HUM 211

ART APPRECIATION

Israel, Dennese C.
AAMT 2-3
 Define the four levels in analyzing the art (Perceptual
elements, Representations, Emotional suggestions,
Intellectual meaning)
 Perceptual elements
The perceptual elements of line, shape, tone, color, pattern, texture and form are
the building blocks of composition in art. When we analyze any drawing, painting, sculpture
or design, we examine these component parts to see how they combine to create the
overall effect of the artwork.

The Visual Elements have a relationship to one another:

- Most images begin their life as line drawings.

- Lines cross over one another to form shapes.
- Shapes can be filled with tone and color, or repeated to create pattern.
- A shape may be rendered with a rough surface to create a texture.
- A shape may be projected into three dimensions to create form.

Each of the elements may also be used individually to stress their own particular
character in an artwork. Different elements can express qualities such as movement and
rhythm, space and depth, growth and structure, harmony and contrast, noise and calm and
a wide range of emotions that make up the subjects of great art.

 Representations
Representation is the use of signs that stand in for and take the place of something
else. It is through representation that people organize the world and reality through the act
of naming its elements. Signs are arranged in order to form semantic constructions and
express relations. Representation has been associated with aesthetics (art) and semiotics
(signs). A representation is a type of recording in which the sensory information about a
physical object is described in a medium. The degree to which an artistic representation
resembles the object it represents is a function of resolution and does not bear on the
denotation of the word. For example, both the Mona Lisa and a child's crayon drawing of
Lisa del Giocondo would be considered representational, and any preference for one over
the other would need to be understood as a matter of aesthetics.

The term 'representation' carries a range of meanings and interpretations. In literary

theory, 'representation' is commonly defined in three ways:
 1. To look like or resemble
2. To stand in for something or someone
3. To present a second time; to re-present
 Emotional suggestions
In psychology of art, the relationship between art and emotion has newly been the
subject of extensive study thanks to the intervention of esteemed art historian Alexander
Nemerov. Emotional or aesthetic responses to art have previously been viewed as basic
stimulus response, but new theories and research have suggested that these experiences
are more complex and able to be studied experimentally. Emotional responses are often
regarded as the keystone to experiencing art, and the creation of an emotional experience
has been argued as the purpose of artistic expression. Research has shown that the
neurological underpinnings of perceiving art differ from those used in standard object
recognition. Instead, brain regions involved in the experience of emotion and goal setting
show activation when viewing art.

 Intellectual meaning
All artworks will have all of these aspects when created by any artist. They will also
be viewed by people who will see them while taking all of these elements into account,
acknowledged or not. To think otherwise is a logical absurdity. The proportions will
necessarily always be a judgment call due to the variables between creator and viewer.

In the 20th century, and increasingly toward the latter part of it, art moved further
and further from the emotive and more toward the linear and the rational. Duchamps'
"readymades" early in the century were carried forward in a friendly, inclusive way by Pop
Art and in more obscure forms by Conceptual Art. Artists increasingly decided that their
"ideas" were more important than emotions or spiritual messages. And this resulted in
some very interesting and groundbreaking work.

How art related to philosophy, anthropology and sociology.

 Philosophy
Art, philosophy of the study of the nature of art, including such concepts as
interpretation, representation and expression, and form. It is closely related to aesthetics,
the philosophical study of beauty and taste.

In its original Greek derivation, the term denoted the study of sense experience
generally and it was not until the mid-18th century, following a usage introduced by
Baumgartner, that a particular reference to the idea of beauty in nature and art was
established. The current meaning developed even later in the 18th and early 19th
articulation of the concept of fine art. Although discussions of beauty have always figured in
the history of philosophy, these discussions were, until the modern period, invariably linked
to primary concerns with epistemology, and ontology, or with moral and social value, or
with logic. Plato and Aristotle, for example, were both concerned with the question
whether art could embody and communicate truth and knowledge. And Plato’s view that it
could not – that art stood at several removes from reality – led him to proscribe most forms
of art from his ideal Republic, lest its citizens be diverted from nobler pursuits.

 Anthropology
Anthropology of art is a sub-field in social anthropology dedicated to the study of
art in different cultural contexts. The anthropology of art focuses on historical, economic
and aesthetic dimensions in non-Western art forms, including what is known as 'tribal art'.

Thus, there is no consensus on a single, cross-cultural definition of 'art' in

anthropology. To surmount this difficulty, anthropologists of art have focused on formal
features in objects which, without exclusively being 'artistic', have certain evident 'aesthetic'
qualities. Boas' Primitive Art, Claude Lévi-Strauss' The Way of the Masks (1982) or Geertz's
'Art as Cultural System' (1983) are some examples in this trend to transform the
anthropology of 'art' into an anthropology of culturally-specific 'aesthetics'. More recently,
in his book Art and Agency, Alfred Gell proposed a new definition of 'art' as a complex
system of intentionality, where artists produce art objects to effect changes in the world,
including (but not restricted to) changes in the aesthetic perceptions of art audiences. Gell's
ideas have stirred a large controversy in the anthropology of art in the 2000s.

 Sociology
The sociology of art is a subfield of sociology concerned with the social worlds of art
and aesthetics.

Studying the sociology of art throughout history is the study of the social history of
art, how various societies contributed to the appearance of certain artists.

In her 1970 book Meaning and Expression: Toward a Sociology of Art, Hanna
Deinhard gives these defining features of a sociology of art: "The point of departure of the
sociology of art is the question: How is it possible that works of art, which always originate
as products of human activity within a particular time and society and for a particular time,
society, or function -- even though they are not necessarily produced as 'works of art' -- can
live beyond their time and seem expressive and meaningful in completely different epochs
and societies? On the other hand, how can the age and society that produced them be
recognized in the works?

Enumerate the various terms used in aesthetics

 The Sublime
The experience of overwhelming power: the viewer feels obliterated by the vastness
and power of the object viewed, until the viewer finds a means of identifying him/herself
with something even greater than the object viewed. One can look at a mountain and feel
dwarfed, to the point of insignificance, until one imagines a God (or a way of gaining
perspective) that made the mountain.

 Longinus
Defines the sublime primarily by its contagion, i.e., we contemplate or view sublime
subjects, or read sublime passages of poetry, and get a rush off them, a sense of swelling
inward importance, even though we're partaking of something else's grandeur.

 Burke
Conditions for sublime perceptions include terror, obscurity, power, privation,
vastness, infinity, succession and uniformity (artificial or architectural infinity, as with
columns), magnitude in building, difficulty, magnificence, light, color, sound and loudness,
suddenness, discontinuity. Sublime language for Burke is non-descriptive, unclear, strong,
full of emotional abstraction, and inciting sympathy and contagion of passions.

 The Beautiful
An aesthetic based in symmetry, softness, intricacy, attractiveness, fecundity, and
powerlessness. Burke defines this as the feminine component to the clearly masculine
sublime; if sublimity is that which overwhelms us with its power, and then beauty is that
which overwhelms us with its need to be protected.

 The Picturesque
An aesthetic derived from idealized landscape painting, with crags, flaring and
blasted trees, a torrent or winding stream, ruins, and perhaps a quiet cottage and cart, with
contrasting light and shadow.
 Pastoral
Traditionally an unrealistic and urban genre, where a sophisticated urban dweller
waxes nostalgically about the pleasures of rural life.

 Sensibility
The capacity to feel; sensitivity to emotion.
 The Gothic
Popular architecturally during the second half of the 18th century, the Gothic
competed with Chinoiserie as a home-grown, domestic (patriotic) aesthetic.