Art


Introduction


            World history has witnessed the birth, development, and achievements of the most talented people. These people have their distinct gifts and area of mastery – literature, politics, arts, science, and so forth. Still, much of their success can be traced back to the kind of life and personality they had. Childhood experiences, support from people around them, environmental influences and personal motivations often determine how a gifted person makes use of his innate abilities to become an important figure in his chosen field of expertise.


The world of arts is one of the most interesting topics of study. This field usually includes some of the most peculiar people who can express their personalities through unique paintings, sculptures, and drawings. Today the word art usually refers to the visual arts.  Actually, the concept of what art is has continuously changed over centuries.  Basically, this paper aim to compare and contrast issues for dealing in modern and traditional art.


With regards to the development of art, “The Cannon” in which the collection of traditional arts are often correlated to the art of traditional cultures in which they are normally expressed in sacred forms, are not simply images or personal reflections, but embodiment of divinity. Within the Orthodox faith, the icons are seen as one of the pillars of the faith with value similar to that of scripture or oral tradition. The icons are a door to the divine. Those within the continuum of Hinduism go further, seeing that the image is part of the original substance. For example, within Vaishnava Hinduism (worship of Vishnua and Krsna), the absolute also has a form and hence images as such can embody and manifest the divine. This is the explanation for the “worship” of images and statues, these forms are not simply images of the divine, but manifestations of the divine. Hence worshipping a temple image of Ksna is not worshipping a statue, but experiencing the essence of Ksna through his form.


            Apparently, modern art is defined in www.encyclopedia.com as:


            “Modern Art is a general term, used for most of the artistic production from the late 19th century until approximately the 1970s. (Recent art production is more often called contemporary art). Modern art refers to a new approach to art where it was no longer important to literally represent a subject (through painting or sculpture) — the invention of photography had made this function of art obsolete. Instead, artists started experimenting with new ways of seeing, with fresh ideas about the nature, materials and functions of art, often moving towards further abstraction.”


I think that there is something to be said for each as an art form. Certainly, there are differences, but all can be considered art from a perspective. Currently, modern art in which photography is included can be an art form like the others, but I also think that some people do not use it as such, just like the others. Not all paintings are artful, not all sculptures are artful either. Neither are all photographs, regardless of digital or film artful. It is all in the meaning behind the art, and the meaning taken from it.


 


 


Discussions


 


            Art is essential to humanity.  However, Elkins J. (1995) believe that most images are not art. Elkins J. (1995) in his paper stated that:


“Most images are not art. In addition to pictures made in accord with the Western concept of art, there are also those made outside the West or in defiance, ignorance, or indifference to the idea of art. In the welter of possibilities two stand out. Non-Western images are not well described in terms of art,(1) and neither are medieval paintings that were made in the absence of humanist ideas of artistic value.(2) Together the histories of medieval and non-Western images form the most visible alternates to the history of art, and they attract most attention in the expanding interests of art history.”


            Apparently, as the value of art changes and evolve several issues emerge. Some of these emerging issues are pornography, intellectual property, exploitation and abuse.


            In addition, a perspective distance is already collapsed onto a picture surface, however, and nowadays even illusions of distance are in states of compression and collapse. Instead of intimations of the end of art history, terminating like a story, we have an oversupply of historical product, under which we are liable to be buried as in the rubble of a seismic collapse. Rather than ending or running out, art history is more likely to consume itself, or to implode under its own weight. In the mode of anthropology, history itself is collapsed into the span of memory, representation into mimicry. And the benign distances of survey are collapsed into an uncomfortable intimacy: remote stars into dwarf furnaces of radiation. Transmission, whether of signals or substance, is as likely to convey viral contamination, cybernetic or biological, as transparent information. Objects are likely to be assayed as contaminants, or as foreign object irritants that provoke a protective response.


            From the beginning, modern art is the continuation of classical art era. Some of the artist now in the modern age has been greatly influenced by the works of the famous artist in the classical era.      The developments in art during the 1900s were many and may be confusing to most people. The academic tradition sustained as the major force all the way through the first half of the century, Even though they soldiered on, the number of painters of the academic tradition declined slowly once the crucial changes of impressionism took hold after the 1960s. The painting in most countries continued in the academic tradition until the end of the century. Excellent painters continued the academic school though the whole period. It is often forgotten today that ‘modern painting’ was by and large rejected by both the public and the critics until very late in the century.


