From
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article is about
the philosophical concept of Art. For the group of many
expressive disciplines, see
The arts.
For other uses, see
Art (disambiguation).
Art
is a (product of) human activity, made with the intention of
stimulating the human senses as well as the human
mind;
thus art is an action, an object, or a collection of actions
and objects created with the intention of transmitting
emotions and/or ideas. Beyond this description, there is no
general agreed-upon definition of art, since defining
the boundaries of "art" is subjective, but the
impetus
for art is often called human
creativity.
An artwork is normally
assessed in quality by the amount of stimulation it brings
about. The impact it has on people, the number of people
that can relate to it, the degree of their appreciation, and
the effect or influence it has or has had in the past, all
accumulate to the "degree of art." Most artworks that are
widely considered to be "masterpieces" possess these
attributes.
Something is not generally
considered "art" when it stimulates only the senses, or only
the mind, or when it has a different primary purpose than
doing so. However, some contemporary art challenges this
idea.
As such, something can be
deemed art in totality, or as an element of some object. For
example, a painting may be a pure art, while a chair, though
designed to be sat in, may include artistic elements. Art
that has less functional value or intention may be referred
to as
fine art,
while objects of artistic merit which serve a functional
purpose may be referred to as
craft.
Paradoxically, an object may be characterized by the
intentions (or lack thereof) of its creator, regardless of
its apparent purpose; a cup (which ostensibly can be used as
a container) may be considered art if intended solely as an
ornament, while a painting may be deemed craft if
mass-produced.
In the 1800s, art
was primarily concerned with ideas of "Truth" and "Beauty."
There was a radical break in the thinking about art in the
early 1900s with the arrival of
Modernism,
and then in the late 1900s with the advent of
Postmodernism.
Clement Greenberg's
1960 article "Modernist Painting" defined Modern Art as "the
use of characteristic methods of a discipline to criticize
the discipline itself."[1]
Greenberg originally
applied this idea to the Abstract Expressionist movement and
used it as a way to understand and justify flat (non-illusionistic)
abstract painting. "Realistic, naturalistic art had
dissembled the medium, using art to conceal art; Modernism
used art to call attention to art. The limitations that
constitute the medium of painting — the flat surface, the
shape of the support, the properties of the pigment — were
treated by the Old Masters as negative factors that could be
acknowledged only implicitly or indirectly. Under Modernism
these same limitations came to be regarded as positive
factors, and were acknowledged openly."[1]
Though only originally
intended as a way of understanding a specific set of
artists, this definition of Modern Art underlies most of the
ideas of art within the various art movements of the
twentieth century and early twenty-first century. The art of
Marcel Duchamp
becomes clear when seen within this context; when submitting
a urinal, titled fountain, to the Society of Independent
Artists exhibit in 1917 he was critiquing the art exhibition
using its own methods.
Andy Warhol
became an important artist through critiquing popular
culture, as well as the
art world,
through the language of that popular culture. The later
postmodern
artists of the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s took these ideas
further by expanding this technique of self-criticism beyond
"high art" to all cultural image-making, including fashion
images, comics, billboards and pornography.
Usage
The most
common usage of the word "art," which rose to prominence
after 1750, is understood to denote
skill
used to produce an
aesthetic
result.[2]
Britannica Online
defines it as "the use of skill and imagination in the
creation of aesthetic objects, environments, or experiences
that can be shared with others."[3]
By any of these definitions of the word, artistic works have
existed for almost as long as
humankind:
from early
pre-historic art
to
contemporary art.
Many books
and journal articles have been written about the concept of
"art".[4]
Where
Adorno
said in 1970 "It is now taken for granted that nothing which
concerns art can be taken for granted any more[...]"[5]
,in 1998,
Walt Weaver
claimed that "It is self-evident that nothing concerning art
is self-evident anymore."[6]
The first and
broadest sense of "art" is the one that has remained closest
to the older Latin meaning, which roughly translates to
"skill" or "craft," and also from an
Indo-European root
meaning "arrangement" or "to arrange." In this sense, art is
whatever is described as having undergone a deliberate
process of arrangement by an agent. A few examples where
this meaning proves very broad include
artifact, artificial, artifice,
artillery,
medical
arts, and
military
arts. However, there are
many other colloquial uses of the word, all with some
relation to its
etymology.
The second and more recent sense of the word "art" is an
abbreviation for "creative art" or "fine
art." Fine art means that a
skill is being used to express the artist’s creativity, or
to engage the audience’s aesthetic sensibilities, or to draw
the audience towards consideration of the "finer" things.
