The document discusses many aspects of defining and understanding art, including: - Art is subjective and definitions have changed over time and cultures. Intention and context are important. - Meaning in art can be explicit or implicit and comes from interactions between form, content, context, media, and genre/style. - Different artistic genres exist like portrait, landscape, abstraction. Representational art depicts reality while abstraction references it less directly. - Artistic styles vary widely from classical to romantic to realism to surrealism to pop art. Media also impacts meaning from traditional to contemporary materials. Process is also significant in some works.

1. What Is Art?

2. Last Class
• Why Art? The impulse to make,experience,understand
• utilitarian, utilitarian-plus
• Ellen Dissanayake
• play, ritual, paleolithic/neolithic record
• “making special”, making special game
• art today vs art of the past
• aesthetic experience

3. Your comments on “what is
art?” discussion forum
• expression, communication
• emotion, ideas, thoughts
• anything
• personal, subjective,“eye of beholder”
• tells a story
• beauty, gives pleasure
• expands our understanding of the world, life

4. developing a complex, nuanced, sophisticated
definition of art
• definition of art has changed over the centuries,
continues to change
• determined by culture, time-period, events
• intention of human, given a context to exist as art
• carrier of meaning
• even if it is a utilitarian object, does not act as such
• even if representational, not merely so

5. Subjective vs Objective
• objective= measurable, verifiable, science
• subjective=based on personal taste, feelings
• art is mostly subjective
• objectivity in art means that you are basing
subjective ideas on observation,“informed
subjectivity”
• helps categorize and understand

6. meaning in art
• what a work of art is about, it’s significance, what is
expressed
• explicit or implicit
• clear, direct or ambiguous, implied (art tends to be
the later)
• intended by maker or unintended, discovered by
experiencer
• shaped by interaction of form,
content/theme,context,
media/process,effect/affect,genre/style

7. Foregrounding
• what stands out, seems dominant, most
important
• intended or unintended

8. Artistic Contributors
to Meaning

9. Form
• the visual or physical aspects, the composition
• elements (what) and principles (how) of art
• “formal” intent, attitude, approach, attentive to the
composition
• Formalism- art criticism that considers only form
• how form relates to content/meaning

10. The Fork
by Andre Kertesz, 1928

11. Gate 630
by Meg Hitchcock, 2008

12. Le Reve
by Pablo Picasso, 1932

13. The Problem We All Live With
by Norman Rockwell, 1964

14. Gun Crime,
illustration by Noma
Bar
to protest gun
violence in UK, 2010

16. Artistic Genre
• similar to music genres (country, rap,
rock,etc.)
• related to subject matter
• portrait, landscape, still-life,
representational, abstraction, figurative

17. Representational vs Figurative vs
abstraction vs non-representational
• Representational art= depicts things in physical world in a
realistic manner
• Figurative art= similar to representational but often applies
to those that include human forms (can be abstract)
• abstraction= a process or visual effect characterized by
simplification, rearrangement and/or exaggeration, still
references physical world, but in a less objective way
• non-representational art= no reference to physical world
(also called nonobjective art)

18. Representational art

19. Figurative

20. Abstraction

21. non-representational or
nonobjective art

22. Name that Genre/s
• abstraction
• only know that via title
• “Bird in Space”

23. Name that Genre/s
• abstraction
• figurative
• “figurative abstraction”

24. Name that Genre/s
• abstraction?
• representational?
• figurative

25. Name that Genre/s
• representational?
• abstraction?

26. Name that Genre/s
• non-representational?
• representational?

27. Artistic Style
• a way of working, a distinctive look or
method
• personal, part of an art historical
movement
• naturalistic, abstract, Gothic, Baroque,
Rococo, expressionist, surrealist,
impressionist, pop art, classical are all
examples

28. Classical vs Romantic
• Classical styles= order, harmony, the ideal,
enduring and universal
• Romantic styles= emotion, sensation,
personal and exotic
• both can refer to a period in art and a style

29. Classical
Ancient Greek Architecture and Sculpture
Renaissance art (Birth of Venus by Botticelli)
Neoclassical art (Jacques-Louis David)
Alex Katz

30. Romantic
Vincent Van Gogh
JMW Turner
Eugene Delacroix
Gustav Klimt

31. some representational
styles
Realism
Surrealism
Photorealism
Impressionism
post-Impressionism
Pre-Raphaelite
Hyperrealist sculpture
Pop Art

32. some abstract and
nonobjective styles
abstract-expressionism
fauvism
dadaism
neo-plasticism or de stijl
expressionism
cubism
color-field
Op Art

33. Media or mediums
• specific materials used by artists
• traditional (oil on panel or canvas, wood
carving, marble, ceramics, photography)
• contemporary (found objects, video
projection, mixed-media, multimedia)

34. Traditionally, the media is not meant
to be noticed, the illusion is
paramount, material did not play a
big role in meaning of work, also
applies to more current art like
photorealism
In modern times, the media becomes
more noticeable, becomes more
about the handling (brush stroke for
example), “show the artist’s hand”
“Truth To Materials” = an idea in
modern architecture where
materials are shown raw, no painting
of concrete for example

35. today, media and material is large part of
meaning
Lick and Lather by Janine Antoni

36. I wanted to work with the tradition of self-portraiture but also the classical bust. So, the
way I made it is: I took a mold directly from my body. I used a product called alginate,
which is the kind of material that you might be familiar with when you go to the dentist,
that sort of minty tasting stuff. It’s an incredible product because it gets every detail,
every little pore. I even cast my hair. So, I started with an exact replica and then I
carved the classical stand. I made a mold, melted down thirty-five pounds of chocolate,
poured it into the mold. And when I took it out of the mold, I re-sculpted my image by
licking the chocolate. So, you can see that I licked up the front and through the mouth
up onto the nose, over the eye and back up over the ear onto the bun, and then down
in the back around the neck.
I also cast myself into soap. She started as an exact replica of myself. We spent a few
hours in the tub together. I slowly washed her down, and she becomes almost fetal
because all her features start to be washed away. So, I was thinking about how one
describes the self and feeling a little uncomfortable with my outer surface as the
description of myself. And this piece very much is about trying to be on the outside of
myself and have a relationship with my image. So, the process is quite loving. Of
course chocolate is a highly desirable material, and to lick my self in chocolate is a kind
of tender gesture. Having the soap in the tub was like having a little baby in there. But
through that process, I’m slowly erasing my self. For me it really is about this kind of
love-hate relationship we have with our physical appearance.
Janine Antoni or her work Lick and Lather:

37. Process
• how an artist uses the materials/media
• can be foregrounded in “Process Art”
Tony Orrico