin myths, ceremonial rights, territory houses, and other spiritual or material property elegant stylized form reflect the symbolic character of the hat, which includes the notion that the clan chief has the power associated with the flight of birds.

Protest, Censorship, and Art

Art can be censored for many reasons:
- Challenges those in power.
- Considered p***.
- Offends religious beliefs.
- Represents values others don't share.

Michelangelo: Pieta

1498: Commissioned by the French ambassador to carve a marble statue of the Pieta (dead Christ across the lap of the Virgin Mary).
The contract stipulated that it had to be the most beautiful statue in the city when Michelangelo completed the PA, it was admired for its formal unity for the high quality of marble and for the depiction of Christ as a relaxed, uh, youthful figure.
Inscribed with Michelangelo's signature across Mary's torso.
Previous images showed Christ stiffened by rigor mortis.
Michelangelo shows a dead Christ harmoniously contained within the pyramidal form of his mother.

Significance of the Pyramid Form

Represents the Holy Trinity (Father, Son, Holy Spirit).
The somber figure of Mary seems eternally youthful.
Idealized imagery: form is so perfectly proportioned it seems unreal.

Controversy

40 years after creation, the Pieta aroused controversy.
German Augustinian monk, Martin Luther objected to corruption in the Roman Catholic church in his call for reform led to the re religious upheaval known as the Protestant revolution, political unrest and religious conflict.
Swept Europe, the Catholic church launched the Counter-Reformation and during the 1540s established rules governing religious imagery, fear the arts had become too focused on humanity.
The church required that the imagery emphasize spirituality and mysticism images of saints and martyrs, the church decreed should about the viewers identification with suffering, inspire faith and reinforce the desire for salvation.
The task for carrying out these rules was assigned to the inquisition, an official body of the church established in the 12th century, in the middle ages to combat heresy member of the Inca inquisition could be quite zealous in pursue pursuing artists who failed to obey their rules.
Counter-Reformation church found Mary's youthful appearance i.

Michelangelo's Response

When ask about her youth, she would have actually been middle age Michelangelo replied that chastity preserves a youthfulness. His response did not impress the inquisitors, therefore, fortunately, to protect the world work from possible destruction by the inquisition.
Removed from public view until tastes permitted display.
Michelangelo's Pieta is still seen by many as the greatest sculpture ever created, now on display at St. Peter's in the Vatican.

Michelangelo: The Last Judgment

1534: Commissioned by Pope Paul III to paint a monumental Last Judgment on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel.
1541: Completed the image at age 66, filling the wall with a powerful scene of dynamic nudes, some finding salvation, others eternal damnation.
Conception that it consists
Of Saints and martyrs carrying instruments of their martyrdom and other instruments identifying attributes.
Youthful Christ at the center of the composition.
Virgin Mary wearing red and blue.
Saint pure St. Peter carries the golden several keys of heaven, uh, to Christ left. Uh, this brings us, uh, to, uh, Saint Bartholomew who, uh, is twisting around to gaze at Christ. Flayed alive.
Flayed Alive, uh, Being flayed alive, to be skinned alive and is a horrific way to be killed or executed Bartholomew Bartholomew
Brandishes a knife and holds his own flayed skin.
The face in the skin is Michael Angelo's own self portrait, a lightness of himself, which suggests that the last judgment has a personal meaning for the artists, as well as a cultural and religious religious meaning and context to the period above Christ in the
Lunesta carved areas at the top of the wall, angels carry entrant instruments of the passion, the crown of thorns, the cross, and the column on which Christ always flagellated below in the lower right.
Michelangelo MIRVs the mythological underworld Hades of ancient Greece with a dark fiery Christian hell damn souls are being ferried across the river, sticks that borders Haiti's at the lower left save souls, climb from their tombs and rise.
Weightlessly towards heaven in the 16th century after the death of Pope Paul, the third, the image drew criticism critics cited that Michael Angelo's failure to distinguish between men, women, and children, which probably refers to the powerful muscles of all the figures, uh, were problematic.
Weighlessly towards heaven in the 16th century.
After the death of a Pope, Paul, the third, the image drew criticism critics cited that Michael Angelo's failure to distinguish between men, women, and children, which probably refers to the powerful muscles of all the figures, uh, were problematic.
Parents were encouraged to refrain from exposing their children to the work since, uh, people at the time that believed that it might corrupt their morals.
- Pope. Paul, the fourth was also more conservative than Pope Paul the third, and believed that the last judgment failed to a base, the rules of the Counter-Reformation, the Pope considered the display of new defensive and wanted the entire fresco erased.
An alternative solution was found, many of the genitals were obscured and the nudes, uh, were painted over with draperies in the 1980s.
The Vatican undertook a controversial restoration of the fresco today.
The last judgment stands as it was intended and is considered to be one of the world's greatest paintings and a monumental expression of the human.

