Chapter 5– Evaluating art

A lot of extra information that is not in the book is here

We talk about art in terms of aesthetics. What is “aesthetics?”

• Aesthetics is the branch of philosophy concerned with the feelings aroused in us by
sensory experiences (sight, hearing, taste, touch and smell)
• Aesthetics concerns itself with our responses to the natural world and to the world we
make.
• Aesthetics address “What is art?” “How does it affect us and why?”
Evaluating art
What makes a work of art worthwhile?
Is it visually interesting?
Does it inform us?
Is it moving?
Is it skillfully done?

Etc….

The type of art that we prefer reveals far more about us than does our
favorite flavor of ice cream.

This is leading us back to the notion of beauty

 By looking at this work we can tell

The painter lacks skill

(anatomy)
The eyebrow is to narrow creating
issues with the use of pos / neg
space
(shading)
Cheek is blotchy

Dawn Marie Jigagian. Shy Glance. 1976.

18" x 24".
 Light seems to be natural over shoulder
Use of color
(other elements and principles?)
Panting technique and skill?
Face is relaxed and confident.
Use of proportion is correct

Elizabeth Vigee-Lebrun. Self-Portrait in a Straw Hat. 1782.

38 1/2" x 27 1/2".
*Art Criticism
Refers to making discriminating judgments, both favorable and unfavorable

Frank Modell. © The New Yorker Collection. 1983.

3 types of art criticism
* Formal theories - focuses on composition and influence)
(we will tend to look more at the composition by using the elements and
principles of design, concept and the influences upon the artist)

Theo van Doesburg (C.E.M. Kupper). Composition (The Cow). c. 1917.

14 3/4" x 25".
Innovative composition – empty niche
surrounded by a diagonal row of
heads that is balanced by the two
figures in the upper right.

Titian. Pietà. 1576.

Oil on canvas. 149" × 136".
Accademia, Venice. © Cameraphoto Arte, Venice. [Fig. 5-3]
 Influenced by cubism
Cubism – early 1900s art style developed
By Picasso.
Figure and ground merge into one
interwoven surface of shifting planes

Sonia Delaunay-Terk. Simultaneous Contrasts. 1913.

Oil on canvas. 18-1/2" × 21-1/2".
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid. 518 (1976.81). Photo Museo
Thyssen-Bornemisza/Scala, Florence © Pracusa. 2013020. [Fig. 5-4]
The work is held together, by
repeating certain motifs across the
panels, such as heads, patches of
white, and words in boxes

Jean-Michel Basquiat. Horn Players. 1983.

Acrylic and oil paintstick on three canvas panels. Overall 8' × 6' 5".
The Broad Art Foundation, Santa Monica. Photograph: Douglas M. Parker Studio,
Los Angeles. © The Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat/ADAGP, Paris/ARS, New York 2013.
[Fig. 5-5]
•Sociocultural - considers art as a product and and of a cultural value
system
•(Tend to look first at the environmental influences on a work of art: the
economic system, the cultural values, and even the politics of the time.)
(critics favor works that either embody important cultural values or
memorably express resistance to them)

Albrecht Dürer. The Knight, Death and the Devil. 1513.

9 5/8" x 7 1/2".
Expressive or empathetic- artist attempt to express a personality or
worldview
(The skill level personal intent, mental state, gender, or mindset of the
creator must play a role in the creative process. Artist -centered theories
are thus termed expressive or empathic theories.)
(Critics tend to look more for powerful personal meanings, deep
psychological insight, or profound human concern)

Jackson Pollock. Drawing. 1950.

11 1/8" x 60".
* 7 steps to thinking critically about art

1. Identify the artist’s decisions and choices.

2. Ask questions. Be curious.
3. Describe the object.
4. Question your assumptions.
5. Avoid an emotional response.
6. Don’t oversimplify or misrepresent the art object.
7. Tolerate uncertainty.
The Idea of the beautiful

Art has traditionally concerned itself with capturing ordinary experiences that are
fleeting in life, especially the more pleasurable ones

*Genre painting- depictions of everyday life

Both represent spirits from another world - both are from our imagining.

Meaning?

