Art is among the highest expressions of culture, embodying its ideals and aspirations, challenging its assumptions and beliefs, and creating new possibilities for it to pursue. We study art in order to understand more about the culture that produced it. The art object gives us insight into what the culture values: religious ritual, aesthetic pleasure, or functional utility, for example.
The critical process we use in studying works of art is similar in many ways to the creative process that artists use to make art. Critical thinking involves questioning, exploration, trial and error, revision, and discovery.
Artists make choices and decisions when making works of art (ex: What color? Paint or drawing?) Identify these choices. Ask yourself why these choices were made. Even though artists often work intuitively, they have the opportunity to revise every part of their work before you see it. What you see in a work of art is intentional.
What is the artwork s title? What does it tell you about the piece? Is there any written material accompanying the work? Is the work informed by the context in which you encounter it by other works around it, or, in the case of sculpture, by it s location? Is there anything you can learn about the artist that is helpful?
By carefully describing the object both its subject matter and how its subject matter is formally realized you can discover much about the artist s intentions. Pay careful attention to how one part of the work relates to the others.
Especially question anything you particularly dislike about a given work of art. Remember, if you have seen the work in a book, gallery, or museum, then someone likes it. Why? Often you will talk yourself into liking it too. If not, you ll be able to analyze why you don t like it. Examine the work itself to see if it has any biases or prejudices.
Art objects are supposed to stir up your feelings, but your emotions can sometimes get in the way of clear thinking. Analyze your own emotions. Determine what about the work set them off, and ask yourself if this wasn t the artist s very intention.
Art objects are complex by their nature. To think critically about an art object is to look beyond the obvious. Be sure that your reading of a work of art is complete enough to recognize the full range of possible meanings the work might possess. At the same time, take care that your reading of the work does not violate or misrepresent the work.
The critical process is a method of discovery, and it is designed to uncover possibilities, not certain truths. Critical thinking is a process of questioning, and asking good questions is sometimes more important than arriving at the right answers. There may be no right answers. Critical thinking is really a matter of putting yourself into a questioning frame of mind. You must learn to see and interpret the visual world around you.
When artists think about why they make their work, most think of themselves as practicing one of four fundamental roles or perhaps a combination of the four. These roles may be conscious or subconscious as artists create their work, but the roles that they assume do impact the overall tone of the art they produce.
Artists may create art to help us see the world in new and innovative ways. Their work may be designed to transform our experience of the world, and to shake us out of our normal acceptance of the way things are.
Yayoi Kusama (born 1929) a Japanese contemporary artist who works primarily in sculpture and installation, but is also active in painting, performance, film, fashion, poetry, fiction, and other arts. She is well known for her large, room-sized infinity installations that combine light and mirrors to create an expansive, surreal experience for the viewer. These are designed to transform our experience of the world, jar us out of complacency, and create new ways for us to see and think about the world around us.
Artists may create art to make a visual record of the people, places, and events of their time and place. This type of art captures the spirit of the age in which it was made; it is a visual documentary of the way things were at a given time. We can see this practice in art from recent works, as well as from art made many centuries ago.
French, Jun 07, 1848 - May 08, 1903 Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin was a French post- Impressionist artist. Unappreciated until after his death, Gauguin is now recognized for his experimental use of color and Synthetist style that were distinctly different from Impressionism. Towards the end of his life he spent ten years in French Polynesia, and most of his paintings from this time depict people or landscapes from that region.
Artists may make functional objects and structures (buildings) more pleasurable and elevate them or imbue them with meaning. An example of an object that many cultures pay a great deal of attention to is clothing. Clothing has a useable function: to protect us from the elements, but it also has many more purposes, most of which are visually important. It can indicate the wearer s taste, selfimage, and, perhaps above all, social status.
The colors and patterns on a kimono have great meaning. Natural dyes from plants are used, and people believe that the spirit of the plants is brought to the kimono through the dye. Red kimonos are the most popular among young women because they are a symbol of youth, beauty, and love.
Guggenheim Bilbao Spain Architect: Frank Ghery This structure goes way beyond function with curved, sculptural walls
Artists give form to the immaterial hidden or universal truths, spiritual forces, personal feelings. It is important to remember the cultural context in which these artworks are created, especially if it is not your own.
Cuban performance artist, born 1968 Bruguera dressed up as an nkonde in August 1998, standing still in the Wifredo Lam Center of Contemporary Art in Havana, and then wandered the city as if in search of those who had broken the promise made to the icon. Nkonde were destroyed by European missionaries who saw them as evidence of witchcraft, and they were suppressed during the colonial era. They are still made today and continue to be used by the Kongo people and among Caribbean people of African descent.
In the West, the desire to give form to spiritual belief is especially apparent in the tradition of Christian religious art. The idea of representing the Christian God has caused controversy, and images of God were banned from Protestant churches in 17 th century Holland: The image of God is His Word For this reason, Jesus (the son of God in Christianity) is often represented rather than the Father, a spiritual unknown who can only be imagined.
One of the most successful depictions of the Christian God in Western culture was painted by Jan van Eyk as part of an alterpiece for the city of Ghent in Flanders. This depiction apparently values worldly things, and is richly adorned the Latin across the top of the throne translates to This is God, all powerful in his divine majesty; of all the best, by the gentleness of his goodness; the most liberal giver, because of his infinite generosity. In the context of the entire alterpiece, where God is flanked by Mary and John the Baptist, choirs of angels, and, at the outer edges, Adam and Eve, God rules over an earthly assembly of worshippers, protecting all.
The act of seeing is not just pointing our eyes at something. Seeing is both a physical and psychological process. Seeing is an inherently creative process. The visual system makes conclusions about the world. Each individual sees things differently, and this mirrors their complex perceptions of the world.
Reception -> extraction -> inference Step 1: External stimuli enter the nervous system through our eyes- we see the light. Step 2: The retina, a collection of nerve cells at the back of the eye, extracts the basic information it needs and sends this information back to the visual cortex, the part of the brain that processes visual stimuli. Step 3: What you see is the inference your visual cortex extracts from the information your retina sends it.
Can you remember how many red stripes are in the artwork? How many white stripes are there? What is the artist s name? What year was the piece completed? What color is the stripe on top? On bottom? How many horizontal rows of stars are there? How is the time in which this was made affect the way you understand the artwork?
The point is not only that we each perceive the same things differently, remembering different details, but also we do not usually see things as thoroughly or accurately as we might suppose. The eye mirrors each individual s complex perceptions of the world. When Jasper Johns created his work Flag, the flag was something seen but not looked at, not examined. It was painted at a time when the nation was obsessed with patriotism: President Eisenhower s affirmation of all things American, the Cold War and the Space Race. Some viewers were disturbed by the lumps and smears on the painting s surface, and newspaper scraps visible below the stars and stripes. The work asks us to consider what the flag represents and to consider it as a painting.
Faith Ringgold, God Bless America, No 13 from the series American People, 1964. oil on canvas, 31 by 19 This painting has its historical context in the Civil Rights Movement. In it, the American flag has been turned into a prison cell. Painted at a time when white prejudice against African Americans was enforced by the legal system, the star of the flag becomes a sheriff s badge, and the stripes are transformed into the bars of a jail. The white woman portrayed in the painting is the very image of contradiction: at once a patriot, pledging allegiance to the flag, and a racist, denying blacks the right to vote. She is a prisoner of her own bigotry.