Combination words                       Meanings

Paleo-                                                 Paleology

Anthro-                                               Anthropology

Psycho-                                               Psychology

Biolog-                                                Biology

Suffixes                                              Meanings

-ical                                                     Pertaining to

The person who coined this term was Ellen Dissanayake; she used this term in the article what is art for? which was our assigned excerpt for this week. Dissanayake uses this term in order to describe what art is to her.

2. It this week’s reading Dissanayake uses the phrase “making special” to explain that when you make something special, someone will care for it or it has some sort of significance in his or her life. Another way to look at the phrase “making special” is to transform a regular object or activity into something “special” or extraordinary. The ability to make something special is necessary to human survival, Dissanayake explains in the reading. The example she uses is animal survival; if a prey cannot distinguish between branches that are falling or branches that are moving because a predator is coming will put the prey in great danger and they probably won’t survive. One way that this phrase relates to art is when art works are put into galleries, they are then “made special”.

3. Medieval times – During these times Dissanayake explains, “arts were in the service of religion… but were not regarded ‘aesthetically’” (pg. 16). Art had an extremely different meaning than it does today. Artists from the Renaissance era were said to “gradually replaced God-center with man-centered concerns” (pg. 16). People of this time believed in different ideas and with this, in time the focus of religion shifted to freedom. For example Dissanayake states that, “Plate did not discuss ‘art’, but rather beauty, poetry, and image making. Aristotle dealt with poetry and tragedy” (pg. 16).

Modernism – This is probably when art started to be truly appreciated. In the 18^th century, many people started to be more concerned with aesthetics. Dissanayake explains that, “ a concern with elucidating principles such as taste and beauty that govern all the arts and indeed make them not simply paintings or statues but examples of (fine) ‘art’” (pg. 17). During this era, the ideology and inspiration of the artwork came into focus but not everyone could understand these ideas and needed experts to explain it to them.

Postmodernism – Dissanayake states that postmodernism is a “point of view that calls into question two centuries of assumptions about the elite and special nature of art” (pg. 19). In this era, the assumption that art reflects a unique and privileged kind of knowledge is thrown out and art is looked at through the artists’ “individual and cultural sensibilities” (pg. 19). Nowadays art is for everyone and anyone can interpret an artwork, however everyone may have different interpretation of an artwork based on his or her point of view.

In this weeks reading What is art for?, the author introduced that to her, art is “palaeoantropsychobiological” (Dissanayake, 15). To me this was very interesting because the word he used when broken down means pertaining (-ical) to the ideas of paleoecology (palaeo-), anthropology (anthro-), psychology (psycho-), and biology (biolog-). He then goes on to explain that is suggest that the idea of art includes all of human history whether it’s Paleolithic or earlier, that it includes all human societies meaning anthropological, and that it needs and has a emotional and psychological effect on it’s viewers (Dissanayake, 15). During Fall 2013, I took an AAD 252: Art and Gender course which really broadened my view on art because it taught me that art can be anything made by any human. Something doesn’t have to be made with the intension of being art, some forms of art were accidentally made but as long as it evokes some type of emotion from its view; it’s considered art. I would agree that my view on art, is the same as Dissanayake which is what she foreseen, “Most people would probably agree that their personal “idea of art” includes all these things…” (15). Everyone has their own take on art and there is no correct definition because it depends on the eye of the beholder. However, these are present day definitions or art whereas back in the Paleolithic or pre-modern times the definition of art was extremely different.

Moreover Dissanayake explains that during the medieval times “arts were in the service of religion, as they have always been, but were not regarded ‘aesthetically’ (16). Although I obviously was not there during this time I know that society as a whole had completely different values from the society we live in today. Everyone was so much more conservative and religion was a big part of everyone’s lives. No one really cared about aesthetics, like today’s society.

There’s a drastic change in how people describe art over the years but overall, I don’t think any definition of art is wrong whether it’s what people in the medieval times thought or today’s people. I believe that there is no exact definition of art because everyone has different point of views. Anything can be considered “art” as long as it evokes some type of thought or emotion.