Art Essays

  • Walter Benjamin: The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

    1865 Words  | 8 Pages

    Similarly what is an epic poem, short story, or a religious text without both a writer and a reader. These two forms of expression have been both a cause of historical processes, as well as a reaction to historical processes. For the sake of a somewhat narrow approach that discusses both Art and Literature, simultaneously, allow for the term Art to signify both the visual arts as well as literature. Throughout human history Art has played a major role in the formation of our communities and our nations. Benjamin and Anderson have distinct perspectives that link responsibility for our modern nations, as well as our potential future communities to the evolving actions of, and responses to Art.

  • The Disconnect of Postmodernism

    1891 Words  | 8 Pages

    The Disconnect Of Postmodernism Modernism, as you may know it, is an art movement and is the radical rendition in the art world, whether of subjects or of materials or media used. Certain artworks offer certain styles depending on the artist. To those who are learned it will be quite easy to connect the certain style to its originator and there can be others to follow suit in the same style. Postmodernism, however, is not limited to the art world but encompasses everything like literature, film, buildings, business, fashion, dance, etc. While modernism connects with primitivism, another art movement, postmodernism disconnects from the traditional and encourages uniqueness and individuality, more like making the futuristic a reality.

  • Clement Greenberg's 'Avant-Garde and Kitsch'

    1277 Words  | 6 Pages

    Humans create art. They create art to show the emotions within them; the emotions that were occurred by the things that they see, feel and live. Since each human’s point of view differs, each created product of art will naturally carry different thoughts. These different thoughts are the most significant reasons for the existence of countless art movements. In this essay one of these art movements, the subject of “kitsch” , will be examined.

  • Text in Art: Jenny Holzer, Richard Tipping & Xu Bing

    1665 Words  | 7 Pages

    Traditionally, representation in art primarily focuses on the visual image. In contemporary art making practices there has been a substantial shift towards the use of letters and text in art and as the artwork itself. Text and letters are either utilised in the design element of the work or as a direct communication to the audience of the intent behind the work. Contemporary artists who have explored the use of text in their artworks include Richard Tipping, Jenny Holzer and Xu Bing, with each considering the concept of text as art with slightly different approaches. In addition to artist utilising text with their works, text also plays other important roles in the art world.

  • Roy Lichtenstein and Plagiarism

    984 Words  | 4 Pages

    Art today is driven by many things, but perhaps the most common force is one's need to be original. Artists' today believes that they must develop their own style, and if that style is taken, they must find one, invent one, fabricate one, for he can be nothing if he cannot be original. Is that truly an acceptable ideal? How do you separate innovative ideas from those that are derived from being inspired by others? R. G. Collingwood, once called ‘one of the twentieth century's best-known "neglected" thinkers’ portrayed art as a "necessary function of the human mind, and considered it collaborative, i.e., a collective and social activity."

  • Questions on Works of Art and Their Purpose

    447 Words  | 2 Pages

    Why or why not? Is the theory viable? Does it run into problems, and if so, can they be solved? Note that the theory is meant to apply to all the arts, and so your exploration should at the very lease involve examples from theater, the visual arts, and music. Although the existence of art is evident all around us, justifying the existence and purpose of art is no easy task.

  • The Development of Abstraction

    788 Words  | 4 Pages

    By the end of the 19th century many artists felt a need to create a new kind of art which would incorporate the fundamental changes taking place in technology, science and philosophy. The sources from which individual artists drew their theoretical arguments were diverse, and reflected the social and intellectual preoccupations in all areas of Western culture at that time. Abstraction indicates a departure from reality in depiction of imagery in art. This departure from accurate representation can be only slight, partial, or complete. Abstraction exists along a continuum.

  • The Significant Role of Art in Defining Culture

    649 Words  | 3 Pages

    However, I turn to the points of contention with the speaker, who flies in the face that art also help define a culture and establish its identity. Art has been defined as a vehicle for the expression of the emotions and ideas, a mean for exploring and appreciating formal elements for their own sake, and as representation. In the realm of visual culture, the Renaissance works by artists now

  • The Postmodernist Breakdown of Culturally Precedential Truths, Ideas and Forms

    1302 Words  | 6 Pages

    The postmodernist breakdown of culturally precedential truths, ideas and forms. Synopsis Postmodern artists aim to have us a contemporary culture question socially accepted Truths, ideas and dominant forms. Alexander McQueen and Barbara Kruger are prime examples of these artists, aiming to surface raw beauty and truth by undermining seemingly solid cultural precedents. They give us, as their audience the responsibility of determining for ourselves, what is beautiful and honest in an effort to encourage individual interpretation and rejection of accepted societal conformity. 2 Contemporary postmodern artists create work that ask us, as individuals, to reassess our cultural values; whether it be ideas we endorse or truths we hold concrete to our societal beliefs.

  • “Art Is a Lie That Brings Us Closer to the Truth” – Pablo Picasso – Evaluate This Statement

    855 Words  | 4 Pages

    “Art is a lie that brings us closer to the truth” – Pablo Picasso – evaluate this statement: The Arts, a way of knowing, is a diverse ra nge of human creative practices. It has already influenced the human race from the very beginning. As for what art is, it is anything one makes. There are various forms of art for example, music, theater, film, painting, sculpting, and more. Surrealism is an art movement that sought to release the creative potential of the unconscious mind, and can be expressed with paintings.

