Definitions, Artistic Roles, and Visual Thinking
Introduction and Definitions
How would you define ‘art’? For many people art is a specific thing; a painting, sculpture or photograph, a dance, a poem or a play. It is all of these things, and more. They are mediums of artistic expression. Webster’s New Collegiate dictionary defines art as “The conscious use of skill and creative imagination especially in the production of aesthetic objects.” Yet art is much more than a medium, or words on a page. It is the expression of our experience.
Joseph Brodsky Links to an external site. hints at a definition of art in his poem “New Life”: “Ultimately, one’s unbound / curiosity about these empty zones, / about these objectless vistas, / is what art seems to be all about.”
Art is uniquely human and tied directly to culture. It takes the ordinary and makes it extraordinary. It asks questions about who we are, what we value, the meaning of beauty and the human condition. As an expressive medium it allows us to experience sublime joy, deep sorrow, confusion and clarity. It tests our strengths, vulnerabilities and resolve. It gives voice to ideas and feelings, connects us to the past, reflects the present and anticipates the future. Along these lines, art history, combined with anthropology and literature, are three main sources in observing, recording and interpreting our human past. Visual art is a rich and complex subject whose definition is in flux as the culture around it changes. Because of this, how we define art is in essence a question of agreement. In this respect, we can look again to the dictionary’s definition for an understanding of exactly what to look for when we proclaim something as ‘art.’
Form and Content
Two basic considerations we need to be acquainted with are form: the physical and visible characteristics inherent in works of art, and content: the meaning we derive from them. Formal distinctions include a work’s size, medium (painting, drawing, sculpture or other kind of work) and descriptions of compositional elements such as the lines, shapes and colors involved. Issues of content include any visual clues that provide an understanding of what the art tells us. Sometimes an artwork’s content is vague or hidden and needs more information than is present in the work itself. Ultimately these two terms are roped together in the climb to understand what art has to offer us.
Aesthetics
Aesthetics is the philosophical argument about the nature of beauty. It’s an idea central to any exploration of art. Aesthetics deals with notions of taste, cultural conventions – ideas of art being ‘good’ and ‘bad’ based on specific cultural information and beliefs and the judgments we make based on our perceptions. As deep as visual art is embedded in the fabric of our lives, it still is the source of controversy and irony. It thrives on common experience yet contradicts ideas of ourselves. Art is part of the culture it’s created in, but can reflect many cultures at once. From where you and I stand today art has become probably more complex than ever in its use of imagery, mediums and meanings. We need a way to access the visual information of our society, of past cultures, and cultures not known to us to have a way to understand what we are looking at.
Subjective and Objective Perspectives
The first level in approaching art is learning to LOOK at it. In future discussions we will spend more time in pure observation than you probably have done before. Generally, we tend to look at art in terms of "liking" it FIRST, and "looking" at it later. From this perspective, the subjective (knowledge residing in the emotions and thoughts of the viewer) almost completely dominates our way of looking at art. In the arts, it’s especially important to begin to develop an informed or objective opinion rather than just an instinctual reaction. An objective view is one that focuses on the object’s physical characteristics as the main source of information. This does not mean that you will remove or invalidate your subjective feelings about a work, in fact you will find that the more informed you become, the more artwork will affect you emotionally and intellectually. It does mean that you will learn alternative ways to approach art, ways that allow you to find clues to meaning and to understand how art reflects and affects our lives.
It’s complex, but the satisfaction of looking at art comes from exploring the work to find meaning, not shying away from it simply because we may not understand it.
Artistic Roles
Description
A traditional role of visual art is to describe ourselves and our surroundings. Some of the earliest artworks discovered Links to an external site. are drawings and paintings of humans and wild animals on walls deep within prehistoric caves. One particular image is a handprint: a universal symbol of human communication.
