In this class, we discuss the fame, reputation and prestige of certain artists and the relative obscurity of others. What factors other than quality or talent contribute to an artist's reputation?

1. ART 100
Summer 2015
Class 2

2. agenda 6.18.15
• what is art? what qualities make something
art?
• what is folk art? how is folk art different from
fine art?
• can great art be made by anyone?

3. what makes art
valuable?
are the most famous artists the best ones?
are the ones whose art sells for the most money the
best artists?
if an artist is unknown in the wider society, does that
mean he or she isn’t very good?
how do we determine value in art? is there a neutral,
value-free way of comparing artists from different
cultural backgrounds?

4. why is the Mona Lisa
so famous?
• because it is the best painting ever made?
• [qualities of object]
• because Leonardo is a genius?
• [qualities of the maker]
are there other factors?

5. Leonardo DA VINCI
Portrait of Lisa Gherardini, wife of
Francesco del Giocondo, known as the
Mona Lisa (the Joconde in French)
c. 1503–06
oil on panel
30.3 x 20.8 inches
Acquired by François I in 1518

6. one answer
It is located in the Louvre, one of the most well-known art
museums in the world. [i.e., it’s benefited from a central
art world location since 1804]
where critics who praise some artists and ignore others
have been able to see it
where art historians have written it into history
where artists have been influenced by it
where art lovers and visitors and tourists have come to
see it and photograph it, and buy coffee mugs and
totebags with this image on it

7. Mona Lisa: the critics
The "first" art critic in the Western tradition, Giorgio
Vasari, gushed over the painting in his 1550 book,
which was read and reread over the generations.
Vasari had never seen the work.

8. “Leonardo undertook to execute, for Francesco
del Giocondo, the portrait of Mona Lisa, his wife,
and after he had lingered over it for four years, he
left it unfinished; and the work is today in the
possession of King Francis of France, at
Fontainebleau."
Giorgio Vasari ‘The Lives of the Most Excellent
Painters, Sculptors, and Architects’ 1550

9. “Anyone wishing to see the degree to which art
could imitate nature could readily perceive this
from the head; since therein are counterfeited all
those minutenesses that with subtlety are able to
be painted: seeing that the eyes had that lustre
and moistness which are always seen in the living
creature, and around them were the lashes and all
those rosy and pearly tints that demand the
greatest delicacy of execution."
Giorgio Vasari ‘The Lives of the Most Excellent
Painters, Sculptors, and Architects’ 1550

10. “The eyebrows, through his having shown the
manner in which the hairs spring from the flesh,
here more close and here more scanty, and curve
according to the pores of the flesh, could not be
more natural. The nose, with its beautiful nostrils,
rosy and tender, appeared to be alive. The mouth
with its opening , and with its ends united by the
red of the lips to the flesh-tints of the face, seemed,
in truth, to be not colours but flesh. In the pit of the
throat, if one gazed upon it intently, could be seen
the beating of the pulse: and indeed it may be
said that it was painted in such a manner as to
make every brave artificer, be he who he may,
tremble and lose courage."
Giorgio Vasari ‘The Lives of the Most Excellent
Painters, Sculptors, and Architects’ 1550

11. “He employed also this device: Mona Lisa being
very beautiful, while he was painting her portrait,
he retained those who played or sang, and
continually jested, who would make her to remain
merry, in order to take away that melancholy
which painters are often wont to give to their
portraits. And in this work of Leonardo there was a
smile so pleasing , that it was a thing more divine
than human to behold, and it was held to be
something marvelous, in that it was not other than
alive.”
Giorgio Vasari ‘The Lives of the Most Excellent
Painters, Sculptors, and Architects’ 1550

12. Mona Lisa: artists
artists of his day were influenced by Leonardo, but
more by his works in Italy
later artists looked to the Mona Lisa as an icon of
traditional Italian painting

13. Marcel DUCHAMP
L.H.O.O.Q
1919
postcard with doodle

14. Andy WARHOL, Double Mona Lisa, 1963
Silkscreen ink on linen
28-1/8 x 37-1/8 inches

15. Andy WARHOL
Thirty Are Better Than One
1963
Synthetic polymer paint and
silkscreen ink on canvas
110 x 94 inches

16. Vik MUNIZ, Double Mona Lisa, After Warhol, (Peanut Butter + Jelly) 1999,cibachrome

17. Mona Lisa: audiences
since 1804, visitors to the Louvre have come to see this
painting.
it has been photographed countless times, and coffee
mugs and notepads across the world bear this image.
among other things, the Mona Lisa is a celebrity—
famous for being famous.

