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

Contemporary Art

Contemporary is the style that art has currently adopted. Contemporary art is a genre of art practiced in since the early 1970's. Contemporary art has several general characteristics that it usually possesses: mixed media, focused on a message, diverse and eclectic, blurs boundaries, references and samples other works, utilizes new technology and techniques, the audience is an active contributor, and the context of the work is vital to appreciate it. Of course any given work in the contemporary genre doesn't have to have all of these traits; it will generally possess several of them though.
Contemporary art is often mistakenly called modern art however they are quite different. Modernism is a genre of art that was practiced from the late 19th century until the 1960's. Modern art was highly focused on composition, emphasizing the study of how colors and shapes interact. Modern art rejected the concept of pictorial representation, strongly favoring abstract imagery. Modern art rarely had a message and the context was irrelevant.
Contemporary art is most recognized for its destruction of traditional barriers. Contemporary artists generally maintain the position that everything is art. Therefore art can be done anywhere in any way. A general example of this would be fluxus events. Contemporary artist seem unconcerned with the logical consequent of that which is, if everything is art then art is meaningless.
Contemporary art generally focuses on a theme. some such themes include process, spaces and places, time or narratives, spiritual contemplation, identity, and the body. Works that focus on the process are works where the artist sets rules for how he/she can make the work and have little concern for what the end result looks like, in such works the act of making it is more important than what is made. The artist that I have selected to exemplify this is Erwin Wurm, who is famous for his One Minute Sculptures, which are made by Erwin Wurm taking selected objects and assembling them into a construct withing one minute.

Location or space based works are works which the artist makes to represent a location, they can be objective and literal, but the majority of the time are highly subjective and meant to convey how the artist experienced the place not how it literally looked. Richard Long is a notable figure whose work falls into this theme, however I too have done work in this field. I made a map of the Olympic Sculpture Park in Seattle.

Time or narrative themed works generally try to get the observer to think about time or a story. These works will refer to time either as an element in the work which is generally where narratives come into play; or by having an element in the work cause the observer to be aware of the time spent making the work.

Spirituality or meditation on higher question is frequently addressed in works of art. works with such themes use iconography or symbolism to convey higher messages. Mandy Greer's Small but Mighty Wandering Pearl is an excellent example of such works. It uses the cultural icon of a white stag to convey a message of hopelessness.

Works that deal with the nature of identity are generally highly metaphor based or lurk in vagueness so that the observer can make assumptions for themselves.

The body is probably one of the most prolific themes in contemporary art. Artist address the body a myriad of different ways ie deconstructing it, using it as a tool, ect. furthermore every artist seems to have their own unique way of addressing and understanding the human body. To highlight the differences in opinion I have written up a transcript of a debate between two artist who deal in this theme, Janine Antoni and Stelarc. The debate is entirely fictional, it is merely what I personally believe they would say based on what I learned about them in the course of my research on body art.

Art

Art is something which has existed as long as Homo Sapiens, but what is it?

 In my opinion art could best be defined as a work created by someone acting as an artist with the expressed intent of creating a work of art. In order to be a work of art it must be both unique and aesthetic in design and composition. However ultimately the observer supersedes these standards, for they are the true decider.
What is an artist? In order to be an artist, one must be a sentient being capable of conscious intent. If the being in question is sentient and capable then he/she/it must then create/compose their creation with the intent of it being a work of art. If these criteria are met then the being in question has become an artist, however that means that any sentient being capable of intention is capable of being an artist, so therefore the title of artist cannot be held with exclusivity or prestige. However nonsentient creatures which are not capable of conscious intent, namely animals cannot be artists, therefore the paintings done by the chimp, named Congo, cannot be considered art.

Congo the Chimp, Untitled, 1957, paint and paper. It is a bunch of random brush strokes made by a juvenile chimpanzee.

Though the artist intent may be the most important factor, the work must also be unique. If the artist merely copied a work of art done by a different artist then it cannot be considered a work of art but rather an act of theft. Though the work may contain or be composed of materials created by another, or even mass-produced, so long as the work in question is assemble or composed in a unique manner; Cai Guo-Qiang’s Inopportune: stage one is composed of nine separate cars which he did not manufacture however the collection of the vehicles staged and suspended become his work of art. Additionally homage is perfectly acceptable, provided that the artist makes it clear that they are referencing an existing work or object. Klara Glosova has made several porcelain sculptures of commercially available underpants as well as commercially available personal electronics that count as art do to the materials and intent involved in their creation.

Cai Guo-Qiang, Inopportune: Stage One, May 5, 2007, Sculpture/semireadymade cars and LED lights. A series of cars with LED lights sticking out of them. It simulates a brutal car accident. Thus invoking thoughts of risk and mortality.

These rules ultimately come to naught in the face of opposition. For in the end, the observer
holds final say, over whether it is art or not. If the observer believes a piece is a work of art then in their eyes it is even if it doesn’t meet any of these standards.

Art has gone through countless styles over the vast ocean of time in which mankind has existed. The earliest know form of art are the paleolithic cave painting. Art has changed constantly since it began, the latest form it has taken is contemporary art.

However before you can go forth in to this blog to learn about the wonders of Contemporary Art, you must first learn the vocabulary needed to discuss art.