When writing about a work of art, one’s opinion can influence the way in which another perceives the work of art they are viewing. When multiple individuals analyze the same work of art, their opinions pertaining to the work of art can vary greatly. For instance, when observing O’ Keefe’s artwork, multifarious opinions and ideas come to the minds of those analyzing the work of art. There is a common belief that her artwork symbolizes femininity, considering the way in which she utilizes flowers and the implied relationship that some are capable of associating with a female body structure. However, when one expresses their ideas of a work of art they can potentially influence or contradict the beliefs contained by other individuals viewing the
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.
“Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known.” -Oscar Wilde. Women are wild, sensitive, magnificent, mysterious, and above all: individual. Art’s many different medias allowed artist throughout the ages to capture women at both their strongest and most vulnerable points. It has the power to capture a woman: as a naïve, young girl clutching her brother as they are painted into a lasting portrait, a golden statue of an angel sent down to Earth to help a saved man take his first steps into an eternal life with God, to the powerful goddess, Artemis, transforming a hunter into a deer and having his hunting dogs tragically attack him. The six pieces of art chosen express the individuality of each women who has walked, walks, and will walk the earth.
Georgia O’Keefe is a famous American painter who painted beautiful flowers and landscapes. But she painted these images in such a way that many people believed she was portraying sexual imagery. “O’Keefe’s depictions of flowers in strict frontality and enlarged to giant scale were entirely original in character . . . the view into the open blossoms evoked an image of the female psyche and invited erotic associations.” (Joachimides 47) O’Keefe denies these allegations and says that she “magnified the scale of the flower only to ensure people would notice them.” (Haskell 203) O’Keefe’s artwork was misinterpreted because of cultural prejudice, her non-traditional lifestyle, and
Art might not be viewed the same way as another individual could. Some people could “see” or “look” at a painting, distinguishing their perspective or interpretation of an artwork. When I “look” at Alma Thomas’ Gray Night Phenomenon, it’s with a goal to identify what the art depicts. I would probably glance at the painting, not taking my time to analyze its different features. At first glance, I register the painting as simply a piece of artwork with a blue background and yellow specks in a pattern, however I don’t take much thoughtful processes to take place and bring emotions into viewing the piece. When one “looks” at something, it is more routine-like and to figure its function, without much appreciation of the artwork. In contrast to “looking”
The artwork I chose to view through a gendered perspective was John Sloan’s Three AM. Three A.M. was made in 1909 and is an oil painting on canvas. John Sloan describes the painting as a look at a “curious two room household” ("Philadelphia Museum of Art - Collections Object: Three A.M."). I chose this painting because it reminded me of times I have shared with my best friend. The scene reminded me of the countless nights I have spent with my best friend in the kitchen baking cookies and gossiping. When I went to the museum, I was with my best friend and the first thing that came to mind when we saw this was, “This looks like us in my kitchen like two weekends ago.” It made me think, if someone had just captured a small moment of us and painted it, it would look very similar to us. Sloan characterized himself as a sort of “window watcher” (Coco 1), which is evident in the way he painted the two women. He painted the room in a “binocular view” (Coco 1) that looks like it was painted while watching these people from a window. This painting has many gendered aspects, some of which are stereotypes. My gender, as well as the artist’s gender, influence the understanding of the work of art.
Since Georgia O’Keeffe defines Albert Stieglitz as this woman artist’s source of talent, it also derives how her painting should be interpreted from him. Both fictionalized and real Mr. Stieglitz perceive O’Keeffe’s art in the same manner, which is in psycho-analytic terms. As a result, Georgia O’Keeffe’s paintings are understood as being interconnected with her gender. In the television film, Stieglitz makes one critic declare, “Her great, painful, ecstatic climaxes makes us, at last, to know that when women feel strongly, they feel through the womb. They paint through the womb. Images of O’Keeffe’s flower paintings are presented alongside art critics’ comments like this and reinforces the concept that they illustrate the female genitals.
Just like everything else in life, art has its critics. Art criticism is the expression used to describe the act of making selective judgments, both positive and negative, about an art piece. Just as art is so diversely expressed and interpreted, those who critique it also have various methods and use various standards when criticizing an art piece. There are many theories critics use to evaluate art but there are three basic theories most commonly put to use by professionals. The three basic theories are: formal theories, contextual theories, and expressive theories. Formal theories focus on the formalities of art. Critics using formal theories pay close attention to the making of a piece, how each section of the art piece works to form a visual experience that may or may not attract the attention of those who come across it. Formalists’ attention is centered on the formal organization rather than the themes, which they deem irrelevant. Contextualists, on the other hand, value the theme and its relevance to the times in which the artwork was created. The contextual theories deal with the context in which an art piece is used; what it symbolizes concerning the culture and values of the environment. Lastly, there are the expressive theories. Expressionists are more concerned with the artist and the personal expression put into the work. Also, because art is a method of communication, expressive theories
Since the beginning of time, artists have labored extensively to find innovative ways to convey sentiment, passion, and feeling. Telling stories and trying to unlock the minds of people through different avenues of artistic labors. Art touches and affects people in unique ways; it can have special or unusual meaning on the person depending on how one views it. Artists’ rendering of their art is interpreted in numerous ways by others who view it unless it is explained by the artist on its meaning giving a clear example of what they are portraying. Two people looking at the same painting, sculpture, portrait, or photo may come to different views on the arts meaning even though they are looking
In an effort to change this objectification, O’Grady suggests that female artists must begin to reconstruct the subjectivity of black female subjects in art. They should reclaim the black female body as something to embrace and admire rather than just glance over. It is a slow and steady process but a necessary one. Furthermore, she strongly argues that the artist must do so even if her audience is uncomfortable with it because it is the best method to deconstruct a pre-existing idea of the black female subject.
