Why a Pile of Bricks is Art:
A Philosophical Examination of Equivalent VIII by Carl Andre Modern art has so starkly broken off from the millennia of art before it that it has thoroughly bewildered people. Until the late nineteenth century, most art contained intricate details and required innumerable hours of labor, whether the artist is meticulously chipping at a block of marble, carefully stroking paint onto a canvass, or painstakingly writing words on a page. Furthermore, the results was generally made to be pleasing to the viewer. But much of modern art strikes many viewers as not being art at all: It is merely random drips of paint on a canvass, or ordinary objects such as sticks arranged in a simple pattern, or even found objects on
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This is the famous “pile of bricks,” that drew harsh criticism from both the public and art critics. Like much of modern art, Equivalent VIII clearly did not have the level of involvement on the part of the artist that a traditional artwork would generally require. However, Andre is not involved in the creation of his art. He uses only commercial materials for his artwork, so the bricks for Equivalent VIII were mass-produced. Andre did not even arrange the bricks himself – They were arranged by …show more content…
When it was first featured in The Tate Gallery in 1972, it caused a great controversy because taxpayer money had been spent on a very inflated price for a simple collection of bricks. Others mumbled that they could have “made it themselves” and the art museum had been conned. Yet the exhibit still lives on in The Tate Gallery, known as the infamous “pile of bricks,” exemplary of the controversial state of modern art.
What is Art? To determine why modern art qualifies as art, it is necessary to determine what art is exactly. What separates a work of art from being just an ordinary object? Art critic and philosopher Arthur Danto devotes his book The Transfiguration of the Commonplace to answering this question.
Is Art Something in the Object Itself? One possibility is that art is something inherent in the object itself. That is, there is an essence of “art-ness” that is in all artworks, and this distinguishes art from all
This paper examined in detail the reasoning, evidence from a claim that Robert Florczak arguing Why is modern art so bad? Robert florczak is an American artists and illustrator with many years of experience in field of art. The motive of the speech is to convince the art community of the ineffectiveness of modern art. The speaker uses a compare and contrast method during his speech between western and modern art. To show differences between the two, he illustrates his ability to back up his argument with evidence. He uses rhetorical analysis techniques such as, ethos, pathos, and logos to build on various point of views to strength his point. The speaker could achieve the overall purpose of the speech in convincing the art community of the
Towards the close of 1951, the artists working in Cheyne Row were asked to vacate their studios, the owners, in wanting to utilise all the buildings on the site. Harry Parr conceded that at the age of seventy, it was time to retire from modelling and sculptural work in general. When the time came for Parr to clear his studio during the last week of January 1952, Malcolm Parr, at home on leave from the Cameroons was there to lend a hand, recalling, It was one of those awful grey days, when my younger sister Bridget, and I helped Pa to smash all the plaster piece-moulds, he’d zealously kept over the years to make his beautiful earthenware figures. When we begged without much hope, that he should save some of them, he defended his act
Understanding art is often thought of as being an unreachable goal, but art should not be considered arbitrary because it influences the cultures and societies around us. The purpose of this paper is to define and also establish my opinions on Pensacola Christian College’s (PCC) definition of art, the bibliosophy of art, and Dr. Francis Schaeffer’s criteria for art. These topics are useful for artists as well as anyone else critiquing art, and can also serve as guidelines and standards for an artist when they create art.
terracotta brick finish is striking and its size, comprised of some sixteen million bricks is
The city of Florence, Italy lays claim to the world’s largest dome that stands atop the Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore or the “Cathedral of Saint Mary of the Flowers”.1 The main cathedral was built in 1296 but the dome was not started until 1420. It was designed by Filippo Brunelleschi, a master goldsmith, who had been preparing for the honor of constructing this dome all his life. As a young apprentice, he sketched and painted, carved in wood and worked with stone, metals and enamels. Using wheels, pulleys, weights and gears, he built clocks and learned about motion. But it was his observations in linear perspective that would give him the knowledge to build the world’s largest brick
Art, by definition, is works created by artists: paintings, sculptures, etc., that are created to be beautiful or to express important ideas or feelings (Merriam-Webster).
It is said that a picture is worth a thousand words, but maybe they are worth far more than that. Pictures, although seemingly simple in nature, are extremely complex. Far too often, people overlook what a picture truly is. When a person looks at an image, they most likely see only the image, nothing else. Many people do not look deep enough into an image to fully comprehend the true meaning of it. However, when an individual begins to truly study an image in an attempt to understand the true complexity of it, they will be surprised at what they overlooked before. As stated by French Realist Painter, Gustave Courbet, “Fine art is knowledge made visible.”