Hellenistic
Gods are like ourselves, only more
beautiful and descend to earth in
order to teach men reason and the
laws of harmony. ????
African
A world of fear and darkness, ready to
inflict horrible punishment for the
smallest infringement of a taboo. ????
 WRONG!
Such an interpretation
is Ethnocentric.
-preconceptions of the
psychic realities-
violence, horror or
fright that might lie
beneath the surface.

Ethnocentric- pertaining to the imposition of the point of view of one culture upon
the works and attitudes of another

This is why learning about the art in a context of the culture it reflects is so
important to understanding it.
According to the carver
This mask, the god of dance is
rejoicing for him.
So his heart is filled with joy
The horns curve nicely and I like
the placement of the eyes and
ears

It make the people happy

They even take the mask out and

contemplate it at times when it is
not being used in a ceremony
The imagination, in sum is an instrument of transformation.
The transformation of the idea into the image.
Could this transformation in itself be beautiful?
Could this transformation make their work meaningful?
We represent the world, then, because we see ourselves reflected
there. In nature, we see something of our own interest and habits of
mind.
Power of imagination
Anyone who has ever fallen in love has experienced very real feelings
that transcend the material reality of the outside world
To represent the immaterial is to give it material form
 Representing the Beautiful

Abstract and non objective art

After approx 80 sittings Picasso painted out
her head.
Returned after the summer and painted it
from memory

Painters felt no longer compelled to

represent the world as it was but has they
felt or imagined it to be.
Imagination of this kind is necessarily
subjective - that is, it exists in the mind of
the artist, or in the artist’s culture, not in the
world as we know it.

Source/Museum: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Bequest of Gertrude

Title: Gertrude Stein Stein, 1947 (47.106). Photo © 1996 The Metropolitan Museum of Art. © 2003 Estate of Pablo
Picasso/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
Artist: Pablo Picasso
Medium:Oil on canvas
Date: 1906
Size: 39 3/8 x 32 in.
Some items in museums considered works of art were designed to be
functional in some form
This function could range from everyday use to ritualistic use.
 Making Things and Creating
Space

Kane Kwei of Ghana

Fist coffin was made for a dying
uncle.
In Ghana, coffins -celebrate a
successful life

Ritualistic qualities/beautiful
design and meaning

Title: Coffin Orange, in the Shape of a Cocoa Pod
Artist: Kane Kwei (Teshi tribe, Ghana, Africa)
Date: c. 1970
Source/Museum: The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.
Gift of Vivian Burns, Inc., 74.8.
Medium: Polychrome wood
Size: 34 x 105 ½ x 24 in.
*Context - The varied connections of a work of art to the larger world of its
time and place
For many, the main purpose of art is to satisfy our aesthetic sense, our desire to
see and experience the beautiful.
 Portrait of his wife Olga Koklova Inspired by
the classical representation of the nude.
Nothing in this painting is intended to be
pleasing except his ability to invent
expressive images of tension
Represents women as sort of a battlefield
between attraction and repulsion
May not be “beautiful” but triggers a higher
level of thought and awareness

Title: Seated Bather by the Sea
Artist: Pablo Picasso
Date: 1930
Source/Museum: The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Mrs.
Simon Guggenheim Collection. Z. VII, 206.
Medium: Oil on canvas
Size: 63 5/8 x 50 ½ in.
 Art and Beauty

What is beauty?
What does it mean that something is beautiful?
Does art always contain beauty?

Immanual Kant, a philosophy who studied the notion of beauty, stated that
for an object to be beautiful- it must not be judged by bias opinion. There must be
a “disinterest”

Sometimes to see beauty- one must look past the subject and find either
the meaning or the formal qualities.
 9. Looking Inward: The Human Experience

“Vanitas”- latin for vanity

Designed to remind us of
the vanity, or frivolous
quality, of human existence-
our mortality
Popular in Northern Europe
in the 17th century
Still life paintings
Key element is the skull

Iconography

Skull = death is the end of all living things / Hourglass = passage of time / Flower = beauty
will fade
Not about death but about the right way to live- material world is not as long lived as the
spiritual

Title: Still Life or Vanitas (tulip, skull, and hour glass) Source/Museum: Musée de Tessé, Le Mans, France. Photo:
Giraudon/Art Resource, New York.
Artist: Philippe de Champaigne
Medium: Oil on canvas
Date: n/a
Size: 11 ¼ x 14 ¾ in.
 Rigor mortis has set in
Body is torn with wounds and scars
Flesh is a greenish gray
Feet are mangled