            The meaning of “modern” is ” of the present or recent times.”  To pertain the term modern to art work now is confusing.  Did not artists of the Renaissance apply modern to their work as well?  To brand the present era of art as Modern Art we can look to the attitudes and characteristics of our modern world and what art means to artist and its viewers today.  Modern Art can be viewed as a swift and essential art style with many variations.  Technology brought change to civilisation down with a conflicting attitude towards art.  In older times artists were specially made by churches or wealthy families, but our times brought about a change that had artists doing “art for art’s sake.”  With the ongoing wars and political turmoil artists found a getaway with art.  Artists want to endow with a longer lasting escape from all the world’s problems. American artists of this time period were finally renowned as competitive artists and brought the art world looking at art from America. Art nowadays became a movement into a world of colour and expression, a world where an apple is only a blotch of red pigment or a toilet is a work of art, leaving more than a few people wondering what can be considered art.


            On the other hand, traditional art and modern art particularly the old artifacts including the antiquities are almost similar in terms of appreciation and evaluation. Basically, moral considerations may play a decisive role in our appreciation of particular works of art, be it the literary or visual form.  Typical of an academic and competitive environment, internal challenges to the idea of the literary came from various sources. The reader-response criticism of Fish (1980), for example, with its roots in analytical philosophy, pragmatism, and linguistic theory, began breaking down the object status of the literary work in the late sixties and developed a strong critique of the special nature of literary language throughout the seventies.


            In accordance to modern art, paintings are often regarded as crucial in the current era. And one of the examples of modern art painter is Willem de Kooning. An influential abstract expressionist painter Willem de Kooning was born on April 24, 1904 in Rotterdam, Netherlands to Leendert de Kooning and Cornelia Nobel. Willem de Kooning’s childhood was marked by the separation of his parents, his family’s mediocrity and his love for arts. His parents could not afford to send him to school which encouraged him to work as an apprentice at the age of twelve. Hard work and talent allowed him to be accepted at an arts academy. Also, de Kooning witnessed the love-hate relationship of his parents and their divorce at a young age. He was closer to his father but his mother demanded for his custody. De Kooning’s wife once shared that her husband described his mother as someone who was hysterical when she was angry. She would grab a knife, yell loudly and pretend to kill herself. This traumatic experience is said to be a contributing factor to the savagery of his Women series of paintings. In his “Woman I” painting in 1950 to 1952, de Kooning used violent brushstrokes and a deformed image of a woman (Ohio State University 2007). The painting displayed a tortured and demonic representation of a woman by scraping and assaulting paint (Encyclopedia of World Biography 2006).



Figure 1: de Kooning’s Woman I (Ohio State University 2007)


 


            Fulford (1997) states that de Kooning developed a sense of insecurity out of his family’s economic status. This insecurity pushed him to immigrate to New York upon his awareness that the city was the centre of arts during those years. However, his alien status in the American soil caused him feelings of being oppressed. He gave out a statement in the 1960s which said “It is a certain burden, this American-ness”. According to Sandler (1997) de Kooning found the United States, particularly New York, to be too complicated, claustrophobic, hectic, urbanised and violent despite his love for city life. Hence, his insecurities aggravated and sense of nervousness developed. His nervousness fuelled him to adopt an attitude that abandons clarity and stability. He considered his way of life as something that was not fixed and stable due to the complexities of the city. De Kooning did not spend his career focusing on one style as it suffocated him and made him uncomfortable. His art styles throughout his lifetime were characterised by abrupt shifts and transformations from abstraction (“Red Eye”) to human figuration (“Woman”) to abstraction once again, and from condensed forms to open forms (“Suburb in Havana”) (p. 1). His self-consciousness and discomfort with stability reflected his action paintings as a “struggle between determination and destiny” (Fulford 1997).



Figure 2: de Kooning’s Red Eye, 1955 (Horsley 2002)



Figure 3: de Kooning’s Woman, 1047 (Horsley 2002)



Figure 4: de Kooning’s Suburb in Havana, 1958 (Horsley 2002)


            On the other hand, the paintings, sculptures and work of arts sponsored by “The Cannon”, which are considered traditional, are often related to religious belief.  The samples are the works of Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci. Figure 5 is the Pieta.



Figure 5. Pieta


            The famous work of Leonardo da Vinci called “The Last Supper” implies significant practices to the culture of the Roman Catholics.



Figure 6. The Last Supper


            Similar to modern art, traditional arts are also filled with emotion, more passion in creating art from raw materials, where they mix the color. Meaning they are in full control by using traditional methods which reflects to the real emotion of the creator. Basically, the formal elements of a painting are not the only source of authentic aesthetic experience. In the case of representational painting, one cannot identify the appropriate experience of emotion without taking into consideration the content of the picture. Philosophers, in discussing art, gravitate towards reductionism. We simplify examples, devise thought-experiments, and limit discussion to general principles, direct attacks against the arguments of other philosophers. We can, however, develop a more sophisticated understanding of aesthetic appreciation, one which transcends this kind of formalist reductionism (Groarke, 1999).


