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Week 3 Essay Assignment

Oct20

1. “Palaeoanthropsychobiological” is a term to summary art for life’s sake. This long word includes several prefix to define the sake of art. This term suggests three points as following. First, “Palaeo-” means ancient. The concepts or understanding of art has a long history based on human activity. It maybe goes through all the history of human being. Secondly, “anthro-” is a prefix that related to human. Indeed, the development of art cannot be separated from human’s culture. Therefore, the art for life’s sake should also related to human. Thirdly, “psychological” shows that art relates to people’s emotional activities and is influenced by the emotional activities.

Dissanayake coined this term from a unfamiliar and different perspective.

 

2. Dissanayake states that “making special” is the process in which human people gain their ability to defense or to fight with the predators. People needed to come up special methods or technologies to protect themselves so that they could survive in a dangerous environment. For instance, organized people who had a stronger leadership could arrange their activities in an efficient so that they could get enough food and avoid the predators.

“Making special” also triggered the beginning of art. People would like to use different paintings to show the specialties. What’s more, the using of painting or decorating during the ceremonies or some group activities could show the specialties of each person as well as the confidence and unity of a group of people. Because of the purpose of making special, people started the history of art.

3.

1). The concept “art” appears in “early treaties from Greek and medieval times. But it must be realized that these are translations and that the authors may not have meant the same thing by the word ‘art’ as we do” (Dissanayake,2). Plato talked about beauty, poetry, and image making while “Aristotle dealt with poetry and tragedy. They used a word, techne”, which is a word equivalent to fishing, chariot driving, and other mundane activities. The term meant that “‘having a correct understanding of the principles involved’”(Dissanayake, 2).

2). “Modernism: Art as Ideology”   Time period: 18th century.

During this period of time, thinkers paid their attentions to the term “aesthetics”. This term is “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’” (Dissanayake, 3).

3). “Postmodernism: Art as Interpretation”  Time period: 20th century.

Postmodernism challenges modernist ideology totally. Postmodernists thought that “truth” or “reality” is the only a point of view. That is a ‘representation’ that comes to us mediated and conditioned by our language, our social institutions, the assumptions that characterize individuals as members of a nation, a race, a gender, a class, a profession, a religious body, a particular historical period” (Dissanayake, 5).

Week 3 assignment Post #1

Oct16

In this reading, the topic about art for life’s sake impressed me. At the beginning, based on my own understanding of art, I think art is a kind of imaginary concept. No one can find a formula for art or define art as the way to define a math concept. When the author related art with life’s sake, the author makes art practical. “While there is no abstract concept of ‘art’, everyone may be an artist-decorating their bodies and possessions, dancing, singing, versifying, performing-even when some persons are acknowledged as being more talented or skillful than others” (Dissanayake). From this sentence in the reading, I refreshed my understanding of art. In addition, artist is not a mysterious occupation as more in the society. Someone are famous artist may be just because more people have the same opinion with the artist and the artist just have a proper way to express his opinions. Even though some other artists do not accept by so many people, they have their own definition for art. Their sake to pursue art is just to express their own thoughts.

Since art did not have a clear concept, I started to think about the diversity of art and people’s attitude to different kinds of art. The diversity of art may be one of the reasons that cause the religion conflict all over the world. If people in one religion cannot accept the differences from other religions in the understanding of art, art would not be a sublime concept any more.

While writing about the unclear definitions about art and thinking about what art really is, I suddenly find the charm of art. No one can define it, no one can touch it, and no one can saw it. It is not real, but it exists in our every-day life.