THEMES AND PURPOSES

OF ART
A subject of artistic representation
• Themes and Purposes may differ within a work of
art.
• A work may reflect more than one theme.
• Installation: work for a specific space and time.
• Triptych: three paneled painting
• Earthwork: work constructed outdoors from
natural materials.
• Negative/Positive Space: the relationship between
a shape we perceive as dominant (the figure) and
the background shape we perceive it against (the
ground).
Positive shape (Dominant) / Negative space depending on what you focus your attention.
Themes of art

The Sacred Realm

The Social Order
Storytelling & History
The Here and Now
The Human Experience
Invention and Fantasy
Art and Nature
Art and art
The Sacred Realm Interior, upper chapel, Sainte-Chapelle, Paris. 1243-48 build
as a private worship hall for the king and his court.
Prayer hall of Abd al-rahman I, Great Mosque, Cordoba, Spain. Begun 786 C.E
 A Tathagata
Buddha. Central
Tibet, late 12th
century. Opaque
watercolor and
gold on linen,
8’6” x 5’9” L.A
county Museum of
Art
Cimabue. Madonna
Enthroned. C. 1280-
90. Tempera on wood.
12’ 7 ½” x 7’ 4”
Iconoclasm is derived from Greek for the “image breaking”
Large Buddha, Bamiyan, Afghanistan. 5th-7th century
Politics and the Social Order
 THE SOCIAL ORDER The Great Pyramids, Giza, Egypt. Pyramid of
Menkaure, c. 2500 B.C.E.; Pyramid of Khafre, c. 2530 B.C.E.; Pyramid of
Khufu, c. 2570 B.C.E
480 ft. about the height of fifty-five story, base is 13 acres, over two million stones, each stone weighed 2 tons
Equestrian Portrait- the portrayal of an admired leader on horseback.
Marcus Aurelius
Eugene Delacroix. Liberty leading the People, 1830. 1830. oil on canvas, 8’6” x 10’ 10”
Pablo Picasso. Guernica. 1937. Oil on canvas, 11’ 5 ¼” x 25’ 5 ¼” Museo Nacional Reina Sofía,
Madrid.
In January 1937, a painting was commissioned by the Republican government to
decorate the Spanish stand at the 1937 Universal Exhibition in Paris.
Barbara Kruger. Untitled (We Will No Longer Be seen and Not Heard). 1985. Nine color
lithographs with photo-lino and silkscreen, each 20 ½” x 20 ½”.
Rauschenberg.
Windward, 1963
The Human Experience
Talking Skull

Meta Warrick Fuller, 1937  

 Shahzia
Sikander
Hood's Red Rider
#2. 1997
vegetable
color, dry
pigment,
watercolor, tea
on hand-
prepared
paper, 19 1/8” x
7 1/8”
INVENTION & FANTASY
 Hieronymus
Bosch
The Garden of

Delights, Exterior
Creation of the
World 1504
INVENTION
&
FANTASY
Hieronymu
s Bosch.
The Garden
of Earthly
Delights,
center
section. C.
1505-10. Oil
on panel, 7’
2 5/8 x 6’ 4
¾”
Sandy Skoglund. Radioactive Cats. C. 1980. Cibachchrome print, 30 x 40”
 ART & NATURE Thomas Cole. The Oxbow ( View from Mount Holyoke,
Northampton, Massachusetts, After a thunderstorm). 1836. Oil on canvas, 4’ 3 ½ x 6’ 4”
Robert Smithson. Spiral Jetty. 1970. Rock, salt crystals, earth, algae; coil
length 1500’.Great Salt lake, Utah
ART & ART Hokusai. Ejira in Suruga province, from Thirty-six views of Mt. Fuji. C. 1831.
Polychrome woodblock print. 9 5/8” x 14 7/8”
Jeff Wall.
A Sudden
Gust of
Wind (after
Hokusai).
1993
transparenc
y in
lightbox, 7’
67/8” x 12’4
5/16”
Study gust of wind(after Hokusai 1993