Often, if the skill is being used in a common or practical
way, people will consider it a
craft
instead of art. Likewise, if the skill is being used in a
commercial or industrial way, it will be considered
Commercial art
instead of art. On the other hand, crafts and
design
are sometimes considered
applied art.
Some art followers have argued that the difference between
fine art and applied art has more to do with value judgments
made about the art than any clear definitional difference.[7]
However, even fine art often has goals beyond pure
creativity and self-expression. The purpose of works of art
may be to communicate ideas, such as in politically-,
spiritually-, or philosophically-motivated art; to create a
sense of
beauty
(see
aesthetics);
to explore the nature of perception; for pleasure; or to
generate strong
emotions.
The purpose may also be seemingly nonexistent.
Painting by
Song Dynasty
artist Ma Lin, c. 1250. 24,8 × 25,2 cm.
The ultimate
derivation of "fine" in "fine art" comes from the
philosophy
of
Aristotle,
who proposed four causes or explanations of a thing.
The
final cause
of a thing is the purpose for its existence, and the term
"fine art" is derived from this notion. If the final cause
of an artwork is simply the artwork itself, "art for art's
sake," and not a means to another end, then that artwork
could appropriately be called "fine." The closely related
concept of
beauty
is classically defined as "that which when seen, pleases."
Pleasure is the final cause of beauty and thus is not a
means to another end, but an end in itself.
Art can
describe several things: a study of creative skill, a
process of using the creative skill, a product of the
creative skill, or the audience’s experience with the
creative skill. The creative arts (“art” as discipline) are
a collection of disciplines ("arts") that produce "artworks"
("art" as objects) that are compelled by a personal drive
(art as activity) and echo or reflect a message, mood, or
symbolism for the viewer to interpret (art as experience).
Artworks can be defined by purposeful, creative
interpretations of limitless concepts or ideas in order to
communicate something to another person. Artworks can be
explicitly made for this purpose or interpreted based on
images or objects.
Art is
something that stimulates an individual's thoughts,
emotions, beliefs, or ideas through the senses. It is also
an expression of an idea and it can take many different
forms and serve many different purposes.
Although the
application of scientific theories to derive a new
scientific theory involves skill and results in the
"creation" of something new, this represents science only
and is not categorized as art.
Theories of art
Clement Greenberg's
1960 article "Modernist Painting" defined Modern Art as "the
use of characteristic methods of a discipline to criticize
the discipline itself."[1]
Greenberg
originally applied this idea to the Abstract Expressionist
movement and used it as a way to understand and justify flat
(non-illusionistic) abstract painting. "Realistic,
naturalistic art had dissembled the medium, using art to
conceal art; Modernism used art to call attention to art.
The limitations that constitute the medium of painting — the
flat surface, the shape of the support, the properties of
the pigment — were treated by the Old Masters as negative
factors that could be acknowledged only implicitly or
indirectly. Under Modernism these same limitations came to
be regarded as positive factors, and were acknowledged
openly."[1]
Though only
originally intended as a way of understanding a specific set
of artists, this definition of Modern Art underlies most of
the ideas of art of within the various art movements of the
twentieth century and early twenty-first century. The art of
Marcel Duchamp
becomes clear when seen within this context; when submitting
a urinal, titled Fountain, to the Society of
Independent Artists exhibit in 1917 he was critiquing the
art exhibition using its own methods.
Art and class
Versailles:
Louis Le Vau
opened up the interior court to create the expansive
entrance
cour d'honneur,
later copied all over Europe
Art has been
perceived as belonging to one social class and often
excluding others. In this context, art is seen as an
upper-class activity associated with wealth, the ability to
purchase art, and the leisure required to pursue or enjoy
it. For example, the
palaces of Versailles
or the
Hermitage
in
St. Petersburg
with their vast collections of art, amassed by the
fabulously wealthy royalty of Europe exemplify this view.
Collecting such art is the preserve of the rich, in one
viewpoint.
Before the
13th century in
Europe,
artisans were often considered to belong to a lower
caste,
however during the
Renaissance
artists gained an association with high status. "Fine" and
expensive goods have been popular markers of status in many
cultures, and continue to be so today. There has been a
cultural push in the other direction since at least November
8, 1793 when the Louvre, which had been a private castle of
the king of France, was opened to the public as an art
museum during the
French Revolution.