Visual art has been highly appreciated and has become popular since the second half of the nineteenth century, during which the public gradually get familiar with the visual art and its applications. In the late nineteenth century, when artists began to utilize distinctive materials and various techniques on their work, there are a lot of innovative works done by masters whose names have been marked ever since. Their stories passed down through generations. Henri Michaux is one of the most well-known artists in that period of time. Michael always made metaphor for objects mentioned in his painting. His paintings always remained figurative, in-spite of all tendencies towards abstraction. His inspiration was from the real world but even
O'Hara used the lyricism, emotional effects, and metaphorical potentials of poetry to convey a painting's contents, a painting's appearance and and array of some of the painting's potential effects upon a viewer. O'Hara's writings about visual art are simultaneously art objects and art criticism. They are art objects themselves made of words responding to paintings. Because this activity--criticism as ekphrasis--rather than a formalized description advocated by Greenberg, O'Hara was able to draw on the strengths of both poetic and prosaic expression to write hybrid pieces of critical text. Again, O'Hara's art writings, unlike those of formalist critics like Greenberg, are a hybrid of aesthetic and critical modes of knowing (Shaw 179). Greenberg is wrong in his belief that ekphrastic poetry cannot fully capture the essence of a painting. Lytle Shaw and Charles Bernstein, two critics who supported ekphrastic poetry as a way to capture the essence of a painting, saw O'Hara's art writing as a powerful and necessary counter to the rigidity that descends from Clement Greenberg’s belief in formal art criticism (Bernstein). Bernstein adds that the significance of O’Hara is his ability to avoid simple descriptions of visual art in pursuit of the complexity found in the pieces they are addressing (Bernstein). Shaw and Bernstein both argue that O'Hara's poetry is a better way to capture visual art than a
O’Keefe met the interpretations of works like Black Iris as erotic with “vehement denials,” stating: “I made you take time to look at what I saw and when you took time to really notice my flower, you hung all your own associations with flowers on my flower and you write about my flower as if I think and see what you think and see of the flower – and I don’t,” those associations being that flowers themselves look like female genitalia (“What do you see in Georgia O'Keeffe's flowers?” and Widewalls Editorial). Some who agree with the erotic interpretation of Black Iris and O’Keefe’s other flowers see the work as a reclamation of femininity and female sexuality, while others go even further in identifying O’Keefe in a lineage of art by queer women, claiming the work “as part of a lesbian tradition extending back to the eighteenth century” (“What do you see”).
“Art is a product of its time. It is a result of the social, political, and religious context in which it was made” (Cruz). For the aforementioned reason, it is imperative to take into consideration the culture, time period, and the gender of the artist because those individualities have a major influence on the depiction of the women in art. For example, gender is a cultural classification, hence, various artists might have portrayed the identity of the female in a different way. Moreover, gender roles are a set of stringent behaviors and expectations set by the society based on the biological sex of a person. The art works were predominantly created by male artists, thus women were represented based on what the society considered to be
In A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Stephen Dedalus defines beauty and the artist's comprehension of his/her own art. Stephen uses his esthetic theory with theories borrowed from St. Thomas Aquinas and Plato. The discourse can be broken down into three main sections: 1) A definitions of beauty and art. 2) The apprehension and qualifications of beauty. 3) The artist's view of his/her own work. I will explain how the first two sections of his esthetic theory relate to Stephen. Furthermore, I will argue that in the last section, Joyce is speaking of Stephen Dedalus and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man as his art.
America has always had the idea that we are great, and can do anything. If we set our minds to it we can achieve. We can advance the world in many ways. Those who make advancements want to be known for their work like anyone else who works hard striving to achieve the future today or just putting in a hard day 's work. I’m looking at works of art that show the different advancements that were made that were a change to how things were. The art is a reminder of the advancements, and how we have progressed over time throughout history to make it to where we are today doing the great things that we still strive to achieve. The art can show an image of the advancement, or something that build or changed in a way that 's related to making an advancement. Over time we want to advance to make things better. Everyone is looking to make an advancement in anyway. I believe this topic is extremely important because there are so many important advancements that have been made that can have a long lasting impact. My personal favorite is art relating to space, and the space program. I have a huge interest in space and engineering so I’m looking at the advancements of the past, which lead to modern advancements that took place to help lead us to where we are today.