Test 1 Flashcards
Birth of Venus
Glorified beauty of female body. At the time Catholic church disaproved of pagan deities.
Les Demoiselles D’Avignon
Originally mean to be a painting of a brothel, eventually ended up in Cubism. Inspired by the Mboom masks.
Ceremonial Mask Known as a Mboom or Bwoom
Used in African Masquerades, was used to represent a people who the king had dominion over. Reanactment of important creation events
The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations Millennium General Assembly
Made by an untrained artist after his janitor day job with ordinary materials. 180 pieces
Genesis
Blends self expression and innovation, but also recreating old forms.
Innovating by painting thick oil strokes on newspapser. Preserving old native symbols.
Mirror Image I
Everything is black, but the value differences in the black are caused by bouncing light.
Car
Example of volume use, with little mass.
Ceiling of Cave 26
Example of needing to look at architecture from many angles. More unfolds in time with viewers motion.
One side of the cave has Parinirvana, sculpture of death of Buddha
Parinirvana
Example of needing to look at architecture from many different angles.
The Binocular Entrance to the Chiat Building
Emphasize how scale and proportion draw attention and shows importance.
Electronic Super Highway
All sorts of media can make art.
Knight, Death, and Devil
Example of metal engraving. Engraving produces thin, precise lines
Sasa
Woven from copper and aluminum scraps. Salvaged objects.
Monumental Heads
Freestanding sculptures, can be viewed from all sides and used in different settings.
Golf Bag
Made of clay, with great detail. Modelingis pushing and pulling a malleable substance
First Landing Jump
Combined oil with many found objects, creating an assemblage.
Junk
DVD projection on fiberglass. Comments on neediness, insecurity, and self-centerdness with work that is both funny and annoying.
Drawing for Transient Rainbow
Gunpowder on paper. Art can be made of many materials.
Nighthawks
Subtext. Loneliness, impending doom. WW2
Yama
Complex iconography that refers to Buddhist religious beliefs. Indian God of death fights agains inner demons like hate and lust.
The Night Watch
Example of portrait of middle class rather than royalty. Not at night.
Speechless
Islamic women in a country where women’s right and actions are limited by religious law.
The New York City Waterfalls
About location. Tries to encourage new yorks to go back to the waterfront
Black Iris
Impermanence of meaning. Originally about love of nature, but some see sexual meaning.
Judith and Holofernes
Her artwork was originally attributed to her father.
Excavations of Ancient Houses at Catal Huyuk
Hall of Bulls
Probably used in rituals. About bounty in nature and food supply.
Witchetty Grub Dreaming
Contour map of australia showing food sources. Central part is the ancestor grub.
Basket
Each woman had one, stains on inside, used.
Pie Counter
Food as a visual display rather than nutrition for the body.
Artichoke, Halved
Focused on form and structure.
The Dinner Party
Celebrates signficant women in western culture. Somewhat related to the Last Supper.
Gnaw
Used substance and materials socially defined as female fetishes.
Venus of Willendorf
Believed to have the power of fertility
Long Skinny Statue
Idol from Amorgos
Thought to be reclined. Fertility idol. Mean to represent female youth.
Abstracted
Imagery derived from reality by distorting, enlarging, or dissecting
Content
Mass of ideas associated with each artwork
Imagery, symbolism, surroundings, customs, writings
Function
Art is intended to do a job within a culture
Idealized
Natural imagery is modified in a way that strives for perfection
Guild
Specialized societies that preserve technical information
Expressionism
Communicates heightened emotions or urgency or spontaneity
Naturalistic
Imagery is depicted very much as seen in nature
Visual Culture
Imagery that humans create this is important in everyday life
Popular Culture
Often more accessible, inexpensive, entertaining, commercial, political, or colorful than fine art
Representational
Contains entities from the world in recognizable form
Style
The art output of a whole culture or of an individual artist.
Aesthetics
The look and feel of an artwork and the attributes that elevate it above other objects.
Elements of Art
Line, Light and Value, Color, Texture, Shape, Space, Time ad Motion
Principles of Design
Balance, Rhythm, Proportion, Emphasis, Unity, Variety
Arch
Dates back to Egypt, wedge shaped stones that lean on each other. Rest on piers.
Biomorphic
Shapes that resemble living beings
Composition
Arrangement of formal elements in a work of art
Contour Lines
Mark important edges of 3d objects
Gesture
Lines that are rapid and sketchy, mimic the the movement of human eyes. Gesture drawings give general shapes without details
Vault
Roofs made with arches
Hieratic Scale
Device that points to the highest ranking person in the scene using scaling
Implied versus Actual
Actual: Physically existing elements
Implied: Not physically existing, but seem real
Linear Perspective
Parallel lines appear to converge as they recede.
Modeling
Shading - create appearance of natural light on objects
Organic
Same as biomorphic. Resembles living things
Primary
Combine to produce largest number of new colors.
Secondary
Mixing two primary colors
Tertiary
One primary color with a neighboring secondary color
Formalism
Study of the elements and principles of art
What is the structure of a Feldman critique? What can we gain from doing one?
1) Description
2) Analysis
3) Interpretation
4) Judgement
Inductive process for understanding and evaluating the significance of art.
What are some of the purposes of art?
