3. What is art?
! Representation: Art imitates, mimics, copies, or otherwise
represents something significant in reality.
4. What is art?
! Representation: Art imitates, mimics, copies, or otherwise
represents something significant in reality.
! Form: Art is an exploration of “significant form” – composition,
color, texture and other abstract elements of design regardless of
content.
5. What is art?
! Representation: Art imitates, mimics, copies, or otherwise
represents something significant in reality.
! Form: Art is an exploration of “significant form” – composition,
color, texture and other abstract elements of design regardless of
content.
! Expression: Art expresses emotions – our identification with this
emotional expression is the basis of the bonds that hold society
together.
6. What is art?
! Representation: Art imitates, mimics, copies, or otherwise
represents something significant in reality.
! Form: Art is an exploration of “significant form” – composition,
color, texture and other abstract elements of design regardless of
content.
! Expression: Art expresses emotions – our identification with this
emotional expression is the basis of the bonds that hold society
together.
! Anything goes: Anything and everything can be art, inside or
outside of the confines of the official institutions of culture.
10. cave paintings at Lascaux, France, ca. 20,000 BCE
The first art depicted the animals our ancestors depended upon for food.
11. cave paintings at Lascaux, France, ca. 20,000 BCE
Representing them was an act of reverence as well as an
attempt to enhance our power over them in the hunt.
15. Giotto, “The Lamentation” 1305
Representational art often depicts stories important to
a culture and can be a way of educating and edifying.
16. [The purpose of drama is] to hold as
’twere the mirror up to nature: to
show virtue her feature, scorn her own
image, and the very age and body of
the time his form and pressure.
William Shakespeare, Hamlet
18. Francisco Goya, “Lunatic Asylum” 1812-14
Modern artists have also used the representational power of
art to highlight aspects of society often hidden from view.
22. Diane Arbus, “Child with a toy hand grenade in Central Park, N.Y.C.” 1962
Photography is not just the mechanical capturing of images,
but has powerful representational possibilities.
24. Diane Arbus, “Identical twins, Roselle, N.J.” 1967
Diane Arbus used photograpy to capture the lives,
sorrows and joys of ordinary and unusual people.
26. Duane Hanson, “Self-Portrait With Model” 1979
Duane Hanson’s ultra-realistic sculptures depict ordinary people doing or-
dinary things, taking the idea of art as imitation to its logical extreme.
28. Duane Hanson, “Old Couple on a Bench” 1994
Walking through an exhibit of these polyester resin sculptures
is an unsettlung experience as it is often difficult to tell
whether a figure is real or not without close inspection.
38. Louise Nevelson, “Mrs. N’s Palace” 1964-1977
Her work focuses on a limited range of materials and almost obses-
sively varies them in the search for interesting forms and textures.
39. My art is an attempt to reach beyond
the surface appearance. I want to see
growth in wood, time in stone, nature
in a city, and I do not mean its parks
but a deeper understanding that a
city is nature too-the ground upon
which it is built, the stone with which
it is made.
Andy Goldsworthy
45. Andy Goldsworthy, 1999
Goldsworthy’s work is as much about the processes of creation and natural
decay as about the simple geometric forms he laboriously constructs.
47. To evoke in oneself a feeling one has
once experienced, and having evoked
it in oneself, then by means of
movements, lines, colors, sounds, or
forms expressed in words, so to
transmit that feeling that others may
experience the same feeling – this is
the activity of art.
Leo Tolstoy, What is art?
49. Vincent van Gogh, “Wheat Field with Crows” 1890
Vincent van Gogh is probably the most well known artist to
work in the expresionist mode. His bold colors and heavily
textured canvases helped redefine painting in the modern era.
51. Vincent van Gogh, “Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear” 1889
His work was as much about his own inner turmoil
as it was about the subject matter of his images.
53. Egon Schiele, “Self-Portrait with Black Vase and Spread Fingers, 1911
Schiele’s distorted figures and stark forms
evoke the anxiety of early 20th central Europe.
55. Edvard Munch, “The Scream” 1893
Even though it has been etensively copied and parodied,
Munch’s iconic “Scream” still evokes uncomfotable emotions.
57. Jackson Pollock
The “action painting” of Jackson Pollock and other abstract
expressionists attempts to remove all thinking from the act of
artistic creation and express the raw emotion of the creative act.
59. Frank Kline, “Orange Outline” 1955
Franz Kline’s monumental canvases evoke Asian calligraphy as
they walk the border between expressionism and formalism in art.
61. Cindy Sherman, “Untitled # 479”, 1975
Cindy Sherman’s expressive photographic self-portraits often
comment visually on social issues such as gender and sexuality.
68. Banksy, security wall West Bank, Palestine/Israel, 2005
It often has strong political content and takes place under
cover of anonymity – the identity of “Banksy” is unknown.
74. Spencer Tunick, “Ireland 3 (Dublin)”, 2008
Spencer Tunick often risks arrest for staging his large photoshoots
with many volunteers posing naked in various outdoor settings.
76. Spencer Tunick, “Switzerland, Aletsch Glacier” 2007
Tunick’s striking images challenge our expectations and assumptions
about the human body and it’s relation to the world we live in.