Art Appreciation Part 1
Art Appreciation Part 1
Art Appreciation Part 1
Nature of Art
Prelude
Art is derived from the Latin word ars meaning ability or skill. It covers those areas
of artistic creativity that seek to communicate beauty primarily through the sense.
Art embraces the visual arts, literature, music and dance.
Art is a highly diverse range of human activities engaged in creating visual, auditory,
or performed artifacts — artworks — that express the author’s imaginative or
technical skill, and are intended to be appreciated for their beauty or emotional
power. The oldest documented forms of art are visual arts, which include images or
objects in fields like painting, sculpture, printmaking, photography, and other visual
media. Architecture is often included as one of the visual arts; however, like
the decorative arts, it involves the creation of objects where the
practical considerations of use are essential, in a way that they usually are not in
another visual art, like a painting.
A Pulitzer Prize-Winning Photojournalism of Carol Guzy depicting Kosovar refugee Agim Shala, 2, who was
passed through the barbed wire fence into the hands of grandparentsat a camp in Kukes, Albania on May 3,
1999 as members of the large Shala family were reunited here after fleeing Prizren in Kosovo during
the conflict and ethnic cleansing.
Katsushika Hokusai, The Great Wave off, 1831, color woodblock, 25.7 cm × 37.8 cm, Metropolitan Museum of
Art
Defining Art from Medieval Period to Renaissance
10 GE 6: Arts Appreciation
Trade, diplomacy, and conquest connected Christendom to the wider
world, which in turn had an impact on art. Artists and patrons were well
aware of artistic developments in other countries. Artists travelled both within
and between countries and on occasion even between continents. Such
mobility was facilitated by the network of European courts, which were
instrumental in the rapid spread of Italian Renaissance art. Europe-wide
frameworks of philosophical and theological thought, reaching back to
antiquity and governing religious art, applied – albeit with regional variations
– throughout Europe.
The most important idea for this purpose is the concept of art itself,
which came to be defined in the way that we still broadly understand it today
during the course of the centuries explored here. This concept rests on a
distinction between art, on the one hand, and craft, on the other. It assumes
that a work of art is to be appreciated and valued for its own sake, whereas
other types of artifacts serve a functional purpose. A significant step in this
direction was made by a group of painters and sculptors who in 1563 set up
an Accademia del Disegno (Academy of Design) in Florence in order to
distinguish themselves from craftsmen organized in guilds. Their central
claim was that the arts they practiced were ‘liberal’ or intellectual rather than
‘mechanical’ or practical. After 1600, academies of art were founded in cities
throughout Europe, including Paris (1648) and London (1768). Most offered
training in architecture as well as in painting and sculpture. A decisive shift
took place in the mid eighteenth century, when the ‘arts of design’ began to
be classified such as painting, architecture, sculpture along with poetry and
music in a new category of ‘fine arts’ (a translation of the French term,
‘beaux-arts’). Other arts, such as landscape gardening, were sometimes
included in this category. Architecture was occasionally excluded on the
grounds that it was useful as well as beautiful, but the fine arts were usually
defined in terms broad enough to encompass it.
From the Sacred to the Courtly
To chart what these conceptual shifts meant in practice, we can borrow the
categories elaborated by the cultural theorist Peter Bürger (1984),
who outlines a long-term shift away from the functions that art traditionally
served. Such functions continued to play an important role after 1600,
especially in the seventeenth century, when academies were rare outside
Italy and many artists still belonged to guilds. As in the medieval period, the
primary function was religious (or in Bürger’s terminology, ‘sacral’). The
so-called Counter Reformation gave a great boost to Roman Catholic
patronage of the arts, as the church sought to renew itself in the aftermath of
the Protestant Reformation. It was in this context that the word ‘propaganda’
originated; it can be traced back to 1622 when Pope Gregory XV (reigned
1621–23) founded the Congregazio de Propaganda Fide (Congregation for
the Propagation of Faith) in Rome. The commitment to spreading the faith
that this organization embodied helped to shape art not just in Europe but in
every part of the world reached by the Catholic Missions, notably Asia and
the Americas, throughout the period explored here. The churches that
rejected the authority of Rome also played a role in supporting ‘sacral art’,
primarily architecture since their use of other art forms was limited by
Protestant strictures against ‘Popish’ idolatry. Even in Catholic countries,
however, the religious uses of art slowly declined relative to secular ones.
The seventeenth century is the last in western art history in which a major
canonical figure like the Italian painter Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio
(1571–1610) might still be a primarily religious artist.
In this context, art was integrated into the courtly or aristocratic way of life, as
part of a culture of spectacle, which functioned to distinguish the nobles who
frequented the court from other social classes and to legitimate the ruler’s
power in the eyes of the world. The consolidation of power in the hands of a
fairly small number of European monarchs meant that their need for
ideological justification was all the greater and so too were the resources
they had at their disposal for the purpose. Exemplary in this respect is the
French king Louis XIV (ruled 1643– 1715), who harnessed the arts to the
service of his own autocratic rule in the most conspicuous manner
imaginable. From 1661 onwards, he employed the architects Louis Le Vau
(1612/13–1670) and Jules Hardouin-Mansart (1648– 1708), the painter
Charles Le Brun (1619–90) and the landscape gardener André Le Nôtre
(1613–1700), among many others, to create the vast and lavish palace of
Versailles, not far from Paris. Every aspect of its design glorified the king, not
least by celebrating the military exploits that made France the dominant
power in Europe during his reign.
William Hogarth, Marriage A-la-Mode: 2, The Tête à Tête,circa 1743. Work is in the public domain.
Among the various approaches that have been applied to the study of art
produced betweenc.1600 andc.1850, the dominant one in recent
decades has been a concern to locate art in its historical context. Art
historians who employ this kind of approach take account both of the
institutional and commercial conditions in which works of art were produced
and consumed and of the broader cultural, social, economic and political
conditions of the period. Such an approach (known as the social history of
art) represents a reaction against an older model of art history, which relied
ultimately on a vague notion of the zeitgeist (or ‘spirit of the age’) as a means
of explaining artistic developments. This older model of art history was
closely associated with a focus on style, each style being assumed to reflect
the spirit of a different age (Wölfflin, 1950). It is now recognized that artistic
practice within a period is invariably more diverse and complex than a
style-based art history admits. Furthermore, rather than simply ‘reflecting’ or
‘expressing’ wider social forces, works of art are primarily shaped by the
structures and values of the art world, but also connected to society at large
in myriad subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) ways (Clark, 1982).
With the establishment of the art museum, the autonomy of art gained its
defining institution. In a museum, a work of art could be viewed purely for its
own sake, without reference to its traditional functions. Nevertheless, as
indicated above, art’s autonomy was far from complete. From around
1800 onwards, for example, the public sphere also opened up the possibility
that artists might try to bridge the gap dividing art from society by
independently producing works that engaged with current events, as the
French painter Théodore Géricault (1791–1824) did in his vast picture, The
Raft of the Medusa.This and comparable works by other French artists,
notably Liberty Leading the People by Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863),
which was painted just after the July Revolution of 1830, are often seen as
having inaugurated a new tradition of politically committed modern or
‘avant-garde’ art, which came to the fore towards the end of the nineteenth
century. However, it was during this period that the French military term ‘avant
garde’ (meaning a section of an army that goes ahead of the rest) came to be
applied to works of art. It was first used in this sense in a text published in
1825 under the name of the Utopian Socialist Henri de Saint-Simon, who
argued that artists could help to transform society by spreading ‘new ideas
among men’ (Harrison et al., 1998). Although he does not seem to have had
any specific type of art in mind, his emphasis on its role as a means of
communication makes it plausible to apply the term to works such as The
Raft of the Medusa and Liberty Leading the People, which convey a political
message on a large scale and to striking effect.