Portraits
Portraits, landscapes, and still life are common examples of description. Portraits capture the accuracy of physical characteristics but the very best also transfer a sense of an individual’s unique personality. For thousands of years this role was reserved for images of those in positions of power, influence and authority. The portrait not only signifies who they are, but also solidifies class structure by presenting only the highest-ranking members of a society.
Notice how portrait is utilized in the images below. The portrait Bust of Egyptian Queen Nefertiti, dated to around 1300 BCE, exemplifies beauty and royalty. The full-length Imperial Portrait of Chinese Emperor Xianfeng below not only shows realism in the likeness of the emperor, it exalts in the patterns and colors of his robe and the throne behind him.
Nina Aldin Thun, Bust of Nefertiti, painted sandstone, Egyptian, c. 1370 BCE, Neues Museum, Berlin
Imperial Portrait of Emperor Xianfeng, China, c. 1855. Palace Museum, Bejing
Landscapes
Landscapes – by themselves – give us detailed information about our natural and human made surroundings; things like location, architecture, time of day, year or season plus other physical information such as geological elements and the plants and animals within a particular region.
In many western cultures, the more realistic the rendering of a scene the closer to our idea of the ‘truth’ it becomes. In the 15th century German artist Albrecht Durer creates vivid works that show a keen sense of observation. His Young Hare from 1495, below, is uncanny in its realism and sense of animation.
Albrecht Durer, Young Hare, c. 1505, gouache and watercolor on paper
Scientific Illustration
Out of this striving for accuracy and documentation developed the art of scientific illustration, an important part of scientific communication before the advent of photography. Scientific illustrators concentrate on accuracy and utility rather than aesthetics and document many different types of scientific phenomenon.
Banksia Coccinea, Illustrationes Florae Novae Hollandiae, plate 3
Enhancing our world
Art plays a role in our everyday lives. Art's role in enhancing our lives is more utilitarian than others. It includes textiles and product design, decorative Links to an external site.embellishments to the items Links to an external site. we use everyday and all the aesthetic considerations that create a more comfortable, expressive environment. Can you point out five works of art, in the utlititarian sense, in close proximity to you right now?
Artistic Categories
Visual arts are generally divided into categories that make distinctions based on the context of the work. For example, Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa would not fall into the same category as, say, a graphic poster for a rock concert. Some artworks can be placed in more than one category. Here are the main categories:
Fine Art
This category includes drawings, paintings, sculptures, photographs and, in the last decade, new media that are in museum collections and sold through commercial art galleries. Fine art has a distinction of being some of the finest examples of our human artistic heritage. Here is where you will find Leonardo Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, also ancient sculpture, such as the Gandhara Buddha from India, and stunning ceramics from different cultures and time periods.
Leonardo Da Vinci, Mona Lisa, c. 1503-19. Oil on poplar. 30.” The Louvre, Paris
Gandhara Buddha, India
Popular culture
This category contains the many products and images we are exposed to every day. In the industrialized world, this includes posters, graffiti, advertising, popular music, television and digital imagery, magazines, books and movies (as distinguished from film, which we’ll examine in a different context later in the course). Also included are cars, celebrity status and all the ideas and attitudes that help define the contemporary period of a particular culture.
Handbills posted on telephone poles or the sides of buildings are graphic, colorful and informative, but they also provide a street level texture to the urban environment most of us live in. Public murals serve this same function. They put an aesthetic stamp on an otherwise bland and industrialized landscape.
Chris Gildow, Street Handbills
Chris Gildow, Public Mural, Seattle
Decorative Arts
Sometimes called "craft," this is a category of art that shows a high degree of skilled workmanship in its production. Such works are normally associated with utilitarian purposes, but can be aesthetic works in themselves. Handmade furniture and glassware, fine metalworking and leather goods are other examples of decorative arts.
Alejandro Linares Garcia, Ceramic bowl, Mexico, date unknown, painted clay. Anahuacalli Museum, Mexico City
Artistic Styles
Style refers to a particular kind of appearance in works of art. It’s a characteristic of an individual artist or a collective relationship based on an idea, culture or artistic movement. Following is a list and description of the most common styles in art:
Naturalistic
Naturalistic style uses recognizable images with a high level of accuracy in their depiction. Naturalism also includes the idealized object: one that is modified to achieve a kind of perfection within the bounds of aesthetics and form. William Sydney Mount’s painting The Bone Player Links to an external site. gives accuracy in its representation and a sense of character to the figure, from his ragged-edged hat to the button missing from his vest. Mount treats the musician’s portrait with a sensitive hand, more idealized by his handsome features and soft smile. Note: click the image for a larger view.
Abstract
Abstract style is based on a recognizable object but which is then manipulated by distortion, scale issues or other artistic devices. Abstraction can be created by exaggerating form, simplifying shapes or the use of strong colors. Let’s look at three landscapes below with varying degrees of abstraction in them to see how this style can be so effective. Marsden Hartley uses abstraction to give the spare Landscape, New Mexico a sense of energy. Through the rounded forms and gesture in treatment we can discern hills, clouds, a road and some trees or bushes.
Marsden Hartley, Landscape, New Mexico, about 1916, pastel on paper. The Brooklyn Museum, New York
Georgia O’Keeffe’s Birch and Pine Trees -- Pink Links to an external site. employs abstraction to turn the painting into a tree-filled landscape dominated by a spray of orange paint suggesting a branch of birch leaves at the top left. Vasily Kandinsky’s Landscape with Red Spots, No. 2 Links to an external site. goes further into abstraction, releasing color from its descriptive function and vastly simplifying forms. The rendering of a town at the lower left is reduced to blocky areas of paint and a black triangular shape of hill in the background. In all three of these, the artists manipulate and distort the ‘real’ landscape as a vehicle for emotion.
It’s important to note the definition of ‘abstract’ is relative to cultural perspective. That is, different cultures develop traditional forms and styles of art they understand within the context of their own culture (see ‘Cultural Styles’ below), and which are difficult for other cultures to understand. So what may be ‘abstract’ to one could be more ‘realistic’ in style to another. For example, the Roman Bust of Sappho below looks very real from a western European aesthetic perspective. Under the same perspective, the African Mask would be called ‘abstract’. Yet to the African culture that produced the mask it would appear more realistic. In addition, the African mask shares some formal attributes with the Tlingit Groundhog Mask from Canada’s west coast. It’s very possible these two cultures would see the Roman bust as the ‘abstract’ one. So it’s important that we understand artworks from cultures other than our own in the context in which they were originally created.
Roman Bust of Sappho. Capitoline Museum, Rome
Cezary Piwowarski, African Mask
Questions of abstraction can also emerge from something as simple as our distance from an artwork. View and read about Fanny/Fingerpainting Links to an external site. by the artist Chuck Close. At first glance it is a highly realistic portrait of the artist’s grandmother-in law. You can zoom it in to see how the painting dissolves into a grid of individual fingerprints, a process that renders the surface very abstract. With this in mind, we can see how any work of art is essentially made of smaller abstract parts that, when seen together, make up a coherent whole.
Non-Objective
Non-objective imagery has no relation to the ‘real’ world – that is – the work of art is based solely upon itself. In this way the non-objective style is completely different than abstract, and it’s important to make the distinction between the two. This style rose from the modern art movement in Europe, Russia and the United States during the first half of the 20th century. Pergusa Three Links to an external site. by American artist Frank Stella uses organic and geometric shapes and strong color set against a heavy black background to create a vivid image. More than with other styles, issues of content are associated with a non-objective work’s formal structure.
Cultural Styles
Cultural styles refer to distinctive characteristics in artworks throughout a particular society or culture. Some main elements of cultural styles are recurring motifs Links to an external site., created in the same way by many artists. Cultural styles are formed over hundreds or even thousands of years and help define cultural identity. We can find evidence of this by comparing two masks; one from Alaska and the other from Canada. The Yup'ik Dance Mask Links to an external site. from Alaska is quite stylized with oval and rounded forms divided by wide bands in strong relief. The painted areas outline or follow shapes. Carved objects are attached to the mask and give an upward movement to the whole artwork while the face itself carries an animated expression.