Most modern public museums and art education programs for
children in schools can be traced back to this impulse to
have art be available to everyone. (It should be noted that
both the earlier examples were also converted into public
museums - the palaces of Versailles also as part of the
French Revolution, the Hermitage much later after the
Soviet
revolution of 1917) Museums in the United States tend to be
gifts from the very rich to the masses (The
Metropolitan Museum of Art
in New York City, for example was created by
John Taylor Johnston,
a railroad executive whose personal art collection seeded
the museum.) But despite all this, at least one of the
important functions of art in the 21st century remains as a
marker of wealth and social status.
Performance by
Joseph Beuys,
1978 : Everyone an artist — On the way to the
libertarian form of the social organism
There have
been attempts by artists to create art that can not be
bought by the wealthy as a status object. One of the prime
original motivators of much of the art of the late 1960s and
1970s was to create art that could not be bought and sold.
It is "necessary to present something more than mere
objects"[8]
said the major post war German artist
Joseph Beuys.
This time period saw the rise of such things as
performance art,
video art,
and
conceptual art.
The idea was that if the artwork was a performance that
would leave nothing behind, or was simply an idea, it could
not be bought and sold. "Democratic precepts revolving
around the idea that a work of art is a commodity impelled
the aesthetic innovation which germinated in the mid-1960s
and was reaped throughout the 1970s. Artists broadly
identified under the heading of Conceptual art...
substituting performance and publishing activities for
engagement with both the material and materialistic concerns
of painted or sculptural form... [have] endeavored to
undermine the art object qua object."[9]
In the
decades since, these ideas have been somewhat lost as the
art market has learned to sell limited edition DVDs of video
works[10],
invitations to exclusive performance art pieces, and the
objects left over from conceptual pieces. Many of these
performances create works that are only understood by the
elite who have been educated as to why an idea or video or
piece of apparent garbage may be considered art. The marker
of status becomes understanding the work instead of
necessarily owning it, and the artwork remains an
upper-class activity. "With the widespread use of DVD
recording technology in the early 2000's, artists, and the
gallery system that derives its profits from the sale of
artworks, gained an important means of controlling the sale
of video and computer artworks in limited editions to
collectors."[11]
Another example of this shift is the art of
Chris Burden.
Chris Burden is most famous for his 1971 performance art
piece "shoot" in which he had a friend shoot in in the arm
with a 22 rifle (and in which nothing was sold). By the late
1980s in exhibitions and a museum retrospective he was
exhibiting "relics" of early performance art pieces in
plexiglass boxes, including two nails that he used to nail
himself to the back of a Wolkswagon Beetle in the 1974
artwork "Trans-Fixed."[12]
By 2003 he was selling the artwork "Gold Bullets," 22-karat
gold bullets that called to mind his most famous work, in
plexiglass boxes set on a high pedestal at the
Gagosian Gallery.[13]
This allowed collectors to buy bullets that allude to this
important work, are by this artist, seem to have other added
value in that they are made of gold, and will be understood
as important by others that know the history of conceptual
art.
Utility of art
One of the
defining characteristics of fine art as opposed to applied
art is the absence of any clear usefulness or
utilitarian
value. However, this requirement is sometimes criticized as
being class prejudice against labor and utility. Opponents
of the view that art cannot be useful, argue that all human
activity has some utilitarian function, and the objects
claimed to be "non-utilitarian" actually have the function
of attempting to mystify and codify flawed social
hierarchies. It is also sometimes argued that even seemingly
non-useful art is not useless, but rather that its use is
the effect it has on the psyche of the creator or viewer.
Art is also
used by art therapists, psychotherapists and clinical
psychologists as
art therapy.
Art can also be used as a tool of
Personality Test.
The end product is not the principal goal in this case, but
rather a process of healing, through creative acts, is
sought. The resultant piece of artwork may also offer
insight into the troubles experienced by the subject and may
suggest suitable approaches to be used in more conventional
forms of psychiatric therapy.
Graffiti art
and other types of
street art
are graphics and images that are
spray-painted
or
stencilled
on publicly viewable walls, buildings, buses, trains, and
bridges, usually without permission. This type of art is
part of various youth cultures, such as the US
hip-hop
culture. It is used to express political views and depict
creative images.
In a social
context, art can serve to boost the public's morale. Art is
often utilized as a form of
propaganda,
and thus can be used to subtly influence popular conceptions
or mood. In some cases, artworks are appropriated to be used
in this manner, without the creator having initially
intended the art to be used as propaganda.
