UNIT I

Assumptions and Nature of Art

 WHAT IS ART?

• The people of Bali have no word for either art or artist; and yet
making beautiful things is their way of life.
• Definitions offered by aestheticians (nature and appreciation
of beauty, especially in art):
• Art is an attempt to create pleasing forms.
• Art is the enjoyment of forms.
• “Art must be a direct communication between the artist’s
imagination of that of the looker.” Kahlil Gibran
 PLATO’S THEORY OF MIMESIS

• “Imitation” is the commonest English translation of mimesis.

• According to Plato “all art is mimetic by nature; art is an
imitation of life.”
• He believed that ‘idea’ is the ultimate reality. Art imitates idea
and so it is imitation of reality.
• He gives an example of a carpenter and a chair. The idea of
‘chair’ first came in the mind of carpenter. He gave physical
shape to his idea out of wood and created a chair. The painter
imitated the chair of the carpenter in his picture of chair. Thus,
painter’s chair is twice removed from reality. Hence, he
believed that art is twice removed from reality.
 ART AS REPRESENTATION
(ARISTOTLE)

• According to Aristotle all the arts have their own techniques

and rational principles, and it is through mastery of these that
the artist/craftsman brings his conceptions to life.
• Yes, the arts do copy nature, but their representations are
fuller and more meaningful than nature gives us in the raw.
That is their strength.
• We do not therefore need to insist on some moral purpose for
art, which is thus free to represent all manner of things
present, past, imagined or institutionally-required.
• Correctness in poetry is not correctness judged on other grounds
like politics or morality. The artist's task is to create some possible
world which the audience will grasp and evaluate much as they do
the "real" world outside. The artwork needs to be internally
consistent, and externally acceptable.
• Form and content cannot be entirely separated. Plays should have
a beginning, middle and end because life itself has these features,
but they should also possess a larger significance that endows the
individual representation with deeper human meaning.
• Plato castigated poetry for bewitching the senses, Aristotle
praises it for catharsis and healthy psychological balance. Both in
its creation and reception, art is mode of understanding, and so a
civilizing influence.

Plato
• Art is imitation, and that’s bad.
• Problems with imitation:
• Epistemological: An imitation that art is
removed from the reality or truth of
something.
• Theological: Poets and other artists
represent the gods in inappropriate ways.
• Moral and Psychological: A good
imitation can undermine the stability of
even the best humans by making us feel
sad, depressed, and sorrowful about life
itself.
Aristotle
• Art is imitation, and that’s all right, even
good.
• Imitation is natural to humans from
childhood.
• Imitation is how children learn, and we all
learn from imitations.
• Tragedy can be a form of education that
provides moral insight and fosters
emotional growth.
• Tragedy is the imitation (mimesis) of
certain kinds of people and actions.
• Good tragedies must have certain sorts of
people and plots. (Good people
experience a reversal of fortune due to
some failing or hamartia.)
• A successful tragedy produces a
catharsis in the audience.
• Catharsis = purification through pity and
fear.
 “ART FOR ART’S SAKE”

• German philosopher Immanuel Kant qualified “art for art’s

sake” as a mode of approaching art in The Critique of
Judgment (1790).
• Content, subject matter, and any other external demands
obsolete, Kant argued the purpose of art is to be
“purposeless”.
• It should not have to justify any reason of existing and being
valued other than the fact that it is art.
• Our experience of art – the ways we appreciate and criticize
work – is therefore wholly commanded by aesthetic pleasure
and delight, separate to the rest of the world.
 ART AS AN ESCAPE

• Art takes the form of hand-drawn images, written words,

photographs, dance, acting, and of course music.
• There are endless forms of art that sometimes appear to have
no purpose beyond the creation of money—although that is a
privilege many artists never experience.
• Today, art’s purpose stood out in all its glory: Good art is an
escape from our reality for a brief point in time that helps us
heal and take a break.
• Without Art we stay stuck in our thoughts, and the beauty that
the world offers disappears into the abyss of our imaginations.
• Art brings us back and helps us see that beauty again and be
thankful that we are alive.
• Art breathes new life into us during those self-harming
thoughts and the inevitable tragedy that we will experience.
Art is an escape, although it’s not a permanent one; rather, it’s a
much-needed escape.
• The art you create is an escape for everybody who comes into
contact with it, and that is one of the best forms of life-changing
usefulness you can ever think of.
• Use art as a powerful escape and make your own art for others
to experience and be transformed by.
 REMEMBER

• When looking at art, it is important to bear in mind the

implication that not all art has to mean anything other than the
fact that it is art.
• Once we start there, conceptualism can become both more
accessible or more confusing, depending on what you are
looking at.
THE NATURE OF
ART
• Art is everywhere
• Art is not only found in museums or concert halls. It is found
everywhere – in all the countries of the world because it is closely
linked with the human society.
• Art is expression and communication
• Art the expression or application of human creative skill and
imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture,
producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or
emotional power.
• Art and Experience
• Art, then, is not merely the process by the artist; it involves both the artist
and the active observer who encounter each other, their mental
environments, and their culture at large. That is, art is not just a recording
of human experience, but it is an involvement of human experience.
• Art and nature
• Although artists imitate nature, what is art is not nature and what is nature
is not art.
• Nature can be a good subject of art.
• Art and Beauty
• Beauty is deeply linked to our thinking about art. Aesthetics, the
branch of philosophy that studies art, also studies the nature of
beauty.