In a world that has become immune to accepting all types of art, Marya Mannes believes we have lost our standards and ability to identify something as “good” or “bad”. In her essay, “How Do You Know It’s Good”, she discusses society’s tendency to accept everything out of fear of wrongly labelling something as being good or bad. She touches on various criteria to judge art, such as the artist’s purpose, skill and craftsmanship, originality, timelessness, as well as unity within a piece rather than chaos. She says that an individual must decide if something is good “on the basis of instinct, experience, and association” (Mannes). I believe that by using standards and the process of association, we will be able to judge what makes an art piece good in comparison to others. However, Mannes forces me to consider the difference between what may be appealing versus what is actually good, and when deciding which art we should accept, which is truly more important. I believe that “good” and “bad” are two ends of a large, subjective spectrum of grey area. It is possible for a piece of art to be good in some areas and bad in others, and if something does not live up to all of our standards, it does not necessarily mean it should be dismissed. Thus, I believe my personal standards for judging art are based on which my standards are largely based on the personal reaction evoked from a piece of art. Though I agree with Mannes’ standards to an extent, I believe that certain standards, such as evoking a personal response, can be more telling of if a piece of art is good as opposed to its timelessness, or the level of experience of an artist in his/her craft.
Art is all around us. There are many different forms of art. It can be something created, captured, or it can be already existent. Not a single person is to say what makes something art because there is a different definition for everyone. However, there are a couple factors that come into mind whenever someone decides to declare something as art. In this essay I will be comparing and contrasting four different pieces of art. I will be discussing each art piece’s form, time period of creation, intention or purpose, and value. These four pieces of art are Michelangelo’s Pieta, Fountain by Marcel Duchamp, Mark Rothko’s No.61, and the “Oyster Dress” by Alexander McQueen. These works of art come in all different shapes and sizes but they are valued
Notwithstanding anyone specific expertise or knowledge of painting technique, each of us can quantify beauty as it relates to art in our own minds. We can see the growth of art and how it provokes emotion, understanding, and experimentation over time. Over the course of time, it appears that art, artist, and the lovers of the various periods of art seem to move beyond a name or basic aesthetics of style and venture into a deeper more comparative analysis of the work and its position in our culture.
Despite the similarities to modern art surrounding subject matter, there can be no doubt that that Renaissance artists broke the static mold of contemporary art. First of all, though the themes of modern art have remained fairly constant, the style of the Renaissance was unique in its combination of modern and ancient influences. However, what is most remarkable about the art of the Renaissance is the constant evolution of techniques and
When trying to define art, humankind runs in to many difficulties. Traditional concepts of art include painting, sculpture, drawing, and photography. Art can also be one
Arthur C. Danto in “The Artworld” provides us with the argument that, “To see something as art requires something that the eye cannot descry-an atmosphere of artistic theory, a knowledge of the history of art: an artworld.” Danto shows us the importance of the artworld in order to know that a work of art is more than just what we can plainly see. Danto provides two theories he calls the “IT” (Imitation theory) and the “RT” (Reality theory). With these two theories, Danto explains how we can define art and why “The Artworld” is needed to help understand art, because after all, “these days one might not be aware he was on artistic terrain without an artistic theory to tell him so.”
“Modern painting, breaking through old conversation, has released countless suggestions which are still waiting to be used by the practical world.”(Gropius) The birth of modernism and modern art goes back to the Industrial Revolution, a period that lasted from the 18th to the 19th century, in which rapid changes in manufacturing, transportation, and technology profoundly affected the social, economic, and cultural conditions of life in Western Europe, North America, and eventually the world. Before the 19th century, artists created art pieces for wealthy people and institution places like the church where they can create art works about storytelling of religious or mythological scenes . These arts were there to instruct the viewers.However, this changed when during the 19th century many artists began to create works that were about people, places, or ideas that interested them, and of which they had direct experience. With the popularization of the idea of a subconscious mind, many artists began exploring dreams, symbolism, and personal iconography as avenues for the depiction of their subjective experiences.Challenging the notion that art must realistically depict the world, some artists experimented with the expressive use of color, non-traditional materials, and new techniques and mediums.
Art overall is created and adored by numerous amount of people for many reasons, such as amplifying shared common visual language. The word art often branches into many different movements and components. Modern art or Contemporary art is one those components; this specific genre began mainly in the 1860’s to the 1970’s. During, this time period artists began throwing aside their own beliefs in a spirit of experimentation and the bringing of new ideas. The purpose of Modern art is to beautify one’s surroundings with intrigue, its often very diverse and cannot be easily defined through a list of visual characteristics, artistic themes or cultural concern. Moreover, Modern art is often hard to understand by people because, unlike Egyptian tomb paintings or Greek sculptures, it speaks to the dramatic social, political and technological changes of the last 50-60 years, and questions many of society’s values and assumptions. Also, Modern artists known for incorporating a great deal of abstraction into their works and representational forms to convey their ideas more elaborately; Rene Magritte is one of those artists.