Fluent Essays

Select at least two artworks in the show to discuss in detail from the links I support. More requirements in the paper assignment doc. Need to choose one of three articles to apply to this paper.Form in Modern Painting Clive Bell Excerpted from Art by Clive Bell. Reprinted by permission of The Society of Authors as the literary representative of the Estate of Clive Bell. The starting-point for all systems of aesthetics must be the personal experience of a peculiar emotion. The objects that provoke this emotion we call works of art. All sensitive people agree that there is a peculiar emotion provoked by works of art. I do not mean, of course, that all works provoke the same emotion. On the contrary, every work produces a different emotion. But all these emotions are recognisably the same in kind; so far, at any rate, the best opinion is on my side. That there is a particular kind of emotion provoked by works of visual art, and that this emotion is provoked by every kind of visual art, by pictures, sculptures, buildings, pots, carvings, textiles, &c., &c., is not disputed, I think, by anyone capable of feeling it. This emotion is called the aesthetic emotion; and if we can discover some quality common and peculiar to all the objects that provoke it, we shall have solved what I take to be the central problem of aesthetics. We shall have discovered the essential quality in a work of art, the quality that distinguishes works of art from all other classes of objects. For either all works of visual art have some common quality, or when we speak of “works of art” we gibber. Everyone speaks of “art,” making a mental classification by which he distinguishes the class “works of art” from all other classes. What is the justification of this classification? What is the quality common and peculiar to all members of this class? Whatever it be, no doubt it is often found in company with other qualities; but they are adventitious—it is essential. There must be some one quality without which a work of art cannot exist; possessing which, in the least degree, no work is altogether worthless. What is this quality? What quality is shared by all objects that provoke our aesthetic emotions? What quality is common to Sta. Sophia and the windows at Chartres, Mexican sculpture, a Persian bowl, Chinese carpets, Giotto’s frescoes at Padua, and the masterpieces of Poussin, Piero della Francesca, and Cézanne? Only one answer seems possible—significant form. In each, lines and colours combined in a particular way, certain forms and relations of forms, stir our aesthetic emotions. These relations and combinations of lines and colours, these aesthetically moving forms, I call “Significant Form”; and “Significant Form” is the one quality common to all works of visual art. At this point it may be objected that I am making aesthetics a purely subjective business, since my only data are personal experiences of a particular emotion. It will be said that the objects that provoke this emotion vary with each individual, and that therefore a system of aesthetics can have no objective validity. It must be replied that any system of aesthetics which pretends to be based on soOf the Standard of Taste David Hume Excerpted from Of the Standard of Taste and Other Essays, Allyn and Bacon (1918). Reprinted by permission of the publisher. It is natural for us to seek a Standard of Taste; a rule by which the various sentiments of men may be reconciled; at least a decision afforded confirming one sentiment, and condemning another. There is a species of philosophy, which cuts off all hopes of success in such an attempt, and represents the impossibility of ever attaining any standard of taste. The difference, it is said, is very wide between judgment and sentiment. All sentiment is right; because sentiment has a reference to nothing beyond itself, and is always real, wherever a man is conscious of it. But all determinations of the understanding are not right; because they have a reference to something beyond themselves, to wit, real matter of fact; and are not always conformable to that standard. Among a thousand different opinions which different men may entertain of the same subject, there is one, and but one, that is just and true: and the only difficulty is to fix and ascertain it. On the contrary, a thousand different sentiments, excited by the same object, are all right; because no sentiment represents what is really in the object. It only marks a certain conformity or relation between the object and the organs or faculties of the mind; and if that conformity did not really exist, the sentiment could never possibly have being. Beauty is no quality in things themselves: It exists merely in the mind which contemplates them; and each mind perceives a different beauty. One person may even perceive deformity, where another is sensible of beauty; and every individual ought to acquiesce in his own sentiment, without pretending to regulate those of others. To seek the real beauty, or real deformity, is as fruitless an inquiry, as to pretend to ascertain the real sweet or real bitter. According to the disposition of the organs, the same object may be both sweet and bitter; and the proverb has justly determined it to be fruitless to dispute concerning tastes. It is very natural, and even quite necessary, to extend this axiom to mental, as well as bodily taste; and thus common sense, which is so often at variance with philosophy, especially with the sceptical kind, is found, in one instance at least, to agree in pronouncing the same decision. But though this axiom, by passing into a proverb, seems to have attained the sanction of common sense; there is certainly a species of common sense, which opposes it, at least serves to modify and restrain it. Whoever would assert an equality of genius and elegance between Ogilby and Milton, or Bunyan and Addison, would be thought to defend no less an extravagance, than if he had maintained a mole-hill to be as high as Tenerife, or a pond as extensive as