  • Baroque vs. Impressionism

    405 Words  | 2 Pages

    All in all impressionism to me seems like an escape into an alternate reality that focuses on fun and transitional of the moment. What do their styles say about your chosen artists’ appreciation of the human figures? The styles are very different to each other. One has more of the realistic of the picture and the other has more of the blur. Given the effect of light source and The chosen style would come from the heart of the person drawing and what they are good at and like.

  • How Does Knowledge Seek to Transform the World?

    1238 Words  | 5 Pages

    Its significance resides on the fact that art is a direct reaction to the artists sociocultural environment at a specific time and place. The artist's work is a reflection of the spatiotemporal position of the artist but at the same time the generation of the art shapes up the artist's environment. An example of art that has transformed the world instead of describing it is more of an era, called "The

  • How Artworks Represent a Visual Language

    1391 Words  | 6 Pages

    Art Essay! “Artworks represent a visual language through signs and symbols that can read.” The definition of the keywords in the sentence above are; an artwork is a personal expression of social comments, aesthetic objects, and functional objects, the creative products and ideas are given a physical form using materials. Visual language is a system of communication through visual elements. Signs are anything which directs the viewers interpretation of an artwork, and symbols are defined as mostly used to represent the artist feelings of something. Lastly the word read is to look at and comprehend the meaning of something.

  • What Art Means to Me

    356 Words  | 2 Pages

    What Art Means to Me Most people would probably describe art as a picture, painting, sculpture, or maybe even a form of music that expresses one’s own thoughts or feelings. I suppose that would indeed be a very accurate description. However, I believe that art is much more than that. To me, art is more of a creative way to express my deepest passions, thoughts, and emotions. Art allows me the freedom to use my wildest imagination while giving me the confidence to conquer my worst fears.

  • Modernism to Minimalism in Art

    747 Words  | 3 Pages

    The also revolutionised both subject matter and technique as they approached their works with the concerns of the affects and quality of light, and knew how colours could complete or alter one another as well as a physical sensation. Impressionists were united and aimed to paint modern life, this conjures up in Edgar Degas works even though he said he was to be a “realist”. He was a founder/member of the impressionists group, concurring sculptures with the impacts of society being different from other

  • Engaged Art: 'Affected Learning' through Community Engagement

    1672 Words  | 7 Pages

    And what joint them is that they could not have been realized without the participation of the public. All activities related above are involved in the art concept entitled engaged art. How we can understand engaged art’s influences in different social context as well as implementations in developing social awareness and personal transformation? Engaged means occupied or involved when we end up thinking about the straightforward definition. Why it is called “engaged art” and what is exactly the meaning?

  • The Ability of Art to Provoke Questions and Inspire the Search for Answers

    1581 Words  | 7 Pages

    In her essay “This is Our World” Dorothy Allison advocates art’s ability to raise questions and inspire the search for answers. She says, “Art should provoke more questions than answers and, most of all, should make us think about what we rarely want to think about at all” (10). Through the search for answers that is inspired by art we are able to learn both about ourselves and about the world around us. In the vast world that we live in it is so easy to turn the other cheek to things that make us uncomfortable and pretend that they do not exist. But art forces us to look that source of discomfort directly in the eyes, whether it be something within us or something that exists on the other side of the world.

  • Post Modern Art

    712 Words  | 3 Pages

    • Artists challenging the traditions and mainstream ideas. • New media, new forms of display, appropriation (using other artists’ work for their own purpose, changing the original meaning through manipulation of the image, placing it in a different context or using of different media), pastiche (art that mixes styles and materials and/ or that imitates the style of other artists or art periods), parody (imitating the style of other artists in a humorous or satirical – making fun of - way; art so badly done to be deliberately mocking) or irony (humorous or mildly sarcastic use of images to imply the opposite of what they normally mean). • The challenging by critics and historians of accepted notions of art and art history. There is a re-evaluation of meaning and ideas, often cynical (believing the worst of others; sarcastic or mocking; showing contempt for accepted standards) in approach, challenging the concept of the artist genius and the masterpiece and the ‘truth’ as written in history and offering new interpretations. Progressive Art – moving forward in media use, presentation of the art and statements made through the art etc.

  • Does Art Have to Have Meaning?

    648 Words  | 3 Pages

    According to the Theory of Knowledge, we can classify “art” into 3 different parts- the creative intentions of an artist, the quality of the work and the responses of spectators. Beyond this, everyone’s opinion about what art is compiled of differs from each other. First of all, I’d like to define art in terms of ‘meaning’. Meaning is what an artist aims at, when he receives the inspiration to do something, he puts the meaning that expresses his feelings, thoughts, and ideas as the main part of his piece of work. You may think that a woman standing with a mysterious smile and those tender eyes are random but they were the ones that helped Leonardo De Vinci became a great artist of the world with ‘Mona Lisa’.

  • Five Approaches to Art Criticism

    517 Words  | 3 Pages

    Psychoanalytic criticism judges art “as the product of individuals who are shaped by their pasts, unconscious urges and social histories.” Structuralism judges artwork based on how all of its formal components are put together. Last is post-structuralist, which still judges artwork by its formal parts but takes many meanings out of it. I find psychoanalytic criticism to be most valuable. This is because the viewer can assign any meaning to the artwork. It allows the people to escape reality and find out the deeper meaning of the piece of art.