Can the “ugly” itself become art

Can the “ugly” be made, by the artist to
appear “beautiful?”
Could that cause us to ignore the
reality of the situation

Title: Crucifixion (detail), from the Isenheim Altarpiece Source/Museum: Musée Unterlinden, Colmar. Erich Lessing/Art
Resource, New York.
Artist: Matthias Grünewald
Medium: Oil on paper
Date: c. 1512-1515
Size: Height 117 ½ in.
Socrates argued that painters should be exiled from his ideal republic-
He believed the painter’s ability to create an emotionally charged scene was
destructive to a society- instead, society should strive to attain truth, wisdom
and order.

ARTISTS HAVE POWER ??

Robert Mapplethorpe
 *Became notorious because of his works known
as the “X Portfolio” (series of photos that
challenged the boundaries of what is art and what
is pornography when viewed by the majority of
the people) It was meant to be seen with the “Y
portfolio” (series of still life's with flowers)
Senator Jessie Helms of North Carolina opposed
Mapplethorpe’s project
NEA - partially financed his exhibition in D.C.
In Cincinnati, art center director Dennis Barrie
was arrested and the works seized

Title: Parrot Tulip Source/Museum: © 1985 Estate of Robert Mapplethorpe.

Artist: Robert Mapplethorpe Medium: n/a
Date: 1985 Size: n/a
Seeing the Value in art

Mapplethorpe’s photography raises key questions about the value of

art-not its monetary worth but its intrinsic value to the individual and
to society as a whole.
Art is something that has great value in our society.

Our culture takes great pride in architecture, museums, well-maintained parks…

Attraction for tourist - It’s fun and pleasing to visit a beautiful place -

Art moves us…

Psychologically, Emotionally and Spiritually

Artist from the past valued art just as much as we do today…

 Ofili, British born artist, raised catholic born in
Nigeria
Background - yellow resin, mosaic
(Byzantine)
Contrast soft texture of blue-gray robe
Black and white beadwork is pushpins
Small cutouts from porn magazines=putti
Two balls of resin coated elephant dung
support the painting
One breast is also defined by a ball of dung
*Puttie and cherubs are not the same thing!
Puttie actually do not have wings
(physical love)
Cherubs have wings
(celestial love)

Title: The Holy Virgin Source/Museum: The Saatchi Gallery, London.

Artist: Chris Ofili Medium: Paper collage, oil paint, glitter, polyester resin, map
pins, and elephant dung on linen
Date: 1996
Size: 8 x 6 ft.
Cardinal called it an attack on
religion
Giuliani threatened to cut of
museum’s city funds and
remover board if show was not
taken down
Ofili -“are very delicate
abstractions, and I wanted to
bring their beauty and
decorativeness together with
the ugliness of shit and make
them exist in a twilight zone”

Elephant dung is used in

various sacred rituals in Africa
 Vincent Van Gogh
“Wheat Field and Cypress Trees”
Oil on canvas / 1889

“I cannot help it that my pictures do not sell” “Never the less the time will come
when people will see that they are worth more than the price of the paint and my
own living,…”
We state that Van Gogh was an artistic genius because his vision of the world was so strong
and uniquely individual, that the force of it is seen in every brushstroke.
 Van Gogh
“Olive Trees”
The value seems to lie in the connection that the painting allows us to feel with the artist-
Van Gogh in particular because of his accomplishments and the story of his life. He is known
As a cultural hero. His letters to his brother, Theo, give us an insight into the artist mind during
The Industrial Revolution. There was a rejection of traditional oil painting and of salon styles.
Also, the value is the influence on generations of artist and art lovers. One last thing to mention is
the fact that there are only a limited amount of works done by this hand. The hand is
recognizable- the artist’s style.
Red vineyard only painting Van Gogh sold in his lifetime

Portrait of Dr Gachet sold for approx 130

 Rejected for the salon
exhibition in Paris in 1863
Exhibited in the Salon des
Refuses
Manet’s work still created
scandal

Broad visable brush strokes, bodies of the nudes are flat, the bather in the back
seems to fall forward onto the picnic.
Why are the men clothed and not the women?