the ocean. Though there may be found persons, who give the preference to the former authors; no one pays attention to such a taste; and wWorks of Art and Mere Real Things Arthur C. Danto Excerpted from The Transfiguration of the Commonplace: A Philosophy of Art by Arthur C. Danto, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Copyright © 1981 by Arthur C. Danto. Reprinted by permission of the publisher. Let us consider a painting once described by the Danish wit, Sören Kierkegaard. It was a painting of the Israelites crossing the Red Sea. Looking at it, one would have seen something very different from what a painting with that subject would have led one to expect, were one to imagine, for example, what an artist like Poussin or Altdoerfer would have painted: troops of people, in various postures of panic, bearing the burdens of their dislocated lives, and in the distance the horsed might of the Egyptian forces bearing down. Here, instead, was a square of red paint, the artist explaining that “The Israelites had already crossed over, and the Egyptians were drowned.” Kierkegaard comments that the result of his life is like that painting. All the spiritual turmoil, the father cursing God on the heath, the rupture with Regina Olsen, the inner search for Christian meaning, the sustained polemics of an agonized soul, meld in the end, as in the echoes of the Marabar Caves, into “a mood, a single color.” So next to Kierkegaard’s described painting let us place another, exactly like it, this one, let us suppose, by a Danish portraitist who, with immense psychological penetration, has produced a work called Kierkegaard’s Mood. And let us, in this vein, imagine a whole set of red rectangles, one next to the other. Beside these two, and resembling each as much as they resemble one another (exactly), we shall place Red Square, a clever bit of Moscow landscape. Our next work is a minimalist exemplar of geometrical art which, as it happens, has the same title, Red Square. Now comes Nirvana. It is a metaphysical painting based on the artist’s knowledge that the Nirvanic and Samsara orders are identical, and that the Samsara world is fondly called the Red Dust by its deprecators. Now we must have a still- life executed by an embittered disciple of Matisse, called Red Table Cloth; we may allow the paint to be somewhat more thinly applied in this case. Our next object is not really an artwork, merely a canvas grounded in red lead, upon which, had he lived to execute it, Giorgione would have painted his unrealized masterwork Conversazione Sacra. It is a red surface which, though hardly an artwork, is not without art-historical interest, since Giorgione himself laid the ground on it. Finally, I shall place a surface painted, though not grounded, in red lead: a mere artifact I exhibit as something whose philosophical interest consists solely in the fact that it is not a work of art, and that its only art-historical interest is the fact that we are considering it at all: It is just a thing, with paint upon it. This completes my exhibition. The catalogue for it, which is in full color, would be monotonoVisual Art Field Paper . Select at least two works in the show to discuss in detail. And then write a four (4-5) page paper in which you will analyze and critically discuss the work. You should cover all of the points below, although not necessarily in this order. Your paper should be a coherent and organized whole. (1) Describe the work of art (not only the play, musical work, or dance but also the particular performance of that play, musical work, or dance). (2) Describe your overall aesthetic experience. (For example, the design of the theater might be part of that experience.) (3) Give your reaction to the work. (4) Interpret the work: What do you think the artist was trying to say, if anything? Are there any parts open to multiple interpretations? Support your interpretation with evidence from the work and from information about the work or the creator(s) of the work. (Information can often be found in the performance space itself. There may be information about the artist, director, or composer in the library or on the internet. Or you could interview the artist or someone else related to the performance. You need to do some research here. Check the San Jose Mercury News and the Metro for recent reviews.) (5) Evaluate the work. Was it better or worse than works similar to it which you have experienced (for example, other dance performances)? (If you have never experienced something in the same genre, for example ballet, then compare the work to ones in similar genres you know, for example flamenco.) Did it provide a good aesthetic experience? Was the experience valuable? c. How does your interpretation and evaluation compare to that of a reviewer of the show and with other people who viewed it? (Again, you might have to get creative here. Perhaps there is a review of the same play or dance performed in another city.) (6) Explain and defend your evaluation. and answer the following questions: (7) What role did emotions play in your experience? (8) Did the work teach you anything? Does it help us to know something? Finally, and most importantly: Relate your discussion of the work to the ideas in one of the readings we have done in this class. Demonstrate an understanding of the philosophical argument at hand. Use textual citations from the text to support your analysis of the topic. Then relate the discussion to your aesthetic experience in a relevant way. For this assignment, please use one of the resources listed below. Choose between the Garden and PARK HYUNKI exhibits from the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Seoul  https://artsandculture.google.com/partner/national-museum-of-modern-and-contemporary-art-korea?hl=en  (Links to an external site.) Any of the online exhibits at the Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand are appropriate https://artsandculture.google.com/partner/masp?hl=en  (Links to an external site.) Any online e