From a more
anthropological perspective, art is often a way of passing
ideas and concepts on to later generations in a (somewhat)
universal language. The interpretation of this language is
very dependent upon the observer’s perspective and context,
and it might be argued that the very subjectivity of art
demonstrates its importance in providing an arena in which
rival ideas might be exchanged and discussed, or to provide
a social context in which disparate groups of people might
congregate and mingle.
Classification disputes about art
-
It is common
in the
history of art
for people to dispute whether a particular form or work, or
particular piece of work counts as art or not. In fact for
much of the past century the idea of art has been to simply
challenge what art is.
Philosophers
of Art call these disputes “classificatory disputes about
art.” For example, Ancient Greek philosophers debated about
whether or not
ethics
should be considered the “art of living well.”
Classificatory disputes in the 20th century included:
cubist
and
impressionist
paintings,
Duchamp’s
urinal, the
movies,
superlative imitations of
banknotes,
propaganda,
and even a crucifix immersed in urine.
Conceptual art
often intentionally pushes the boundaries of what counts as
art and a number of recent conceptual artists, such as
Damien Hirst
and
Tracy Emin
have produced works about which there are active disputes.
Video games
and
role-playing games
are both fields where some recent critics have asserted that
they do count as art, and some have asserted that they do
not.
Philosopher
David Novitz has argued that disagreement about the
definition of art are rarely the heart of the problem.
Rather, “the passionate concerns and interests that humans
vest in their social life” are “so much a part of all
classificatory disputes about art” (Novitz, 1996). According
to Novitz, classificatory disputes are more often disputes
about our values and where we are trying to go with our
society than they are about theory proper. For example, when
the
Daily Mail
criticized
Hirst's
and
Emin’s
work by arguing "For 1,000 years art has been one of our
great civilising forces. Today, pickled sheep and soiled
beds threaten to make barbarians of us all" they are not
advancing a definition or theory about art, but questioning
the value of Hirst’s and Emin’s work.
Controversial art
Famous
examples of controversial European art of the 19th century
include
Theodore Gericault's
"Raft
of the Medusa" (1820),
construed by many as a blistering condemnation of the French
government's gross negligence in the matter,
Edouard Manet's
"Le
Déjeuner sur l'Herbe"
(1863), considered scandalous not because of the nude woman,
but because she is seated next to fully-dressed men, and
John Singer Sargent's
"Madame
Pierre Gautreau (Madam X)",
(1884) which caused a huge uproar over the reddish pink used
to
color
the woman's ear lobe, considered far too suggestive and
supposedly ruining the high-society model's reputation.
In the 20th
century, examples of high-profile controversial art include
Pablo Picasso's
Guernica
(1937),
Leon Golub's
Interrogation III (1958), shocking the American
conscience with a nude, hooded detainee strapped to a chair,
surrounded by several ever-so-normal looking "cop"
interrogators, and
Andres Serrano's
Piss Christ
(1989).
In 2001,
Eric Fischl
created Tumbling Woman as a memorial to those who
jumped or fell to their death on
9/11.
Initially installed at
Rockefeller Center
in New York City, within a year the work was removed as too
disturbing.[14]
orms, genres, mediums, and styles
The creative
arts are often divided into more specific categories, such
as
decorative arts,
plastic arts,
performing arts,
or
literature.
So for example
painting
is a form of visual art, and
poetry
is a form of literature.
An art
form is a specific form for artistic expression to
take, it is a more specific term than art in general, but
less specific than “genre.” Some examples include, but are
by no means, limited to:
An artistic
medium
is the substance the artistic work is made out of. So for
example stone and bronze are both mediums that sculpture
uses sometimes. Multiple forms can share a medium (poetry
and music, both use sound), or one form can use multiple
media.
A genre
is a set of conventions and styles within an art form and
media. For instance, well recognized genres in film, for
example, are
western,
horror
and
romantic comedy.
Genres in music include
death metal
and
trip hop.
Genres in painting include
still life,
and
pastorial landscape.
A particular work of art may bend or combine genre but each
genre has a recognizable group of conventions, clichés and
troupes. (One note: the word genre has a second older
meaning within painting,
genre painting
was a phrase used in the 17th to 19th century to refer
specifically to paintings of scenes of everyday life and can
still be used in this way.)
An artwork,
artist’s, or movements style is the
distinctive method and form that art takes. Any loose
brushy, dripped or poured abstaract painting is called
expressionistic (with a lower case "e" and the "ic" at the
end). Often these styles are linked with a particular
historical period, set of ideas, and particular
artistic movement.
So
Jackson Pollock
is called an
Expressionist
(with a capital "e"). Because a particular style has very
specific cultural meanings it is important to be sensitive
to differences in technique.