1) Reflect customs and concerns related to food, shelter, and reproduction
2) Helps us conceive divinity and create places of worship
3) Serves and commemorates the dead
4) Reveals political and social injustice
5) Entertainment
6) Promotes cohesion within a social group
Difference between fine art, popular culture, and craft? (Concept 1)
Fine Art - Refined objects considered to be among the highest cultural achievements of the human race. The type of art this is displayed in museums
Popular Culture - Popular art is often perceived as being more accessible, inexpensive, entertaining, commercial, political, naive, or colorful than fine art.
Craft - Usually making objects instead of images. Often utilitarian in purpose
Overlap example: Jose Guadalupe Poster shows two running skeletons that represent assassins.
Thematic vs Chronological approach?
Thematic often misses the deeper context surrounding a period. It takes more effort to really understand a piece of art.
Chronological misses connections and similarities that may be made across different time periods or culture, such as architectural developments.
What is art?
Depends on the culture! For the US, Art is primarily a visual medium that is used to express ideas about our human experience and the world around us. We can understand art by looking at function, visual form, content, and aesthetics.
Refracted Light
Light through a prism
Reflected Light
Objects absorb some of spectrum and reflect the rest
Hue
Pure state of the color
Value
Lightness or darkness in a hue
Additive Colors
Light emitting media. All light together makes white.
Subtractive
Mixing more and more pigments results in a darker color.
How does color influence meaning in art?
Colors can be symbolic (christmas)
Colors are associated with ideas
Colors are associated with emotions
Assemblage
A collection of found objects
Binder
Substance that holds the components once dried
Fresco
Paint on a plaster wall
Lost wax method
Method for casting bronze sculptures. Waxed is melted out
installation
Installations are mixed-media artworks design for a specific space.
print making
Process of making art using a printing plate.
ready mades
Found objects that are barely edited
photography
Light sensitive surface s exposed to light through a lens
found objects
Objects from real life that are incorporated into artwork
subtractive process
Material is taken away
additive process
Material is added
tromp l’oeil
“Fool the eye” - artwork that is so realistic that it looks real
relief
Non printed areas are cut away so that printing areas are raised
performance art
Live action event that is staged as artwork
classical
Art based on ancient Greece, prioritizing ideal proportion surrounding the human figure
combines
Works that are both painting and sculpture
mobiles
Kinetic works of art
How does the medium used by artists influence the way we perceive art and the value we may give to a particular piece?
The medium chosen does influence the meaning of a work of art. Skull with diamonds “For the Love of God”, a symbol of death lined with worldly pleasures. It is not necessarily tied to the value of the piece, but if it influences the meaning in the correct way, it can.
Context
External conditions that surround a work of art.
Abstract expressionism
Post WW2 movement that emphasized spontaneous self expression and non representational imagery
Iconography
System of symbols that allows artists to express complex ideas
Deconstructionism
Any system is filled with unseen contradictions, myths, and stereotypes.
Symbol
Image or element that stands for some other entity or concept
Post Modern
A rejection of modernism. Subjectivity, nuances, and ambiguity
Subtext
Underlying ideas or messages
Content
Artwork’s theme or message
How does environment or setting influence the meaning of a work of art? (Can you cite an example?)
Example would be the waterfall structure in NYC.
How does environment or setting influence the meaning of a work of art? (Can you cite an example?)
1) Context for Creation
2) Physical Surroundings
3) Method of Encounter
Tibetan Potala Palace -
What are different ways to analyze art?
1) Formal Analysis
2) Content Analysis
- Subject Matter
- Iconography
3)Physical Surroundings
Ideological Criticism - Political
Modernist Criticism - Notion of Progress
Psychoanalytic Criticism - Product of the individual
Post-Structuralism - multiple meanings to art
Good example for different lenses - maybe NightHawks, Pyscho vs political
Who is Clement Greenberg?
Art critic of modernist America. He was a champion of Abstractionist Art. Abstractionist art was the necessary conclusion of modern art. He wanted to strip down various out forms and reduce them to the philosophical core of true. Flatness.
Paleolithic
Stone Age, 30,000 BC, Hunters and gatherers
Mesolithic
Middle Stone Age, 10,000 BCE, First raising of crops and animals
Neolithic
New Stone Age, 8000, Expanded Agricultural production and cities
Pop Art
Glorified Pop Culture Icons
Sympathetic Magic
Using rituals to bring about rain or good crop harvests
Renaissance
A rebirth of the learning and arts of the Greek and Roman cultures
International Style
Bare steel and glass, self contained and with controlled access, in worlds largest cities.
Ancestor Dreaming
Australian aboriginal system of beliefs that accounts for cosmos, creation, survival, and location of food. Past along through song and dance
Archaic
Greek Archaic period 650-600 BCE
Vanitas
that is, the impermanence of all earthly things and the inevitability of death.
What is the role of art making in ancient societies as it pertains to survival?
Art was used in a ritualistic way to promote good crops and good hunts. You can look at Hall of Bulls as an example. Also the Aboriginal Australians.
Describe how different cultures have created art to aid in fertility.
Made sculptures and figurines as talismans for good health and fertility. This was in Austria.
In Polynesia they made figurines for Male fertility as well. God was Te Rongo.
Art was also made to decorate rooms where fertility rituals for Dionysos took place.
Native Americans used figures to cast “Love spells”
Different ways food and eating is represented in art?
1) Vanitas
2) Art the glorifies the aesthetic qualities of food (Pie counter)
3) Buddhist simplicity paintings
4) Experimentation with media (artichoke)
5) Social events (last supper)
What makes a utilitarian object art?
In addition, however, they display aesthetic and/or conceptual attributes that go beyond mundane use
