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Chapter:  INT  |  1  |  2  |  3  |  4  |  5  |  6  |  7  |  9  |  10  |  11  |  12  |  13


 

I N T R O  D U C T I O N

T O  H U M A N I T I E S

 I N T R O  D U C T I O N   

ART AND KNOWLEDGE


 

PRESENTATION

 

p16  The Humanities include philosophy.
Branches of Philosophy: (p 19
)

 

Branches of philosophy: Aesthetics, ethics, epistemology, metaphysics, logic, theology, political, language, and philosophy of mind.

 

Aesthetics is the philosophy of beauty and art. Some questions in this field would be: what is beauty? What is beauty doing here? Is beauty a necessary component of art?

 

Beauty is an average. read  more

 

Kant shifted the focus on subjective aesthetic meaning. There are no objective aesthetic truths.

Natural philosophy become science?

 

Fine art and applied art (craft). See p 21

 

Question: Should Art exist for it’s own sake, or should art serve a function? p17.


 

PURPOSES OF ART -  p21/23 Read

 

1. Provide a Record

2. To Express Feelings

3. To Reveal Metaphysical Truths

4. To see common things in uncommon ways - a different perspective.

 

1. Provide a Record (Art is a Mirror)

 

Naturalist Illustrations:

Ernst Haeckel (1834 – 1919), was a German naturalist, philosopher, physician, and artist. He discovered and named thousands of new species.
 

 

 

 

view more

 

 

2: To Express Feelings:

 

Two people not in love by Peter Fuss

Home | 3 Bombs by Abdi Farah

 

 

ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM - p21

 

JACKSON POLLOCK

work | video | assignment
 

 

Unknown Artist
Marco Grassi
       

SUSO Abstract action drawing.

Jonas Gerard

 

 

3. Revealing Metaphysical Truths
 

POINTILLISM

Georges Seurat


 A Sunday Afternoon On The Island Of La Grande Jatte"

 

 




Detail of La Parade




 

 

SURREALISM (presentation)
 

Surrealist Manifesto

From Le Manifeste du Surréalisme, 1924

ANDRÉ BRETON


Surrealist Animation
Raymond Georges Yves Tanguy, 1900–1955, French painter.
Dali and Max Ernst: Salvador Dali, 1904-1989, Spanish
Max Ernst, 1891–1976, German painter, sculptor, and poet. He is a pioneer of the Dada and Surrealist movements.
Rene Magritte, 1898-1967, Belgian Painter

 

John Lock – p20 
P21 Out of chaos we create form – TED
A Stroke of Insight

Optical Illusions & Visual Phenomena 

 


4: Different Perspective:

 

Tom Forsythe's Food Chain Barbie
 

DADA or DADAISM (Art is not a mirror; it's a hammer.)
 

Dada
It began in Zürich Switzerland in 1916 as a reaction to World War I. They believed that “Destruction is also creation." Dada can best be defined as art without rules. It focuses on the absurdity of existence, irrationality, is countercultural, controversial, and shocking.




Fountain (1917) by Marcel Duchamp

Art is whatever is displayed as art.


Marcel Duchamp
(1887 –1968) was a French artist whose work is most often associated with the Dadaist and Surrealist movements. He produced relatively few artworks. His output influenced the development of post-World War I Western art. He advised modern art collectors, such as Peggy Guggenheim and other prominent figures, thereby helping to shape the tastes of Western art during this period.

He said, “The creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act.”
 

View his work:  www.understandingduchamp.com

 

 

FUNCTIONS OF ART - p21:
 

 

SOCIAL CHANGE

 

Dread Scott - What is the Proper Way to Display a US Flag?

Banksy
 

Igor Stravinsky - THE RIGHT OF SPRING, 1912
 

Picasso - G  U E  R  N  I  C  A
 

Guernica  p 31- During the Spanish Civil War Nazis bombed the Spanish town.

- 11 feet tall by 25 feet long – you feel dwarfed by it, and like you’re within the image.
- The painting is done in black, white, and grays to create contrast (compare to 0.10 p31).

- The horse dominates the center, and represents the people  who were victimized by incomprehensible cruelty.

Watch Pan’s Labyrinth: www.panslabyrinth.com
- The bull symbolizes senseless suffering, farm animals (Guernica’s a farming community), & God (the mother pleads, & the bull ignores.  The problem of evil.
-
The man holding flowers?

 


CRITICISM:

 

Gabriel Cornelius von Max, 1840-1915
Monkeys as Judges of Art, 1889

 

The Greeks believed that creative inspiration was due to a divine spirits – Damon. The Romans called it a genius. In the Renaissance we started to believe that people were geniuses – rather than saying they were inspired by a genius.


During an inspired performance people would say, ‘Allah Allah Allah’. In Spain they say, ‘Oley Oley Oley’.

 

PLATO (427-348 BCE) was the first art critic. P27 BCE means before the common era. He believed in different levels of reality, and but art at the bottom because it’s a copy (Art is a Mirror). If art is not viewed as a mirror, what is it then?

Plato’s Symposium - There is not love in ugliness. Love is the idea of the beauty of the beloved - John Carbonara. You move from physical love, to the love of a beautiful mind, and knowledge.

What is beauty?
Pleasure caused by apprehension. (Greater Hippias)
What is beauty doing here?

 

Symmetry (Timaeus)
This fails because colors, sounds, and smells are beautiful; a rotting corpse may be symmetrical.


What is a beautiful act?
M > Y , M = Y, M < Y

 

Plato believed in censoring art. We don’t know all ends, so we shouldn’t tamper with convention. We shouldn't glorify violence and vice - Collateral Club Scene with music by Paul Oakenfold. 