Roy Lichtenstein's
paintings are not
pointillist,
even though it uses of dots, because it is not aligned with
the original proponents of Pointillism. Lichtenstein used
Ben-Day dots: they are evenly-spaced and create flat areas
of color. These types of dots were used to color comic
strips and are intended to combine the high art of painting
with the low art of comics - to comment on culture and its
unreality. Pointillism employs dots that are spaced in a way
to create variation in color and depth - it was an attempt
to paint images that were closer to the way we really see
color - an attempt to get closer to reality. They both use
dots but the meaning is opposite.
These are all
ways of beginning to define a work of art, to narrow it
down. "Imagine you are an art critic whose mission is to
compare the meanings you find in a wide range of individual
artworks. How would you proceed with your task? One way to
begin is to examine the materials each artist selected in
making an object, image video, or event. The decision to
cast a sculpture in bronze, for instance, inevitably effects
its meaning; the work becomes something different than if it
had been cast in gold or plastic or chocolate, even if
everything else about the artwork remained the same. Next,
you might examine how the materials in each artwork have
become an arrangement of shapes, colors, textures, and
lines. These, in turn, are organized into various patterns
and compositional structures. In your interpretation, you
would comment on how salient features of the form contribute
to the overall meaning of the finished artwork. [But in the
end] the meaning of most artworks... is not exhausted by a
discussion of materials, techniques, and form. Most
interpretations also include a discussion of the ideas and
feelings the artwork engenders."
[15]
Art history
-
Art predates
history; sculptures,
cave paintings,
rock paintings, and
petroglyphs
from the
Upper Paleolithic
starting roughly 40,000 years ago have been found, but the
precise meaning of such art is often disputed because so
little is known about the cultures that produced them. The
oldest art objects in the world: a series of tiny, drilled
snail shells about 75,000yrs old[16],
were discovered in a South African cave, see
Art of South Africa.
The great
traditions in art have a foundation in the art of one of the
great ancient civilizations:
Ancient Egypt,
Mesopotamia,
Persia,
India,
China,
Greece,
Rome
or
Arabia
(ancient
Yemen
and
Oman).
Each of these centers of early civilization developed a
unique and characteristic style in their art. Because of the
size and duration these civilizations, more of their art
works have survived and more of their influence has been
transmitted to other cultures and later times. They have
also provided the first records of how
artists
worked. For example, this period of Greek art saw a
veneration of the human physical form and the development of
equivalent skills to show musculature, poise, beauty and
anatomically correct proportions
In
Byzantine
and
Gothic art
of the Western
Middle Ages,
art focused on the expression of Biblical and not material
truths, and emphasized methods which would show the higher
unseen glory of a heavenly world, such as the use of gold in
paintings, or glass in mosaics or windows, which also
presented figures in idealized, patterned (i.e. "flat"
forms).
The western
Renaissance
saw a return to valuation of the material world, and the
place of humans in it, and this paradigm shift is reflected
in art forms, which show the corporeality of the human body,
and the three dimensional reality of landscape.
In the east,
Islamic art's
rejection of
iconography
led to emphasis on geometric patterns,
Islamic calligraphy,
and
architecture.
Further east, religion dominated artistic styles and forms
too. India and Tibet saw emphasis on painted
sculptures
and
dance
with religious painting borrowing many conventions from
sculpture and tending to bright contrasting colors with
emphasis on outlines. China saw many art forms flourish,
jade carving, bronzework, pottery (including the stunning
terracotta army
of Emperor Qin), poetry, calligraphy, music, painting,
drama, fiction, etc. Chinese styles vary greatly from era to
era and are traditionally named after the ruling dynasty.
So, for example,
Tang Dynasty
paintings are monochromatic and sparse, emphasizing
idealized landscapes, but
Ming Dynasty
paintings are busy, colorful, and focus on telling stories
via setting and composition. Japan names its styles after
imperial dynasties too, and also saw much interplay between
the styles of calligraphy and painting.
Woodblock printing
became important in Japan after the 17th century.
The western
Age of Enlightenment
in the 18th century saw artistic depictions of physical and
rational certainties of the clockwork universe, as well as
politically revolutionary visions of a post-monarchist
world, such as Blake’s portrayal of Newton as a divine
geometer, or David’s propagandistic paintings. This led to
Romantic
rejections of this in favor of pictures of the emotional
side and individuality of humans, exemplified in the novels
of
Goethe.
The late 19th century then saw a host of artistic movements,
such as
academic art,
symbolism,
