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:

• 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

Thirty are Better Than One, Andy Warhol,

1963

ABOUT ANDY WARHOL

© 2013, McGraw-Hill Higher Education. All rights reserved.

Our modern world of art includes schools, galleries, critics,

collectors and museums. It features individual artists working

independently expressing their own ideas.

Artist and Audience

Insert visual(s).

Suggestions:

2.8 Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nation’s

Millennium General Assembly, James Hampton

1950-64

2.7 Badi’uzzaman Fights Iraj to a

Draw, Dasavanta, Shravana,

Madhava Kurd

© 2013, McGraw-Hill Higher Education. All rights reserved.

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.

Artist and Audience

David,

Michelangelo,

1501-1504,

marble, 17’.

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• 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.

Art and Beauty

2.9 Cabbage Leaf, Edward Weston,

1931

2.11 Saturn Devouring One of His

Children, Francisco de Goya, 1820-

22

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.

2.15 House Painter III, Duane

Hanson, 1984/1988

2.14 Woman with Packages,

Louise Bourgeois, 1949

2.17 Cylindrical Head,

Yoruba, 13th-14th century

2.16 Head of a King,

Yoruba 13th 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.

Hairdressing, from

Twelve Types of

Women’s Handicraft,

Kitagawa Utamaro, Nude Woman Having Her

Hair Combed, Edgar

Degas

Maggie’s Ponytail

Susan Rothenberg,

DIFFERING STYLES

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

The Kiss, Auguste Rodin,

1886-98. 5’11”

FORM AND

CONTENT

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

Key Terms

• outsider/folk art

• disinterested

contemplation

• representational

• abstract

• nonrepresentational

• embodied meaning

• form, content, and

context

• installation © 2013, McGraw-Hill Higher Education. All rights reserved.