19th Century Paris

Paris was the center of the art world in the 19th century.
Controversy arose when works by Eduardo Manet were first exhibited.

The Salon

State-sponsored juries controlled public exhibitions (the Salon).
Conflicts arose over taste, propriety, and style.
1863: The salon jury rejected more than 4,000 painting.
This led to protests and Napoleon III authorized a separate exhibition (the Salon of the Rejected).
Consisted of work by artists who proved to be the most important of the new generation.

Manet: Luncheon on the Grass

The French public was shocked by the image of a nude woman, casually picnicking with two leaf, two fully clothed men and a public part that they could recognize.
Recognizable contemporary portraits made the painting too close to home and was another offense or embarrassment to the viewers, unlike Renaissance painters who tended to extend landscapes into the space towards the horizon the painting by mannequin.
The French public was shocked by the image of a nude woman, casually picnicking with two fully clothed men and a public part that they could recognize.

Hitler's Exhibition of Degenerate Art (1937)

Avant-garde (on the forefront) flourished in German cities in the early 20th century.
Political/cultural climate changed in the 1930s when Hitler rose to power.
The Nazi party considered modern art deviant and degenerate.
July 19th, 1937. Hitler's great German art exhibition opened in Munich. This was to be it to be an example to the German people of degenerate art
Included more than 650 paintings by major European artists.
Accompanying pamphlet attacked the morality of modernism, accusing artists of representing the world as a brothel.
Modern films, music, books, architecture, and theater were also declared subversive and degenerate.
Hiltler Declared
Works of art that are not capable of being understood in and of themselves, but in need of some partitions instruction booklet to justify their existence will never make their way to the German public
*June 1939: Modern art removed from German museums and auctioned off to foreign buyers for bargain prices.
There was one Picasso that was sold for 1,200 that recently just sold for, uh, over 6 million at option.
Hitler was wrong, and modern art returned to the people of Germany.

America and Robert Mapplethorpe

Most heated artistic controversies centered around government funding for the arts.
Compared with Europe, the United States allocates relatively little public money to the arts.
Conflicts involve the First Amendment (freedom of speech) and its application to visual arts.

Mapplethorpe Received Funding

1989: Photographer Robert Mapplethorpe 3 portfolios were included Received a 15,000 grant and the Philadelphia Institute of contemporary art received 30,000 for a show.
XYZ Portfolios. The X portfolios contained homosexual and sadomasochistic imagery.The Y portfolio contained, uh, pictures of flowers, but flowers were not always so innocent. And the Z portfolio, uh, was photographs of black men and classically inspired,
We can see from, uh, Robert Mapplethorpe self portrait that he challenged, expected notions of representation in this case. The challenge is not so much formal as it is a gender base.Shows himself as an androgynous figure with smooth powdered skin/soft wavy hair,
challenges Expected notions of representation.
Challenging Boundaries of Gender
Mapplethorpe Shows himself as an androgynous figure with smooth powdered skin and solved wavy hair can contracting with a clearly male musculature of his neck and chest emerges his own male female identity into a single isolated, bigger Mapplethorpe is made up so that his masculinity appears ambiguous,
portraying artistic interest is challenging the boundaries of gender.Gender, of course, is the range of characteristics
pertaining to differentiating between masculine and feminine, depending on context. These characteristics may include
biological, sex, the state of being male or female.
Returning to the Mapplethorpe Controversy
People were outraged over his imagery.
Congress curtailed public funding for the arts by 45,000.
Congress Clearly sending Mapplethorpe a Message (money taken equaled) (Mapplethorpe's grant plus) -((Philadelphia Institute) - irst year ban on government grants to artists depicting perverse or obscene content was also enact enacted.
Mapplethorpe's artistic challenge was gender-based.

1980's Vatican Restoratiion of the Fresco To this day it is Considered

Last judgement stands is intended to be of the greatest achievements of Man in Artistic Form.

Other Self Portraits

*Compare or contrast
Rembrandt the Artist
Shows himself as a Aristrocract.

People do this because when you have humble beginnings they were self-conscious about it.
so a Person Flatterers themeselves to show to let people he made it.
Pablo Picasso in his self portrait.
Shows his Cubists sides. That he is innovator.

Marcel Duchamp

Showed the importance of art
Took Pictures of leonardos and did a pencil mark of a mustache and a beard.

Mount Rushmore

*Defacement
Desecration
Transgression
That was Certainly a transgressive act for that time.
Presents

Land taken.
Black Hills sacred.
It honored Killers of Naitivr

Tracey Emin

My Bed
An Artist from Britian used her life to tell this Story. She put a Bed In a Art Gallery.
v. She shares her thoughts and stories.
authenticity in breaking down the barriers to make this a Feminist statements