In this class, we tackle the grand question: what is art, anyway? How should we define it? We use the concept of "prestige" articulated by Tim van Laar and Leonard Diepeveen to help us understand the social stakes of the definition.

1. MODULE 1
What Counts as Art?

2. agenda 5.17.16
• what is art?
• your posts took on a number of key issues:
• what media do we want to include? are there
media we want to exclude?
• what is the relationship of art to expression? to
communication?
• what
• can great art be made by anyone? why do some
artists become recognized as great talents, while
others languish?
• what is folk art? how is folk art different from fine
art?

3. art: question of media
• traditional fine arts: drawing, painting, sculpture,
architecture
• performing arts: music, dance, theater,

4. 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?

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. 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 that might contribute to
the painting's reputation?

7. one answer: location, location,
location
• 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

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

9. Salvador Dali
Philippe Halsman
Self Portrait as Mona Lisa
1954
30 in × 21 inches

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

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

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

15. The Mona Lisa is surrounded by mult
layers of security.

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

18. Leonardo DA VINCI
Virgin of the Rocks
oil on panel
1483-6
Louvre, Paris

19. June 14, 1940
German troops enter Paris

20. The Grande Galerie of the Louvre,
with the frames emptied of their canvases.

21. Adolf Hitler viewing art with some of his staff.

22. Louvre curators unwrapping the Mona Lisa, returned from secret sto
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”
a system of
agreement among
interconnected
aspects of the art
world
• the market
• the critics
• the institutions

26. “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)

27. 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)

28. 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)

29. conclusion
Art is not an ontological, but a
sociological property.

30. conclusion
• 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.

31. 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
tfhings made not primarily for aesrhetic contemplation but
because they have a use
technologies/enhancements of vision (for example, scientific
and medical imaging)
the role of vision in the production of knowledge/power

32. 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.

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

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

36. 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.

38. Horace Pippin painting
photo, 1940

39. Horace PIPPIN, Outpost Raid: Champagne Sector, 1931, oil on fabric, 18 x 21 in

40. Horace PIPPIN, Shell Holes and Observation Balloon, Champagne Sector, c. 1931
oil on muslin, 22 1/2 x 30 7/8 inches

41. Horace PIPPIN, The End of War: Starting Home, 1930-33, oil on canvas, 26 x 30 inches

42. Horace PIPPIN, Country Doctor (Night Call) 1935, oil on canvas, 28 1/8 x 32 1/8 inches

43. Horace Pippin
Supper Time
c. 1940
Oil on burnt-wood panel
12 x 15 1/8 inches

44. Horace PIPPIN, John Brown Going to His Hanging, 1942
oil on canvas, 24 x 30 inches, PAFA

45. Horace PIPPIN
Old Black Joe, 1943
o/c, 1943

46. Horace PIPPIN
The Barracks
1945
Oil on canvas
25 1/4 x 30 in

47. James Hampton
• 1909-1964
• born in rural South Carolina
• moved to Washington, DC
to live with his brother;
worked as short –order cook
and janitor
• served in WWII in a
segregated unit, 385th
Aviation Unit, maintaining air
strips on Saipan and Guam
• returned to Washington, DC
worked as a janitor for the
GSA
• “Director, Special Projects
for the State of Eternity”

48. • possibly made the first
piece as early as 1945 in
Guam
• in 1950, rented a garage
and built a special staging
area inside
• collected castoffs/junk from
his job and all over the city
to make this environment

49. gold and silver aluminum foil, Kraft paper over mixed materials
180 pieces in overall configuration: 10 1/2 x 27 x 14 1/2 ft.
Includes plaques, tags and notebooks in a not-yet deciphered
language.
James HAMPTON
The Throne of the Third Heaven
of the Nations' Millennium
General Assembly
circa 1950-1964

50. posted on the wall of
Hampton's garage
"Where there is no vision,
the people perish.”
— Proverbs 29:18

62. Howard FINSTER
• (1915-2001)
• born Alabama, one of 13
children
• “born again” at age 13
and followed call to
become a Baptist
minister

63. Howard Finster ·
Howard Finster, Man of
Visions. 1988, Wood
Sculpture with paint,
13.00 x 8.38 x 3.5
inches.

65. Howard FINSTER
George Washington in Another
World
1987
oil on panel
58 ½ x 47 inches

66. Howard Finster, Florence Nightingale

67. Paradise Garden, Pennville,
GA
• bought 4 acres of
inexpensive land, which he
began to clear and drain
after purchasing.
• Began planting, as well as
building walkways and
structures, mostly made of
concrete with embedded
objects. Many sculptures
and structures, including a
chapel he called the
“World's Folk Art Church.”

72. installation view, Howard Finster, Paradise Garden at the High Museum

74. Howard FINSTER
album cover for
Little Creatures,
Talking Heads, 1985