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What is art? A look at form and function
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What is art? A look at form and function. Tolstoy on Art The destiny of art in our time is to transmit from the realm of reason to the realm of feeling.

Apr 01, 2015

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What is art? A look at form and function Slide 2 Tolstoy on Art The destiny of art in our time is to transmit from the realm of reason to the realm of feeling the truth that well-being for men consists in their being united together, and to set up, in place of the existing realm of force, that kingdom of God--that is of love. Slide 3 from War and Peace For us with the standard of good and evil given by Christ, no human actions are incommensurable. And there is no greatness where simplicity, goodness, and truth are absent. Slide 4 Tolstoys Theory Tolstoy's theory of art: Tolstoy rejected any definition of art based on a conception of beauty. Since we have no objective way of defining beauty, it merely becomes defined as what pleases us, which is different for each person. The only clear definition of art can lie in its function, which is the transmission of feeling. Art can then be judged on how well it transmits feelings (infectiousness) and on the value of the feelings transmitted (truth or goodness). Slide 5 Form Form is one of the seven elements of art. At its most basic, a form is a three-dimensional geometrical figure (i.e.: sphere, cube, cylinder, cone, etc.), as opposed to a shape, which is two-dimensional, or flat.elements of art In a broader sense, form, in art, means the whole of a piece's visible elements and the way those elements are united. In this context, form allows us as viewers to mentally capture the work, understand it and attempt to analyze it. Slide 6 Function The action for which a person or thing is specially fitted or used or for which a thing exists Slide 7 Medium In art, " medium " refers to the substance the artist uses to create his or her artwork. For example, the medium Michelangelo used to create David was marble, Calder's stabiles employ painted steel plates and Duchamp's infamous Fountain had porcelain as its medium. Far more commonly, you'll see notations following the titles of paintings that read along the lines of: "Gouache on paper" "Tempera on board" "Oil on canvas" "Ink on bamboo" Slide 8 Top Ten The following works of art are among some of the most popular in the world. They have been made famous either by their creators popularity or by their contribution to the artistic movement of their time period. Slide 9 The Creation of Adam Ceiling of the Sistine Chapel Michaelangelo -- 1512 Slide 10 The Birth of Venus Sandro Botticelli -- 1486 Slide 11 Mona Lisa Leonardo da Vinci -- 1517 Slide 12 Water Lilies Claude Monet -- 1899 Slide 13 Starry Night Vincent Van Gogh -- 1889 Slide 14 David Michaelangelo 1504 Slide 15 The Scream Edvard Munch 1893 Slide 16 Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907), Pablo Picasso The women being intruded upon by the small still-life at the bottom of frame are actually prostitutes in a brothel. An early study for the painting featured a medical student entering from the left to make his selection for the night, but Picasso wisely decided to leave him out in the final composition, leaving only Avignon in the title as a clue to his subject's origin: It's the name of a street in the artist's native Barcelona, famous for its cathouses. Slide 17 Gold Marilyn Monroe (1962), Andy Warhol No Warhol demonstrates the artist's worship of glamour better than this painting, created the year Monroe died in an apparent suicide. It is the altarpiece in Andy's Pop Art church of celebrity. But by the same token, the work also speaks to Warhol's background as an observant Catholic; it wouldn't look all that out of place at St. Peter's Basilica in Rome or at St. Patrick's Cathedral on Fifth Avenue, where Warhol regularly attended mass (sans wig). The image is based on a publicity still for the film Niagara, in which Monroe played opposite Joseph Cotton as an unhappily married woman, plotting the murder of her husband. Slide 18 The Piano Lesson (1916), Henri Matisse One of the artist's most personal pieces, The Piano Lesson shows Matisse's son Pierre at the keyboard. It's a composition about space, but also about time, as it echoes again and again the pyramidal shape of the metronome on the piano---in the band of green slicing across a casement to the left, and in the shadow falling across Pierre's face. He is set between two of his father's works depicting females, the matronly Woman on a High Stool and a small sculpture of a sensuous, reclining nude. More than a simple description of a family life, The Piano Lesson serves as a meditation on manhood, and one boy's impending introduction to it. Slide 19 Drowning Girl (1963), Roy Lichtenstein Lichtenstein's Pop icon is at once a coolly ironic deconstruction of pulp melodrama and a formally dynamic---even moving--- composition, thanks largely to the interplay of the subject's hair (swept into a perfect Mad Men--era coif) and the waves (which seem to have wandered in from a Hokusai print) threatening her. The image, a crop from a panel in an early-'60s comic book titled Run for Love!, shows that Lichtenstein's in full command of his style, employing not only by his well-known Ben-Day dots, but also bold black lines corralling areas of deep blue. It's a complete stunner. Slide 20 The Persistence of Memory (1931), Salvador Dal Dal described his meticulously rendered works as "hand-painted dream photographs," and certainly, the melted watches that make their appearance in this Surrealist masterpiece have become familiar symbols of that moment when reverie seems to uncannily invade the everyday. The coast of the artist's native Catalonia serves as the backdrop for this landscape of time, in which infinity and decay are held in equipoise. As for the odd rubbery creature in the center of the composition, it is the artist himself, or rather his profile, stretched and flattened like Silly Putty. Slide 21 Untitled (1961), Lee Bontecou In the macho scene of postwar American art, Bontecou was a rare female presence, but when it came to making tough work, she could keep up with the boys and then some. This piece is made with industrial canvas salvaged from a conveyor belt that had been tossed out on the street by a laundry located below the artist's East Village apartment. The glowering form---suggesting a wormhole into some dimension of Cold War terror, or an eyepiece from a gas mask---was achieved by stretching fabric across a steel frame. Slide 22 Ballet Slide 23 Mikhail Baryshnikov Ballet Slide 24 Hip Hop Slide 25 Valentine Chmerkovkiy and Kelly Monaco Dancing With the Stars Slide 26 Ballroom Dancing Slide 27 Fashion Slide 28 CrossFit Games Slide 29 CrossFit Slide 30 Slide 31 CrossFit Competition Slide 32 Architecture Slide 33 Disney L.A. Slide 34 Pulitzer Winner 2013 Slide 35 Slide 36 Pulitzer Winner 1945 Slide 37 Pulitzer Winner 1969 Slide 38 Pulitzer Winner 1971 Slide 39 Pulitzer Winner 1996 Slide 40 Ansel Adams Slide 41 Slide 42 Graphic Novels Comic Art Slide 43 Tattoo Art Humans have marked their bodies with tattoos for thousands of years. These permanent designssometimes plain, sometimes elaborate, always personal have served as amulets, status symbols, declarations of love, signs of religious beliefs, adornments and even forms of punishment. Slide 44 First Tattoos In terms of tattoos on actual bodies, the earliest known examples were for a long time Egyptian and were present on several female mummies dated to c. 2000 B.C. Slide 45 However. But following the more recent discovery of the Iceman from the area of the Italian-Austrian border in 1991 and his tattoo patterns, this date has been pushed back a further thousand years when he was carbon-dated at around 5,200 years old. Slide 46 Tattoos Art expressing art. This tattoo exemplifies characters from Tolkeins Lord of the Rings. Slide 47 Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll