Objective
- Consider the origins of art
- Explore a brief history of Western Art
- Examine multiple perspectives for evaluating art
Original Post (Click here)
1. Ellen Dissanayake coined this term “paleoanthropsychobiological”, which used by herself to describe the view of art. This term “paleoanthropsychobiological” which can be separated as “anthro”, “Psycho”, and “biology”, came from many objectives like human history, human societies, and psychological and emotion effects. Dissanayake created this term in order to show the relationships between these three objectives. In addition to that, she claims that “art must be viewed as an inherent universal (or biologval) trait of the human species (Page 15)”, which means many things that related to human nature can be treated as art. For example, like language. Therefore, the combined term paleoanthropsychobiological can deeply describe the art.
2. Based on Dissnayake’s point, she states that “Among these tendencies, I claim, is also the behavior or propensity to ‘make special,’ particularly things that one cares deeply about or activities whose outcome has strong personal significance.” (Page 22) , “something that is “special” is different from the mundane, the everyday, the ordinary.” (Page 22). That is to say, “making special” is to make something unique, to make something that is really different from the general and normal thing. For example, language is an art, no matter what language it is. Every language in the world is unique, some people create Chinese in the ancient, but at that time, some other people may make efforts to create another language. Those language have different features, different pronunciations, different characters, and different histories, etc. Maybe even people created language wanted to create other kind of art at first, they may never know that they can create a language. With the time goes by, languages are developing in the history and recent times. Many words combined, many language combined.
3. Here are 3 different periods of art in the western European history.
–>The Renaissance in 14th century (medieval period)
–>The modernism in 18th century
–>The postmodernism in 20th century
In the 14th century, Renaissance artists “gradually replaced God-centered with man-centered concerns”, and “the “art” was accurately representing that subject matter, using craftsman like standards of beauty, harmony, and excellence.”(page 16).
In the 18th century, the modernism focused on aesthetics. “This was that there is a special frame of mind of appreciating works of art-a “disinterested attitude that is separate from one’s own personal interest in the object, its utility, or its social or religious ramifications.”(page 18). That is, art became more abstract and personal from people’s mind.
In the 20th century, postmodernism, art became more abstract than last period. Art is interpretation in this period. In this period, people became more individual and personal when they appreciate art, “interpret it according to their individual and cultural sensibilities (page 19)”. Additionally, “Postmodernists point out that any “truth” or “reality” is only a point of view- a representation that comes to us mediated and conditioned by our language, our social institutions (Page 20).” Therefore, art is more about individual interpretation.
Reflection
When the first time I read Ellen Dissanayake’s article, I was attracted by the word “paleoanthropsychobiological” which coined by Dissanayake. Then I started to think what it means, and I start to think what is art. I still remember when I was a kid, I treat art as something abstract and cannot be understand. If I see some artwork and I cannot understand, I might believe it it art when I was much younger. However, by the time I read about the article, I re-think a lot. As Dissanayake said, “art must be viewed as an inherent universal (or biologval) trait of the human species” (Page 15). Them, I know that language can be an art, many things related to human can be an art. I changed my mind about art, about how to understand for myself.
Back to the three main period for art development that Dissanayake discussed, the medieval period, modernism in 18th century, and postmodernism in 20th century, those period all have different type of art. It started with representing that subject matter, then art became more abstract and personal from people’s mind, at last in 20th century, art became individual interpretation. The trend changed, so the style changed.
The reason why I choose this picture (I posted above) is there are many word that can interpret art in that picture. It include creativity, open-minded, sharing, etc., they all a part of the art, and I think that is the way art be evaluated. Since people are different, since the history period are different, I just find when I evaluate art, I should pay attention to the specific history period to understand artists’ situation first, then try to evaluate their artwork. Actually, Dissanayake gives me all those ideas, but I think I also have the opinion from myself for about how to evaluate different type of art.
Future Goals
In the future, I will pay more attention to different art pieces in my daily life. For example, when I travel to Europe, I will research many things happened in the history and many period in the past that the type of art changed. It is really important for me to evaluate the art. In addition to that, I think I will research many Chinese artwork to see what are the differences of styles in the same period in the history. I am curious about when the time is in 18th century, what Chinese artists and Western artists did. That will be very interesting. I learned a lot in this unit about art. Everyone can be an artist, maybe I will try to create some artwork just by interests.