Eugène Delacroix, Liberty Leading the People, 1830, oil on canvas, 260 × 325 cm. Musée du
Louvre, Paris. Work is in the public domain.
In fifteen years some artists would take this problem – the recognition
that making art involved attention to its own formal conditions that are not
reducible to representing external things – through Cubism to a fully abstract
art. Conventionally, this story is told as a heroic progression of ‘movements’
and styles, each giving way to the next in the sequence:
Post-Impressionism, Fauvism, Cubism, Futurism, Dada, Constructivism,
Surrealism, and so forth.
Pablo Picasso, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, 1907, oil paint, 243.9 cm × 233.7 cm, Museum of
Modern Art, New York
Wassily Kandinsky, On White II, 1923, oil on canvas painting, 105 x 98 cm, Musée National d’Art
Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France
Paul Cézanne, The Large Bathers, 1898, oil paint, 2.1 m x 2.51 m, Philadelphia Museum of Art
Nature of Art
“Art plays a large part in making our lives infinitely rich. Imagine, just for a minute, a
world without art. You may ask so what without but considering the impact that lack
of graphics would have on your favourite video game. Art stimulates different parts
of our brains to make us laugh. It gives us a way to be creative and express
ourselves. For some people, art is the entire reason they get out of bed in the
morning. It is something that makes us more thoughtful and well-rounded humans.
On the other hand, art is such a large part of our everyday lives, we hardly even
stop to think about it. Look at the desk or table where you are right this
minute. Someone designed that. It is art. Your shoes are art. Your coffee cup is art.
All functional design is art. So, you could say art is something that is both functional
and (hopefully) aesthetically pleasing to our eyes (Silverman, 2008). This leads to a
question, what is art?
Art is everywhere
Art as it is found everywhere is very much a part of our lives. We
cannot deny its presence even if we want to. We find art in the clothes we
wear, the furniture and furnishings, style of houses and vehicles. We find art
objects in the home and in the community, in religion, in trade, and in
industry. All these things are part of human efforts to lessen the drabness
and tedium of everyday living and transform the environment into more
interesting place to live in.
Examples:
∙ Coins, medals and pendants are examples of relief sculptures. ∙ Paper bills
and postage stamps are examples of engravings. ∙ Statues of angels or saints
are examples of free-standing sculptures
∙ Multi-coloured designs inside the jeepney are examples of decorative arts.
Guillermo Tolentino, The Oblation, 1930, concrete statute, University of the Philippines, Diliman
T’nalak cloth woven by the T'boli people in communities around Lake Sebu, Mindanao Island.
No one can contain an intense emotion within the self for long. The tension
that results would compel the person to unburden the self or share
the feeling with others. We express our emotional state by some visible
signs and activities. This expression however, is not only limited to the
revelation of emotions but also extends to the personal and social values of
the artist and the penetrating psychological insights into reality that are
conveyed through the arts.
Lea Salonga performing as Kim at musical Miss Saigon in London in 1989.
Art as Creation
Humans have been led by an innate craving for order to create objects that
are delightful to perceive. The word “creation” in this sense refers to the
act of combining and reordering already existing material so that new object
is formed. As a creative activity, art involves skill or expertness in
handling materials and organizing them into new, structurally pleasing, and
significant units. These skills thus not just happen. It is acquired through long
training and constant practice. Therefore, art is a planned activity.
Art and Experience
It has been said that the art is experience, because all art
demands experience; but probably it is a clearer to say that all art involves
experience, that there can be no appreciation without experience. 20 GE 6:
Arts Appreciation
At least three major kinds of experiences are involved in the artistic activity:
a. An artist has an experience that he/ she wants to communicate
b. The artist expresses the self -- that of creating the art object or form.
c. When the work is done, there is the artist’s gratifying experience of having
accomplished something significant.
The Dying Gaul, or The Capitoline Gaul a Roman marble copy of a Hellenistic work of the late
3rd century BCE Capitoline Museums, Rome