18. Crowds attempt to get a glimpse of the painting at the Louvre Museum in Paris.

19. The Mona Lisa is surrounded by multiple
layers of security.

22. Louvre curators unwrapping the Mona Lisa, returned from secret storage,
after the Nazis have departed Paris, 1945

23. one is famous,
one is forgotten
why?

24. Frank Gallo (1933—
born 1933 Toledo, OH
trained as an artist
with early classes at
the Toledo Museum of
Art, Iowa State and
Cranbrook Academy.
brief period of fame
for lifesize epoxy
sculptures of women
during the 1960s
then returned to
teaching art

25. “prestige”
is a system of
agreement
among
interconnected
aspects of the art
world
the market
the critics
the institutions
Van Laar and
Diepeveen describe the
artworld as operating on
a mechanism of
"prestige"—who's up and
who's down; who's in
and who's out—separate
from a mechanism of
quality or value.

26. “prestige”
They study the
case of Frank
Gallo because he
was an artist who
had prestige—
and then lost it.
His work stayed
the same, but his
reputation did
not.

27. “The failure of art theory and criticism to talk about
prestige is an oversight with consequences, because
the artworld and art history cannot be understood
without understanding how prestige works, how it is
generated and conferred, how it privileges and
excludes, and how it pervades the culture and induces
complicity. Without prestige as part of the analysis, the
important relational, social aspect of art is obscured;
the subtleties of social positioning in art are concealed.
Prestige opens the way for particular ways of
understanding art’s audience. This ranges from
articulating social complicity in elitism and creating
value, but also in analyzing how estimations of value
are contested and resisted.”
(Van Laar and Diepeveen, 55)

28. defining prestige
“Prestige, which we define as a system of hierarchies of
agreed-upon social value, is a twofold thing: it is a
quality that people confer on others, but it is also a
system inextricably bound up with that conferral, a
system that gives the rationale for those value
judgments."
(Van Laar and Diepeveen,
5)

29. not only artists, but
subject matters and
media can lose prestige
In examining the workings of prestige, this book also
deals with the process of valuation, best and most
sharply understood through the loss of status. It
demonstrates how prestige works, as it disappears, as it
eludes one’s grasp and one is left behind….This
dispatch is larger than the reputations of individual
artists: modes of artmaking take a back seat, subject
matters become banal, and forms of aesthetic
experience lose their luster.”
(Van Laar and Diepeveen, 5)

30. summary
Art is not a matter of ontology, but of
sociology.
ontology—property or quality of a thing in
itself

31. In any society, some objects are
called ‘art,’ others are not. These
designations are a matter of
social tradition and convention.
Such labels can change over
time as a society’s values and
preferences change.

32. what is visual culture?
It includes everything that art excludes:
All the objects that are left out from consideration in the
traditional fine arts (painting, sculpture, architecture)
things made not for elite but ordinary audiences
the role of vision in the production of knowledge/power
technologies/enhancements of vision (for example,
scientific and medical imaging)

33. as Howard Becker suggests:
the artworld is a
collaborative system
it requires the
cooperation of many
people in different
roles
it is social in nature
and reflects the values
and priorities of a
given society

34. the case of "folk art"
As Vlach points out, the
definitions of folk art are
contradictory.
is it naive, or
sophisticated?
untrained, or skilled?
"Folk art" ends up being
defined by the social
position of the maker,
rather than by any
specific qualities of the
object.

35. Sheldon PECK (1797–1868),
David and Catherine Stolp Crane,
Aurora, Illinois, c. 1845
Oil on canvas, 35 11/16 × 43 5/8"
-

36. John Singleton COPLEY
Mrs. Ezekiel Goldthwaite
1771
oil on canvas
50 1/8 x 40 1/8 inches
http://www.mfa.org/collecti
ons/object/mrs-ezekiel-
goldthwait-elizabeth-lewis-
32756

37. Ammi PHILLIPS
Lady in a gold-colored
dress
Probably New York,
Connecticut, or
Massachusetts, 1835–1840
Oil on canvas
33 1/2 x 28 1/4 in.

39. http://folkartmuseum.org/?t=images&id=1582
Ammi PHILLIPS (1788–
1865)
Girl in red dress with cat
and dog
Vicinity of Amenia, New
York 1830–1835
Oil on canvas
30 x 25 inches