• Many of us assume that a work of art should be beautiful, and even

that art’s purpose is to be beautiful. To help analyze whether such
assumption is correct or not, study the following concepts of
beauty.
• Concepts of Beauty
• Beauty is relative: We have different ways of looking at what is
beautiful.What is beautiful to you may not be beautiful to another.
• Beauty changes as time passes: What may be beautiful before may
not be beautiful today and vice versa.
• Concepts of beauty vary between cultures: What may be beautiful
to Filipinos may not be necessarily beautiful to Japanese, Africans or
Europeans.
 FUNCTIONS OF ART

• Ideally, one can look at a piece of art and guess with some
accuracy where it came from and when. This best-case
scenario also includes identifying the artist because they are in
no small way part of the contextual equation. You might
wonder, "What was the artist thinking when they created this?"
when you see a piece of art.
• The functions of art normally fall into three categories:
physical, social, and personal.
 PHYSICAL FUNCTION
• The physical functions of art are often the easiest to
understand. Works of art that are created to perform some
service have physical functions. If you see a Fijian war club,
you may assume that, however wonderful the craftsmanship
may be, it was created to perform the physical function of
smashing skulls.
 SOCIAL FUNCTION
• Art has a social function when it addresses aspects of (collective) life
as opposed to one person's point of view or experience. Viewers can
often relate in some way to social art and are sometimes even
influenced by it.

• American photographer Dorothea Lange (1895–1965) along with

many others often took pictures of people in conditions that are
difficult to see and think about.
 PERSONAL FUNCTION

• The personal functions of art are often the most difficult to

explain. There are many types of personal functions and these
are highly subjective. Personal functions of art are not likely to
be the same from person to person.
• An artist may create a piece out of a need for self-expression
or gratification. They might also or instead want to
communicate a thought or point to the viewer. Sometimes an
artist is only trying to provide an aesthetic experience, both for
self and viewers. A piece might be meant to entertain, provoke
thought, or even have no particular effect at all.
SUBJECT OF ART
Subject
is the term used for whatever is represented
in a work of art. The subject of a work of art
answers the question:What is it about?
• Not all arts have subjects
• Those arts without subject are called nonobjective/
nonrepresentational, they do not represent anything.
They are what they are without the reference to anything
in the natural world.
• A Subject may have a different levels of meanings:
• Factual meaning – that which is easily recognized or the
literal statement of the work. For example a painting
with a dove – a dove is an animal specifically a bird
• Conventional meaning – the special meaning that an
object or color has for a certain group of people.
• Examples:
• Dove – holy spirit descending from heaven
• Olive – Peace
• Fish – Jesus Christ and all Christians
• Subjective meaning – the personal meaning consciously
or unconsciously conveyed by the artist using a private
symbolism which comes from his own associations and
experiences with objects, colors and others. A work can
only be fully understood if the artist explains what he
really means.
 WAYS OF REPRESENTING A
SUBJECT
Realism
is the attempt to represent
subject matter truthfully,
without artificiality and
avoiding artistic conventions,
implausible, exotic and
supernatural elements.
Abstraction
Is a technique of simplifying and
reorganizing objects and
elements according to the artist
creative expression.
Distortion
Is a technique employed
by the artist to dramatize
the shape of a figure to
create an emotional effect.
FIGURATIVE DISTORTIONS
 THE ARTIST AND HIS CHOICE
OF SUBJECT
Practically everything under the sun is raw material for the artist
to draw his subject. Whatever subjects an artist chooses, his
choice involves some personal statement; it shows what he
considers significant or aesthetically satisfying.
Factors:
• Medium
• Time
• Patronage
• Personal Preference
 KINDS OF SUBJECT
• Landscapes, seascapes and cityscapes
• Still Life
• Animals
• Portraits
• Figures
• Everyday Life
• History and Legend
• Religion and Mythology
• Dreams and Fantasies
LANDSCAPES, SEASCAPES AND CITYSCAPES
Landscapes, seascapes and cityscapes
STILL LIFE
ANIMALS
 PORTRAIT

Self Portrait with Necklace by Frida Khalo Self-Portrait by Raphael

HISTORY AND LEGEND
FIGURES
RELIGION AND MYTHOLOGY
RELIGION AND MYTHOLOGY
EVERYDAY LIFE
Everyday Life
DREAMS & FANTASIES
DREAMS & FANTASIES
DREAMS & FANTASIES
 REMEMBER:

• Art reflects and belongs to the period and

culture from which it is spawned.
• In other words, whatever definition of art
we arrive at, it is bound to be limited to
our era and culture.
• The definition of art reflects three
concepts: (1) art as experience, (2) art as
expression, and (3) art as form.