Aside from these arts, African, Australia Aboriginal Arts, and Mid and South American Arts gives a significant contribution to global arts. In Africa, their art is usually constituted of one of the most diverse legacies on earth. Though many casual observers tend to generalize “traditional” African art, the continent is full of peoples, societies, and civilizations, each with a unique visual special culture.  Art is not all about paintings sometimes it is more on the culture of people. Basically, the human figure is the primary subject matter for most African art. In historical periods involving trade between Africa and Europe, the introduction of the human body into existing European pottery and other art forms can reliably be taken as evidence of contact with African cultures. The figure below shows the bronze head of Yoruba.  This head describes the artistic side of Africa.



Figure 7. Yoruba-bronze-head

The Yoruba people, numbering over 12 million, are the largest nation in Africa with an art-producing tradition. Most of them live in southwest Nigeria, with considerable communities further west in the Republic of Benin and in Togo. They are divided into approximately twenty separate subgroups, which were traditionally autonomous kingdoms. Excavation at Ife of life-sized bronze and terracotta heads and full-length figures of royalty and their attendants have startled the world, surpassing in their portrait-like naturalism everything previously known from Africa. The cultural and artistic roots of the Ife masters of the Classical Period (ca. 1050—1500) lie in the more ancient cultural center of Nok to the northeast, though the precise nature of this link remains obscure.


In Australia, art is also important.  Acrylic paintings by Central Australian Aboriginal people is one of the most exciting developments in modern Australian Art. The paintings are mythical representations of landscapes or conceptual maps of designs wrought by ancestors. In this tradition, paintings, dances and songs relating to the Dreamtime are repeating the work of Ancestors, thus keeping the Dreaming alive. Here are some of their works:



Figure 8. Bush Tucker


 


Figure 9. Whalladarloo


This work shows Whalladarloo or whirlpool rockhole, part of the river system that forms the headwaters of the Ord River. During the wet season when the monsoonal rains have arrived this rockhole fills with water and a whirlpool forms. During the drier months good water can always be found in Australia.



Figure 10. Kakuru


Kakuru is the Walmajarri word for Freshwater Mussels. Kakuru were an important food source when people lived a traditional lifestyle and were dug from the sand in waterways near Lake Gregory in the Great Sandy Desert. This painting shows the waterways and the tracks/tunnels of the Kakuru.


Aboriginal people traditionally used the materials available to them to symbolise the Dreaming and their world. As a result, art forms varied in different areas of Australia. In the central desert, ground drawing was a very important style of art and throughout Australia rock art as well as body painting and decoration were common although varying in styles, method, materials and meaning. There is and was a wide range of traditional Aboriginal art forms.


In Mid and South America, arts are given importance.  Basically, there is a museum know as the Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans houses which is the largest single collection of Southern art.  In their arts, movements are very vivid in their art presentation. Numerous movements are included in this broad category, including Southern expressionism, folk art, and modernism. These movements are connected by the commonality of the Southern cultural experiences that formed the perceptions of the artists.


While antebellum Southern portraiture has little in common visually with modern Southern expressionism, it is considered Southern art because it was created by Southern artists and its subjects were residents of the American South.  Here are the samples of their artworks:



Figure 11. Folk Art by Edward Hicks



Figure 12.  Southern expressionism by Catherine Clark Ellis


Southern art is more widely recognized as a distinct genre compared to the regional art of other geographic regions of the United States of America. This is a consequence of the unique role the American South played in the history of the United States. Slavery, though legal in every one of the thirteen original colonies, flourished and grew as an institution in the early 19th century in the American South, while it died out in the North. Political issues surrounding slavery caused the American Civil War, and that conflict and its resolution defined the United States and American culture today more than any single event in history. For that reason, Southern art is an important element in the story of the United States of America.


            Fry (1958) observed there is the consciousness of purpose, the consciousness of a particular relation of sympathy with the man who made this thing to arouse precisely the sensations we experience. And this recognition of purpose is an essential part of the aesthetic judgment proper. The author’s original purpose is not available as a standard for judging a work of art. In the present instance, however, the artist’s original purpose can be readily recovered (Groarke, 1999).


            Apparently, art appreciation reached another level with the coming of the French revolution, and these same aesthetic preoccupations were now shaped and fitted to a new purpose. As Kelder (1976) explained, “It was now the duty of those artists serving the new republic to provide works of art which would stimulate the high moral standards and sense of patriotic self-sacrifice consonant with a utopian state.” This desire for an exalted secular morality expressed itself, in particular, in the revolutionary cult of great men. The artist’s duty was, in this case, clear, to glorify the revolutionary martyr, “to immortalise the sacrifices of these great men through permanent works of art.”


