Art

Definitions through Western Art

History
Flaudette May V. Datuin
Key terms
 Aesthetics

 art

 beauty

 Genius

 Originality
“Art”
 In the modern period, takes its meaning from
the 18th century (1700s)
 original creation

 produced by a highly gifted creator or genius

 separate from everyday life, exists for its

sake
aesthetics
 The theoretical counterpart to Art
 was coined as a new science of serious
knowledge in 1735 by philosopher Alexander
Baumgarten
 but first delineated by Immanuel Kant
aesthetics
 How art is defined
 How art is interpreted (meaning)

 How art is perceived (senses), and felt

 How art is evaluated: taste, sense of beauty

 How art is related to society and nature

 Is art useful?
Kant
 The first property of art is originality
 originality must be exemplary

 art is not governed by rules nor science

 a genius is BORN with an inspiration to

create
 beyond the dictates of culture
aestheticism
 France – art for art’s sake
 Importance of form over meaning or content

 Artist retired to his ivory tower

 In poetry: symbolism by Baudelaire

Romantic notion of artist
 Illness, pain
 sex scandals
Romantic notion of artist
madness
Romantic notion of artist

 Alcoholism
 flamboyance
Beauty in the modern period
 Intrinsic, good in itself
 separate from daily life
 Malevich

Mondrian
Art
 Master/genius
 white, male, dead
 name
 biography
 how much was it sold?
 WHO has it?
Art
Ancient Middle Renais- Modern
th th
Greek ages (13 sance 18 to
th th
to 14 ) (15 to present
th
17 )
Techne Icon: A branch Fine arts
religious of learning
Beauty
Ancient Middle Renais- modern
ages sance

Pleasure, The good, Order, Good in

catharsis, not for harmony, itself,
useful, itself proportion intrinsic
efficient
Art in Classical Greek
 form of knowledge or
craft
 “techne” - capacity to
do or make something
Classical Greek
 all kinds of human
endeavor
 Plato: hunting,
midwifery, prophecy,
math, as well as
painting, sculpture
 useful and efficient
Art in the Middle Ages
 Skill(Aquinas)
 shoemaking, cooking, juggling, grammar,

 painting, sculpture, architecture, navigation,

medicine, agriculture (mechanical arts)
Art in the Middle Ages
 Religious significance
 ICONS - objects
through which man’s
devotion can be
channeled to the
supreme God
 MANIFESTATIONS of
God
Art in the middle ages

 SYMBOL to man of
divine nature
Art in the middle ages

 beauty is good, but not

for itself
Renaissance (14th and 15th C)
 Status of artist began to change to what we
know in the modern period
 liberal arts: painting, sculpture, grammar,
rhetoric, dialectics, arithmetic, geometry,
astronomy, music
 a branch of learning, formalized and taught in
the academy
Renaissance: 1400-1600
 The rise of the middle class: bourgeosie
 Rebirth of classical antiquity

 Humanism

 Renaissance ideal of man

 Order, harmony, proportion

 Empirical fidelity
Renaissance
 Leonardo Da Vinci
aligned Art with
scientific endeavors
 renaissance man:
painting, poetry,
sculpture, fencing,
horse riding, coin
collection
illusionism, aka optical or
empirical fidelity, “realism,”
“naturalism”

 Linearperspective: illusion of depth

 Sfumato: modeling, shadow

 Chiaroscuro: play of light and dark

 Contrapposto

 The human figure

beauty
 Order, harmony,
proportion
 visual and empirical
fidelity
 Mantegna

Linear perspective
Masaccio
SFUMATO
Chiaroscuro
Corregio

Head of Christ
Sfumato technique
Michelangelo

Masterful
comprehension of
anatomical structure
contrapposto

The Crouching Boy, 54 cm

David, 17 feet
Adam and Eve, 1504
Albrecht Dürer (German, 1471–1528)
Engraving; 9 7/8 x 7 7/8 in. (25.1 x 20 cm)
Fletcher Fund, 1919 (19.73.1)

Under the influence of Italian theory, Dürer became

increasingly drawn to the idea that the perfect
human form corresponded to a system of
proportion and measurements.
symmetrical idealized poses: each with the weight
on one leg, the other leg bent, and each with one
arm angled slightly upward from the elbow and
somewhat away from the body
Dürer was a complete master of engraving
 Brunelleschi

Objective, mathematical standards of measurement

and proportion, balance, harmony, symmetry,
elegance, in accordance with the scientific spirit of
the age
Fine Arts
 France in the late 17th century
 poetry, music, architecture, painting,
sculpture, optics, mechanics (Charles
Perraut, Cabinet of the Fine Arts)
 Italy - second half of the 18th century
Neo-classic: late 1700-1800
(19th century)
 Founding of the French academy
 Veneration of antiquity and its formal
discipline
 Official style of the court

 Reaction against ornateness

 Enlightenment: reason
 decadent
Napoleon: neo-classic
became the official style
Jacques Louis David

Coronation of Napoleon
David/Oath of the Horatii
David/Death of Socrates
David/Marat Assassinated
Romanticism
Stressed individuality
emotions
Eugene Delacroix

La Barca
a Dante
Delacroix/Death of Sardanapal
Delacroix/Liberty Guiding the People
Gericault

The Raft of
the Medusa
Spanish
risings of the citizens of Madrid against occupying forces

Goya

Third of May, 1808

Plates from Disasters of War Series
War between France and Spain

Plate 47 And This is How it

Happened

Plate 09 They Do Not want To

Plate 39 Great Deeds Against the Dead

19 century Realism
th

(French)
Industrial capitalism
Working class
Revolt against stereotyped subject matter
Democratization of the subject of art
 Common people in
Courbet,
Daumier, Millet
Not feasting and regaling themselves
with drink as in the Dutch 17th century,
but as victims of oppression
Millet: The Gleaners
Millet/The Man With a Hoe
Daumier

Third Class Carriage

 Daumier

The Uprising

The Laundry Woman

Daumier/Writer (lithograph)
 Courbet

Stone breakers
 Avant-garde
modernism

Challenge to tradition: avant-garde

“leading the way”
19th century: politically progressive or
social groups
Distinctions
 Modernity as a historical stage
 Modernization as a social process

 Modernism as a cultural process that

coincides with the development of capitalism
 Modernism
An international “trend” - last years of the
19th C – 20th
Innovation and experimentation
Experimentation in Form and
Explosion of styles
Challenges to Realism

Subject matter
Form
Rejection of “realism” (mimesis,
optical or empirical fidelity or
accuracy, etcetera)
Modernity: Context of modernism
 Radical transformation of western experience
 The city: urbanization

 Technology: industrialization

 Global conflict: World War 1

 Challenge to and assertion of individual

autonomy