What is Art?
OBJECTIVES
- Examine multiple perspectives for evaluating art
- Explore a brief history of Western Art
ORIGINAL POST
It is very interesting that Ellen Dissanayakewho has fifteen-year lived abroad experience in non-western country start to think about the real meaning of art and the. She starts from discussing that both definition and expression of art are varying along with time goes by. She pointed out that when the concept of art was firstly talked, people took it as beauty or poetry things, and Aristotle expressed it with poetry and tragedy (p.2). In medieval times, “renaissance artists replaced god centered with man centered concerns”, and in 18th century, “modemity” formed since “a number of social and intellectual trends came together, intertwined and influenced one another” (p.2). Art starts to become unprecedented from nineteen century when “a disinterested attitude that is separate from one’s own personal interest in the object, its utility, or its social or religious ramifications” (p.3). When comes to mid-twentieth century, which was nearer to my life, I can feel what she saying that “paintings became less and less like mirrors, and more elaborate ad abstract” (p.4). In recent years, I find out that more and more art work are very abstract or “postmodemism”, and I can hardly know what the artist want to express without looking at the interpretation, or sometimes I cannot get it even with the explanations.
Dissanayake defined art as “a behavior of making something special” (p.10), and she believed that art is shifting from a kind of objects to an activity. I understand it as saying that art is not only a noun but also a verb now. Personally, I can understand that people don’t want to be alike, instead people want to be more creative or special, but I disagree to give art such a general definition. I once had the honor to attend an art exhibition, and when other people keep nodding towards a painting, I really don’t know what that piece of abstract work trying to express. I know I am not an artist, but I don’t like people regard one thing as Art once they can’t understand it. Dissanayake mentioned that “while there is no abstract concept of art, everyone may be an artist” (p.7), and I think this is just another way to say some “art” works cannot be called “art”. To sum up, I wish art can retain the basic form even through this is not special. We can classify abstract paintings and postmodemism objects into another new category, and just keep “art” simple.
REFLECTION
Like I said in my blog, I never thought about “what art is” both because I am not in art major and I really don’t think there has a definition for art. Not like math or physics, art is a kind of thing that really abstract and general, which means no one could give a correct definition to it. I thought before that the definition of art must like setting up a limit or a range for some objects to be called art, and there always has multiple ways for evaluating art, but after reading Dissanayake’s article, I believe at least my view of defining art has been changed. Dissanayake defined art as “a behavior of making special” and “works of art that art the result of artistic behavior” (Dissanayake, 10). I am not saying I agree with Dissanayake’s definition at this point, instead, I am glad that I read this article so I broke my own limit for defining art. By this reason, I came up with another thought about the word art itself. It fell like art isn’t just a noun anymore and it becomes a verb too.
This makes me think of another assignment which asks for whether food as art. I discussed that whether or not people see food as art depends on how people see that food at my artifact page Food As Art. I also discussed whether sound could be called art when I explored the unit of horror and create my artifact page Horror. I brought these up because they kind of showing that there is no specific limit for definition of art.
I also didn’t think about the art history in Western countries before I took this class and read that article. It is very interesting that the author outlined the changes for art formats in western countries thought decades. From the very beginning when art is just a general idea to now art probably has hundreds of different formats. It changes from focusing on realistic to less like mirror and then it terms into abstract and even “postmodemism”. People change as well as art formats.
Take this picture as example, I will not consider it as a work of art if I did not take this class, but I guess I could understand at least why there are some people see it as art. It might just another new type of art.
http://www.chrisspagani.com/197/abstract-art-its-summer/
Bibliography:
FUTURE
I feel like the first thing I learn form this unit and hope I can keep in mind in the future is that I wish I can broke the limit of definition, and think about things in a different way and probably give it my own definition no matter it is things like science or things are really abstract like art.
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Table of Contents
· What is Art?
· Food As Art
· Adornment
· Horror
· Creative Spirituality
· Technology
· Remix
· Public Art
· Bibliography
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