Title: Luncheon on the Grass (Déjeuner sur l'herbe) Source/Museum: Musée d'Orsay, Paris. Cliche des Musées
Nationaux-Paris. © Photo R.M.N./Art Resource, New York.
Artist: Edouard Manet
Medium: Oil on canvas
Date: 1863
Size: 7 ft. x 8 ft. x 10 in.
 Inspired by the Judgment of Paris
Poses of the figures are classical
But Manets treatment of them was
modern

Title: The Judgment of Paris (detail)

Artist: Marcantonio Raimondi
Date: c. 1488-1530
The public tends to receive innovative art work with reservation because
it usually has little context, historical or otherwise, in which to view it

(Visual Literacy?)
 Almost 100 years later
Scandalous success
Teddy Roosevelt - reminded him of a Navajo
blanket
Others an explosion in a shingle factory
Everyone was looking for a nude woman
70,000 saw it in New York, Armory show
After Boston and Chicago nearly 300,000 had
seen it
Influenced by Etinne Marey and Eadweard
Muybridge

Source/Museum: Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia. Louise and

Title: Nude Descending a Staircase No. 2 Walter Arensberg Collection, 1950. 50-134-59. © 2003 Artists Rights Society
(ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris/Estate of Marcel Duchamp.
Artist: Marcel Duchamp
Medium: Oil on canvas
Date: 1912
Size: 58 x 35 in.
Duchamp said of Bicycle
Wheel, (1913) "Please note *By (1915), Duchamp used the
that I did not want to make a term READYMADE to classify
work of art out of it." ﾊ It is The Bicycle Wheel and In Advance of a
offered as something Broken ﾊ Arm.
"absolutely devoid of
aesthetic pleasure."
Painting is "washed up," Duchamp said in 1912. In abandoning painting, he
said, "I want something where ﾊ the eye and the hand count for
nothing."This period culminated in his 1917 submission of Fountain (signed R.
Mutt) to an art exhibit of the Society of Independent Artists in New York.
Although the show did not have a jury, the organizers refused to exhibit
Fountain
Duchamp responded in defense of his alter-ego, Mr. Mutt, with the
following argument:"Whether Mr. Mutt with his own hands made
the fountain or not has no importance. He chose it. He took an
ordinary article of life, placed it so that its useful significance
disappeared under a new title and point of view -- he created a
new thought for the object."
 *1967 congress created
the NEA (National
Endowment for the
Arts)

*What is the 1%
program?
Like many other public
works, at first the
publics reaction was
negative

Source/Museum: Calder Plaza, Vandenberg Center, Grand Rapids,

Title: La Grand Vitesse Michigan. © John Corriveau, all rights reserved. © 2003 Estate of Alexander
Calder/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
Artist: Alexander Calder
Medium: Painted steel plate
Date: 1969
 William Diamond -regional
Administrator of the General
Services Administration
The administration originally
commissioned the piece 1981
Diamond starts the campaign to have
the piece removed
Was dismantled in 1989

Title: Tilted Arc Source/Museum: Installed Federal Plaza, New York City. Destroyed by the
U.S. Government, 3/15/89. Artists Rights Society, Inc.
Artist: Richard Serra
Medium: Cor-Ten steel
Date: 1981
Size: 12 ft. x 120 ft. x 2 ½ in.
 Commissioned in 1501
Also did not have universal approval when it
was first displayed
Political context-
David’s triumph over Goliath symbolized
Republican Florence - the city’s freedom from
foreign and papal domination and from the rule
of the Medici family
Stones thrown at it
*Skirt of copper leaves was made to spare the
public of the possible offense of nudity

Title: David Source/Museum: Copy of the original as it stands in the Piazza della
Signoria, Florence. Original in the Galleria dell'Accademia, Florence.
Artist: Michelangelo
Medium: Marble
Date: 1501-1504
Size: Height 13 ft. 5 in.
Which leads us back to becoming more visual literate
And having a understanding of how to critique art

7 steps to thinking critically about art

1. Identify the artist’s decisions and choices.

2. Ask questions. Be curious.
3. Describe the object.
4. Question your assumptions.
5. Avoid an emotional response.
6. Don’t oversimplify or misrepresent the art object.
7. Tolerate uncertainty.