Artifact 2 – What is Art?
Unit Objectives:
- Consider the origins of art
- Explore a brief history of Western Art
- Examine multiple perspectives for evaluating art
Artifact: Unit 03 What is Art for?
The article “Art For Life’s Sake” introduced an interesting question to us. What is art for? My first response to this question is that art is for expressing the creator’s emotion and thoughts. In my impression, artists always want to express their opinions for something through artworks. For example, I remember the famous Spanish artist Picasso had created an oil painting which is Guernica. This painting shows the ruthless situation of the Second World War. Picasso painted Guernica is for expressing his attitude to the war.
The author Dissanyake introduced that art have three features, as he described, “First, that the idea of art encompasses all of human nature (i.e. as far back as the Paleolithic or even earlier); second, that it include all human societies (i.e. is anthropological or cross cultural); and third, that it accounts for the fact that art is a psychological or emotional need and has psychological or emotional effects” (Dissanayake, 15). Indeed, in addition to express emotion, the artworks also can reflect the human society at that time. Just like Guernica demonstrate the situation of the Second World War.
The art is highly related with our daily life even I can say it exist in everywhere among our life, like dance, songs, literature, architecture and so on. Just as Dissanyake argued, “art must be viewed as an inherent universal (or biological) trait of the human species” (Dissanayake, 15). For instance, some kids like building castles in the beach. I think those castles could be seen as art even though they are created by the kids. The art is our inherent trait so everyone could be artist and create artworks.
Since art is so important and highly relative to our daily life, so my question is: what our life would be without the art? Can we live well without art?
Reflection:
In this week, we discussed mainly focus on the question “what is art for”? Through the artifact that I posted, I start to consider the origins of art. Dissanayake’s reading is really evoking and my ideas are same with him. I believe that the art is for expressing three kinds of aspects, which are human history, human society, and human emotions. As Dissanayake explained, “First, that the idea of art encompasses all of human nature (i.e. as far back as the Paleolithic or even earlier); second, that it include all human societies (i.e. is anthropological or cross cultural); and third, that it accounts for the fact that art is a psychological or emotional need and has psychological or emotional effects” (15).
Dissanayake also introduced the history of Western Art in his article so it really helps me to explore a brief history of Western Art. Before, I did not pay attention on the art history and I think this is a good chance to me to learn more knowledge
Future Intentions:
In the future, I would likely to try creating some art works to express anyone of human history, human society and my personal emotion. I think this will be very interesting because I want to show my art works to others after I finished and then let them to tell me what the internal emotion in my work is.
Works Cited: