Vocabulary

• Aesthetics: The field of philosophy dedicate to the theory of beauty. what is beautiful and why is it beautiful?
• Description: The internal information of a piece of art.
• Subject matter: the imagery of the work, what is visually present in the work. 
• people, objects, places, events, et cetera
• Media/Medium: materials and technique used in the work of art.
• Form/Formal Elements/Elements of composition: How the work was put together. how it uses:
• spaces, shapes, shading, texture, volume, scale, proportion emphasis, cropping, framing, foreground/mid-ground/background, et cetera
• Interpretation: What the work of art is about, relies on information not contained in the work. requires research, analysis, and synthesis. What the work means based on:
• rules, worldview, knowledge, history, art history, biases, and beliefs of the culture
• Context: where/when is the piece presented.
• What is currently going on in that:
• Place
• Society
• Culture
• Historical background
• Content: everything that is in the work of art. the imagery, the artist's intent, the form, medium, and context
• Concept: the Artist's intent. What he wanted to say, how he wanted to say it, where he positioned it, how he wants you to react to it.
• Subject: the main idea/theme/topic of the work

·  Sculpture: a type of art which is 3dimensional, has both mass and volume, composed of physical materials, and provides the observer with a 360 degree experience

·  Diorama: a sculpture that is in a closed space and can only be viewed from one direction.  Generally depicting a “real world” event or a closed scene.

·  Tableau:

a Life-sized sculpture with no barrier, so the audience can walk around in the scene.

·  Installation: a single work of art composed of an ensemble of multiple different elements. Draws the viewer into a multisensory environment.

o    Site specificity / Site specific: work that is conceived for, dependent on, and inseparable from its location. Context(location) vital for understanding the work.

·  Earthworks/Land Art: art which uses the landscape as its medium. Highly site specific, literally can not be moved. Represents the artist imposing his will power over nature.

·  Readymade: a mass produced, or commercially available item not made with the intention of making art becoming art by being placed into a new context.

o    Appropriation: the act of taking an object and putting it in a new context

·  Embodied time: when the work makes the observer acutely aware of the passage of time

·  Represented time: a symbolic process by which an artwork, or element within it, refer to a subject beyond itself, it does so by:

• Using/referencing history
• Freezing a moment
• Symbolism

o    Monument

·  Kinetic art: artwork made with moving or mechanical parts

·  Process art: art where the emphasis is on the process of making through physical handling materials and repetitious accumulation.

• Uses the logic of the materials. Ex. metal rusts, ice melts, wood rots, liquids drip/pour

o    The materials are ephemeral, changing over time.

·  Performance art: live art activities that encompasses elements of theater and visual art

·  Subjective time: time experienced. Ex. how long it feels like

·  Objective time: Time measured. Ex. How much time passed

·  Iconography : using traditional forms and imagery in an artwork to add further meaning.

·  Vanitas: when art possesses imagery to remind the viewer of their mortality

·  Sublime: art which evokes the feeling of awe and terror experienced when observing something of incomprehensible immensity.

·  Ritual:

• A set of actions with symbolic value

o    Done with a consciousness that supersedes the practical function of that activity

·  Figurative art: work that depicts the body

• Body Art:
•  
• Made with/on/out of the body
• Performance activity
• Often through extreme actions that explore
• Gaze: looking is never neutral, contemporary art generally endeavors to expose or subvert the gaze’s biases
• Behavioral theory of art:
• Art allows us to express ourselves in ways which are difficult to convey
• Art serves as a catharsis
• Art helps spread ideas
• Instrumental theory of art:
  art’s role for-
  o    An individual: an agent of consciousness, morality, ideology, and pleasure
  o    A community: an icon of the community’s culture
  o    A culture: an artifact of the culture’s ideals
• Institutional definition of art:

1. An artist is a person who participates with understanding in the making of a work of art.
2. A work of art is an artifact of a kind created to be presented to an artworld public.
3. A public is a set of persons the members of which are prepared in some degree to understand an object which is presented to them.
4. The artworld is the totality of all artworld systems.
5. The artworld system is a framework for the presentation of a work of art by an artist to an artworld public