Canadians watch the same TV and play the same video games, yet they have a far lower crime rate.

 

"Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible." - Frank Zappa


Guess Who's Coming to Dinner

 

ARISTOTLE (384-382 BCE) was Plato’s student. Aristotle's Poetics is the earliest-surviving work of drama and literary theory. It covers poetry, drama, comedy, and tragedy.

 



DECONSTRUCTION

This theory of art criticism was advanced by the philosopher Jacques Derrida. He believed that an analysis of any artwork would yield conflicting meanings. The meaning of a work arises from the artist and viewer, so there is no absolute meaning, facts, or truths in art. There are only interpretations.

 

FORMAL CRITICISM


Formal criticism does not consider any external information. The work must stand on it's own. This ignores symbolisms that point to things happening in the world.
READ MORE


 

Criteria:

      Artisanship

      Clarity

      Coherence

      Interest

      Is it unique?
 


CONTEXTUAL CRITICISM

 

This includes external factors.


Criteria:
 

     Does the artist have something to say?

     How well does she say it?

     Is it worth saying?

     Does it make you think or feel?

 

 

STYLE p31 6th edition

Repetition is an element of art  as we will see later. Repetition in a body of work creates an artist's style.


Mark Kostabi
(1960 - ) is an American artist and composer. Kostabi World is his New York studio; it openly employs artists to do all his work. These artists are grouped as; idea people, image people, and painting assistants that do all the paintings. Kostai just signs the artwork.
 

Amedeo Clemente Modigliani (1884-1920) was an Italian artist who worked in France. His unique modern style is due to his repetitive distortion of form by elongation and mask-like faces. He was addicted to alcohol and narcotics, and died poor.


Paul Gauguin (7 June 1848 – 8 May 1903) was a French Primitivism and Post-Impressionist painter. His style is due to the repetition of his subject matter (people of Tahiti), bold colors, simple abstract shapes, exaggerated body proportions, and stark contrasts. He was influenced by the art of Africa, and Native Americans. 

 

POP ART


Jasper Johns
1954-1955
Flag


Andy Warhol, 1962
Campbell's Soup Cans

 


Tom Wesselmann
1962, Still Life

 

Claes Oldenburg
1966 Soft Bathtub


David Hockney
1967
A Bigger Splash


Wayne Thiebaud
1963 Three Machines



IMPRESSIONISM
 

This style of painting and music started in France during the 1860's. Claude Monet (1840 –1926) was a founder of the movement in painting. The name comes from the title of his painting Impression Sunrise. Characteristics of Impressionist painting include bold visible brush strokes, emphasis on light, ordinary subject matter, and unusual angles.


 

MONET

 


Houses of Parliament, London, c. 1904, Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris


Bridge over a Pond of Water Lilies
, 1899,
Metropolitan Museum of Art


Haystacks, (sunset), 1890-1891, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Water Lilies, 1906, Art Institute of Chicago


Water Lilies, 1907, Bridgestone Museum of Art, Tokyo


Water Lilies, 1914-1917, Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, Ohio

Nympheas, c. 1916, Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris

Nympheas, 1915, Neue Pinakothek, Munich

 

Water Lilies, 1916, The National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo

Water Lilies, 1917-1919, Honolulu Academy of Arts

Water-Lily Pond, c. 1915-1926, Chichu Art Museum, Naoshima, Kagawa, Japan

 


Sea-Roses (Yellow Nirwana),
1920,
The National Gallery, London

 

VINCENT VAN GOGH

Vase with three sunflowers

(Arles, August 1888)

Private collection, United States

 

File:Van Gogh Vase with Five Sunflowers.jpg

Vase with five sunflowers

(Arles, August 1888)

Destroyed by fire in World War II

on 6 August 1945

File:Vincent Willem van Gogh 128.jpg

Vase with Twelve Sunflowers
(Arles, August 1888)
Neue Pinakothek, Munich, Germany

File:Van Gogh Twelve Sunflowers.jpg

Vase with twelve flowers

(Arles, January 1889)

 Philadelphia Museum of Art,

Philadelphia, United States

File:Van Gogh Vase with Fifteen Sunflowers Amsterdam.jpg
Vase with Fifteen Sunflowers
(Arles, January, 1889)
Van Gogh Museum,

Amsterdam, Netherlands

Vase with Fifteen Sunflowers
(Arles, January 1889)

Seiji Togo Yasuda Memorial Museum of

Modern Art Tokyo

Sold for USD $39,921,750

 

Van Gogh began painting sunflowers in late summer 1888, and continued into the following year. One went to decorate his friend Paul Gauguin's bedroom. The paintings show sunflowers in all stages of life - from fully in bloom to withering. The paintings were innovative for their use of the yellow spectrum. Newly invented pigments made new colors possible.


On March 31, 1987, even those without interest in art were made aware of van Gogh's Sunflowers series when Japanese insurance magnate Yasuo Goto paid the equivalent of USD $39,921,750 for Van Gogh's Still Life: Vase with Fifteen Sunflowers at auction at Christie's London  - a record-setting amount for a work of art. The price was over four times the previous record of about $12 million paid for Andrea Mantegna's Adoration of the Magi in 1985. The record was broken a few months later with the purchase of another Van Gogh, Irises by Alan Bond for $53.9 million at Sotheby's, New York on November 11, 1987.


While it is uncertain whether Yaso Goto bought the painting himself or on behalf of his company, the Yasuda Fire and Marine Insurance Company of Japan, the painting currently resides at Seiji Togo Yasuda Memorial Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo. After the purchase a controversy arose whether this is a genuine van Gogh or an Emile Schuffenecker forgery.

 
 

 

 

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