            From this presentation, art is definitely an art. People appreciate art not only because of the recognition of any group. It is still in the eye of beholder. That’s why modern artist should not only concern themselves with the excellence already recognised and approved by the Artists’ world/authority e.g. “the Canon”. Truly, we cannot appreciate art unless we first understand what kind of object it is. Formalists argue for an appreciation of an artwork based on formal qualities alone. But to appreciate an artwork is to experience the appropriate emotional reaction. If a masterpiece is, formally, a beautiful work of art, the appropriate emotional response is not spiritual rapture or exaltation. It is a very different feeling, a sense of betrayal, a feeling that one has been swindled, seduced, tricked, defrauded, by the very magnificence of the pictorial representation. A painting is made up of formal elements that constitute, at the same time, an exercise in deception. One cannot avoid the moral issues that arise from judging an art work. It is not as if one experiences the form or the content of a representative painting. The enlightened spectator is aware of both together. An art work is, on one level, a beautiful visual display. On another level, it is an exercise in flagrant, sordid, politically motivated deception. The appropriate aesthetic response includes an awareness of the resultant tension. To naively celebrate the formal beauty of the work without taking into consideration the moral problems it poses is to miss out on a more sophisticated level of aesthetic appreciation (Groarke, 1999).


            Art appreciation doesn’t depend on how “The Canon” reacts on it, the appropriate aesthetic reaction to an art work is a simultaneous and complicated awareness of its beauty and its deviousness. People are driven to the aesthetic ecstasy and in the same instance, we are pulled down into disgust and indignation. There is no point trying to find a resolution to this terrible tension. In some painting, the ideal is the sordid and the sordid is the ideal. The experience of successful artistic form must be attended by a corresponding emotional pleasure. From the given examples of artwork, we have an experience of successful artistic form which should be attended by some searing emotional discomfort. In an ideal world, the ethical and the beautiful would exist together. In the real world, things are not so simple.


            To appreciate an artwork is to respond with the appropriate emotional reaction. We cannot experience, however, the appropriate emotional reaction to an art work without taking into consideration the subject matter, the historical context and its artistic purpose. Though the previous discussion claimed that formalism allows us to experience the old masters with less intrusion of irrelevancies, and therefore more fully and more intensely, to view this particular painting without taking into consideration its non-formal elements would be unsophisticated, untutored and, properly speaking, unaesthetic. Almost zealously, formalists divorce the moral from the aesthetic. However, in considering the moral ramifications, we are not imposing foreign values on the work. The work, by its very nature, imposes these standards on itself. It demands a moral evaluation. It was originally designed to be viewed in a moral light. If we want to experience it fully, we must grapple with the attendant moral issues.


 


Conclusion


            In the end, many artworks, and for that matter literary works too, do not address moral and political issues in so direct a manner. Every artwork is an expression of human purpose; and, wherever there is human purpose, there is some underlying moral aspiration. Meaning to say, recognition of global community e.g. “The Canon” should not be concerned by artists. It is proper and fitting to respond to the world in an appropriate manner: to delight in the beautiful, to feel awe at the sublime, to laugh at what is truly funny, to weep at what is truly sad, to feel horror at the horrible, to feel contempt for the contemptible, and so on. The best of art enhances and intensifies these feelings, which but celebrate man’s humanity, which but is the purpose of artistry or art, irrespective of the discipline it is now entangled to.


 


References:


 


Elkins, J (1995). Art History and Images That Are Not Art ; The Art Bulletin, Vol. 77.


 


Encyclopedia of World Biography on Willem de Kooning (2006). Book Rags, viewed 12 February 2008. <http://www.bookrags.com/biography/willem-de-kooning>.   


 


Fish, S (1980). Is There a Text in this Class? The Authority of Interpretive Communities. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.


 


Fry, R (1958). Vision and Design. Middlesex: Penguin.


 


Fulford, R (1997). Robert Fulford’s Appreciation of Willem de Kooning, Robert Fulford Homepage, viewed 13 February 2008, <http://www.robertfulford.com/Dekoonin.html>.


 


Groarke, L (1999). The Deceitful Artwork: Beautiful Falsehood or False Beauty? Humanitas, Vol. 12, Issue 2, p. 64.


 


Horsley, C (2002). A Private American Collection, The City Review, viewed 13 February 2008, <http://www.thecityreview.com/f02sco1.html>.


 


Kelder, D (1976). Aspects of Official Painting and Philosophic Art. New York, London: Garland Publishing.


 


Sandler, I (1997). ‘Willem de Kooning, 1904-1997-artist-Orbituary,’ Art in America, p. 1.


 


Willem de Kooning (2008). The Ohio State University, viewed 13 February 2008, <http://arted.osu.edu/160/04_DeKooning.php>.


 


 


 



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