By comparison, a Wolf Mask from the Tlingit culture in coastal northwestern Canada exhibits similar forms and many of the same motifs. The mouths of each mask are particularly similar to each other. Wolf’s visage takes on human – like characteristics just as the Yup’ik mask takes the form of a bird. This cultural style ranges from western Alaska to northern Canada.
Louis Garcia, Casco y Collera de Lobo Tlingit, Tlingit wolf mask, M. América, Madrid, Spain
Celtic art from Great Britain and Ireland shows a cultural style that’s been identified for thousands of years. Its highly refined organic motifs include spirals, plant forms and zoomorphism Links to an external site.. Intricate and decorative, the Celtic style adapted to include early book illustration. The Book of Kells is considered the pinnacle of this cultural style.
Page from the Book of Kells, around 800 CE. Trinity College, Dublin
Perception and Visual Awareness
Visual information – images from media and the environment around us – dominates our perception. Our eyes literally navigate us through a visual landscape all our lives, and we all make decisions based on how and what we see. Separating the subjective and objective ways we see helps us become more visually aware of our surroundings. Scientifically, the process of seeing is the result of light passing through the lens in our eye, then concentrating it on the retina at the back of the eye. The retina has nerve cells that act like sponges, soaking up the information and sending it to the visual cortex of our brain. Here the light is converted to an image that we can perceive – the ‘truth’ – as we understand it to be. We are exposed to so much visual information every day, especially with the advent of mass media, that it’s hard to process all of it into specific meaning. Being visually aware is more complicated than just the physical act of seeing because our perceptions are influenced by exterior factors, including our own prejudices, desires and ideas about what the ‘truth’ really is. Moreover, cultural ties to perception are many. For example, let’s look at three images that share one particular element; that of raised arms, and see how we perceive each one according to what we know about them.
Art is a resource for questioning our perceptions about how objects and ideas present themselves. The Belgian artist Rene Magritte Links to an external site. used his easel as a soapbox to confront the viewer with confounding visual information. Click the hyperlink to watch a short video where Magritte considers language and perception Links to an external site..
As was mentioned at the beginning of this module, there is a difference between looking and seeing. To look is to glance back and forth, aware of surface qualities in the things that come into our line of sight. To see is more about comprehending. After all, when we say “I see” we really mean that we understand. Seeing goes beyond appearances. So, as we confront the huge amounts of visual information coming at us we start to make choices about what we keep and what we edit out. We concentrate on that which has the most meaning for us: a street sign that helps us get home, a view of the mountains that lets us enjoy a part of nature’s spectacle, or the computer screen that allows us to gather information, whether it’s reading the content in this course or catching up on the day’s news or emails. Our gaze becomes more specific, and with that comes specific meaning. At this point what we see becomes part of what we know. It’s when we stop to contemplate what we see – the view of the mountain mentioned above, a portrait or simple visual composition that catches our eye – that we make reference to an aesthetic perception. That is, when something is considered for its visual properties alone and their relation to our ideas of what is beautiful, as a vehicle for meaning.
No matter how visually aware we are, visual clues alone hinder our ability to fully comprehend what we see. Words, either spoken or read as text, help fill in the blanks to understanding. They provide a context: a historical background, religious function or other cultural significance to the art we are looking at. We ask others for information about it, or find it ourselves, to help understand the meaning. In a museum or gallery it may be wall text that provides this link, or a source text, website or someone knowledgeable about the art. Now that we have a basic understanding of what art is, the cultural roles it plays and the different categories and styles it can belong to we can begin to explore more specific physical and conceptual issues surrounding it.
"Arth101: Art Appreciation and Techniques" Links to an external site. is licensed under CC BY 3.0 Links to an external site.