SUMMER15UVC2

ART 100Summer 2015

Class 2

agenda 6.18.15

• what is art? what qualities make something art?

• what is folk art? how is folk art different from fine art?

• can great art be made by anyone?

what makes art valuable?

are the most famous artists the best ones?

are the ones whose art sells for the most money the best artists?

if an artist is unknown in the wider society, does that mean he or she isn’t very good?

how do we determine value in art? is there a neutral, value-free way of comparing artists from different cultural backgrounds?

why is the Mona Lisa so famous?• because it is the best painting ever made? • [qualities of object]

• because Leonardo is a genius?• [qualities of the maker]

are there other factors?

Leonardo DA VINCI

Portrait of Lisa Gherardini, wife of Francesco del Giocondo, known as the Mona Lisa (the Joconde in French)

c. 1503–06

oil on panel

30.3 x 20.8 inches

Acquired by François I in 1518

one answer

It is located in the Louvre, one of the most well-known art museums in the world. [i.e., it’s benefited from a central art world location since 1804]

where critics who praise some artists and ignore others have been able to see it

where art historians have written it into history

where artists have been influenced by it

where art lovers and visitors and tourists have come to see it and photograph it, and buy coffee mugs and totebags with this image on it

Mona Lisa: the critics

The "first" art critic in the Western tradition, Giorgio Vasari, gushed over the painting in his 1550 book, which was read and reread over the generations.

Vasari had never seen the work.

“Leonardo undertook to execute, for Francesco del Giocondo, the portrait of Mona Lisa, his wife, and after he had lingered over it for four years, he left it unfinished; and the work is today in the possession of King Francis of France, at Fontainebleau."

Giorgio Vasari ‘The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects’

1550

“Anyone wishing to see the degree to which art could imitate nature could readily perceive this from the head; since therein are counterfeited all those minutenesses that with subtlety are able to be painted: seeing that the eyes had that lustre and moistness which are always seen in the living creature, and around them were the lashes and all those rosy and pearly tints that demand the greatest delicacy of execution."


1550

“The eyebrows, through his having shown the manner in which the hairs spring from the flesh, here more close and here more scanty, and curve according to the pores of the flesh, could not be more natural. The nose, with its beautiful nostrils, rosy and tender, appeared to be alive. The mouth with its opening , and with its ends united by the red of the lips to the flesh-tints of the face, seemed, in truth, to be not colours but flesh. In the pit of the throat, if one gazed upon it intently, could be seen the beating of the pulse: and indeed it may be said that it was painted in such a manner as to make every brave artificer, be he who he may, tremble and lose courage."


1550

“He employed also this device: Mona Lisa being very beautiful, while he was painting her portrait, he retained those who played or sang, and continually jested, who would make her to remain merry, in order to take away that melancholy which painters are often wont to give to their portraits. And in this work of Leonardo there was a smile so pleasing , that it was a thing more divine than human to behold, and it was held to be something marvelous, in that it was not other than alive.”

Giorgio Vasari ‘The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects’ 1550

Mona Lisa: artists

artists of his day were influenced by Leonardo, but more by his works in Italy

later artists looked to the Mona Lisa as an icon of traditional Italian painting

Marcel DUCHAMPL.H.O.O.Q1919postcard with doodle

Andy WARHOL, Double Mona Lisa, 1963Silkscreen ink on linen28-1/8 x 37-1/8 inches

Andy WARHOLThirty Are Better Than One 1963Synthetic polymer paint and silkscreen ink on canvas110 x 94 inches

Vik MUNIZ, Double Mona Lisa, After Warhol, (Peanut Butter + Jelly) 1999,cibachrome

Mona Lisa: audiences

since 1804, visitors to the Louvre have come to see this painting.

it has been photographed countless times, and coffee mugs and notepads across the world bear this image.

among other things, the Mona Lisa is a celebrity—famous for being famous.

Crowds attempt to get a glimpse of the painting at the Louvre Museum in Paris.

The Mona Lisa is surrounded by multiplelayers of security.

Louvre curators unwrapping the Mona Lisa, returned from secret storage,after the Nazis have departed Paris, 1945

one is famous, one is forgotten

why?

Frank Gallo (1933—

born 1933 Toledo, OH

trained as an artist with early classes at the Toledo Museum of Art, Iowa State and Cranbrook Academy.

brief period of fame for lifesize epoxy sculptures of women during the 1960s

then returned to teaching art

“prestige”

is a system of agreement among interconnected aspects of the art world

the market

the critics

the institutions

Van Laar and Diepeveen describe the artworld as operating on a mechanism of "prestige"—who's up and who's down; who's in and who's out—separate from a mechanism of quality or value.

“prestige”

They study the case of Frank Gallo because he was an artist who had prestige—and then lost it.

His work stayed the same, but his reputation did not.

“The failure of art theory and criticism to talk about prestige is an oversight with consequences, because the artworld and art history cannot be understood without understanding how prestige works, how it is generated and conferred, how it privileges and excludes, and how it pervades the culture and induces complicity. Without prestige as part of the analysis, the important relational, social aspect of art is obscured; the subtleties of social positioning in art are concealed. Prestige opens the way for particular ways of understanding art’s audience. This ranges from articulating social complicity in elitism and creating value, but also in analyzing how estimations of value are contested and resisted.”

(Van Laar and Diepeveen, 55)

defining prestige“Prestige, which we define as a system of hierarchies of agreed-upon social value, is a twofold thing: it is a quality that people confer on others, but it is also a system inextricably bound up with that conferral, a system that gives the rationale for those value judgments."


not only artists, but subject matters and media can lose prestigeIn examining the workings of prestige, this book also deals with the process of valuation, best and most sharply understood through the loss of status. It demonstrates how prestige works, as it disappears, as it eludes one’s grasp and one is left behind….This dispatch is larger than the reputations of individual artists: modes of artmaking take a back seat, subject matters become banal, and forms of aesthetic experience lose their luster.”


summary

Art is not a matter of ontology, but of sociology.

ontology—property or quality of a thing in itself

In any society, some objects are called ‘art,’ others are not. These designations are a matter of social tradition and convention.

Such labels can change over time as a society’s values and preferences change.

what is visual culture?

It includes everything that art excludes: All the objects that are left out from consideration in the traditional fine arts (painting, sculpture, architecture)

things made not for elite but ordinary audiences

the role of vision in the production of knowledge/power

technologies/enhancements of vision (for example, scientific and medical imaging)

as Howard Becker suggests:

the artworld is a collaborative system

it requires the cooperation of many people in different roles

it is social in nature and reflects the values and priorities of a given society

the case of "folk art"

As Vlach points out, the definitions of folk art are contradictory.

is it naive, or sophisticated?

untrained, or skilled?

"Folk art" ends up being defined by the social position of the maker, rather than by any specific qualities of the object.

Sheldon PECK (1797–1868), David and Catherine Stolp Crane, Aurora, Illinois, c. 1845Oil on canvas, 35 11/16 × 43 5/8"-

John Singleton COPLEYMrs. Ezekiel Goldthwaite1771oil on canvas50 1/8 x 40 1/8 inches

http://www.mfa.org/collections/object/mrs-ezekiel-goldthwait-elizabeth-lewis-32756





Ammi PHILLIPS Lady in a gold-colored dressProbably New York, Connecticut, or Massachusetts, 1835–1840 Oil on canvas 33 1/2 x 28 1/4 in.

http://folkartmuseum.org/?t=images&id=1582

Ammi PHILLIPS (1788–1865) Girl in red dress with cat and dog Vicinity of Amenia, New York 1830–1835 Oil on canvas 30 x 25 inches

