What Are the Arts and How Do We Respond to Them?
I. Art is not like science.
A. New forms do not invalidate previous ones or reduce them to obsolescence.
B. Regardless of the age of the work of art, the viewer always encounters it in “the here and now.”
II. Sporre: The Concerns of Art.
A. Creativity.
1. Form/cosmos out of formlessness/chaos.
a. The organizing of "experience."
2. The artist's medium.
a. Durable arts.
b. Ephemeral arts.
3. Can any physical form live up to its "idea?" cf. Plato.
B. Communication.
1. Is an audience necessary? What about the self alone?
2. "Aesthetic" vs. "Anaesthetic."
C. Symbol (see previous webpage material on sign and symbol).
D. "Fine" arts and "applied" arts: aesthetics and/or function.
III. Sporre: The Functions/Purposes of Art (summarized/combined as one listing).
A. Enjoyment/escape.
B. The organized expression of feeling and experience (as discussed above)
C. Social and/or political commentary; e.g. :
1. Media: socio-political satire.
2. Pablo Picasso, Guernica (1937).
3. Grant Wood, American Gothic (1930).
4. Maya Lin, The Vietnam Veterans Memorial (1982).
D. Therapy.
1. Creative activity as stress management, as healing process.
E. Artifact.
1. Reflections and records of past cultures/civilizations.
2. e.g., the cave paintings of Lascaux (ca. 15K-10K BCE)
F. Art for its own sake (anti-function).
1. Oscar Wilde: "All art is quite useless."
G. Ritual.
1. The spirituality of the creative process (artist).
2. The spirituality of the encounter with the art object (viewer).
IV. Art Criticism.
A. Criticism is not “criticizing;” criticism is analysis and interpretation. Compare to previous discussion of text-context-subtext.
1. Formal (textual).
2. Historical (contextual).
3. As outlined previously, both of these utilized and interrelated in order to develop an interpretation (subtextual).
V. Convention and Style.
A. Convention is determined by culture.
1. Does the work affirm/support or challenge/protest cultural convention?
B. Style is reflective of culture, but also of a particular artist or movement.
1. "Style" vs. "fashion"-- what does it mean to be "hip?"
2. Art and life: what "imitates" what? Can art "imitate" itself?
C. Stylistic exercise in line, palette, and brushstroke.
1. Corot: “A View Near Volterra.”
2. Picasso: “Guernica.”
3. Van Gogh: “The Starry Night.”