Art Theories

3.
Art
Theories
Dr Sophie Ward
[email protected]
‘Art’ or ‘Not Art’?
 Theatre
 Television
 Football
 Cooking
 Fashion
 Films
 Sculpture
 Graffiti
 Photography
 Ballet
 Disco dancing (Fleming,
2012, p. 20)
Making art or making a mess?
Making messy art or being naughty?
Making a mess or making money?
Tracey Emin ‘My Bed’. Sold at auction for £2.5m in 2014
https://news.artnet.com/art-world/tracey-emin-bed-margate-1115603
Dada: Art is whatever the
artist says it is?
MOT3_DYS_U8_p80-81.pdf (oup.com)
Marcel Duchamp (1917) ‘Fountain’

Ancient Greece
 Mechanical Arts
require the mind and
the body e.g.,
woodwork,
stonemasonry,
pottery
 Liberal Arts require
the mind alone e.g.,
maths, philosophy,
poetry
From art to
technology
 In the early 20th century,
the concept of
‘technology’ replaced
the concept of
mechanical arts
(Schatzberg, 2012)
 The term ‘art’ was now
associated with
culture/leisure
Painter or
‘fettler’*: who
is the artist?
*Person who removes
imperfections from ceramics
before firing
Mike Fleming (2012)
1. Representation
2. Form
3. Expression
4. Aesthetic attitude
5. Context
1. Representation
 Depiction (through sound, vision,
movement, sculpture etc.) of the world
around us and our thoughts and feelings.
 Ranges from literal (e.g. ‘This drawing
represents a horse’) to the metaphorical
and metonymical (e.g. ‘This drawing, by
virtue of being a horse, represents
intelligence’). (White, 1992, p. 541)
 But the Surrealists ask, ‘Do objects
correspond to words and images?’
https://www.renemagritte.org/the-treachery-of-images.jsp
 The Treachery of Images is a 1929 painting

by Belgian surrealist painter René
Magritte. Also known as ‘This is Not a Pipe’.
Representation…of
what?
 ‘…our “reality” is linguistic

and rests upon our naïve
belief that our words have an
inherent meaning.
Wittgenstein warned that
meaning does not exist in and
of itself but only “in the use”.’
(Willette, 2014 see
https://arthistoryunstuffed.com/michel-fouca
ult-representation-pipe/
)
 What objections might we make to
the idea that the arts represent the
world around us and our
experiences?
Wittgenstein (1922)
“Whereof one cannot

speak, thereof one must
be silent…The limits of
my language mean the
limits of my world.”
Ludwig Wittgenstein (1922) Tractatus Logico-
Philosophicus, see
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tractatus_Logico-Philosophicus
Do the arts give ‘voice’ to experiences that

would otherwise remain unknown?
2. Form
 Formalism – belief that the formal properties of an artwork
are central to its identity as art (colour, shape, structure etc.)
 Under formalism, says Feldman (1992, p. 122) ‘…
aesthetics becomes the science of discerning how forms and
formal relationships acquire expressive power, how they
generate emotion and signify meaning, and why they are
symbolically potent. Thus, the history of art is a history of
the evolution of formal relationships and of art-related
decisions that have caused them to change over time. Thus,
art instruction consists of teaching students to create forms,
understand decisions that produce formal relationships,
discern formal choices in the art of others, and apply
lessons of form in their own artistic expression’.
 What objections might we make to formalism?
The Tables Turned
(Wordsworth, 1798)
(Last two verses)
Sweet is the lore that Nature brings;
Our meddling intellect
Mis-shapes the beauteous form of things
–
We murder to dissect.
Enough of Science and of Art;

Close up those barren leaves;
Come forth, and bring with you a heart
That watches and receives.
3. Expression
 Belief that ‘art’ is the expression of the artist’s
thought. Mindless production/imitation of poems,
images, dances moves etc. is not art.
 According to the novelist Leo Tolstoy, ‘A really
artistic production cannot be made to order, for a true
work of art is the revelation (by laws beyond our
grasp) of a new conception of life arising in the
artist’s soul, which, when expressed, lights up the
path along which humanity progresses.’ (Tolstoy, c.
1896 in Cooper, 1997, p. 176).
What objections might we make to the belief that the
arts must express ‘a new conception of life’?
4. Aesthetic attitude
 This theory focuses on the audience, rather than the artist: it
asks, how do we respond to the arts? In education, it means
encouraging learners to have an emotional response to the arts,
rather than understanding form or seeking mastery of a craft.
 According to the philosopher, Immanuel Kant, ‘Every
reference of representation is capable of being objective, even
that of sensations (in which case it signifies the real in an
empirical representation). The one exception to this is the
feeling of pleasure or displeasure. This denotes nothing in the
Object, but is a feeling which the Subject has of itself and of
the manner in which it is affected by the representation.’ (Kant,
1790, in Cooper, 1997, pp. 96-97)
 What objections might we make to the aesthetic attitude in arts
education?
5. Context
 Belief that judgements about what is, and what is not, art are
negotiated within communities.
 According to the literary theorist, Terry Eagleton (2003, p. 10),
‘There is no such thing as a literary work or tradition which is
valuable in itself, regardless of what anyone might have said or
come to say about it. ‘Value’ is a transitive term: it means
whatever is valued by certain people in specific situations,
according to particular criteria and in the light of given purposes.
It is thus quite possible that, given a deep enough transformation
of our history, we may in the future produce a society which is
unable to get anything at all out of Shakespeare. His works
might simply seem desperately alien, full of styles of thought
and feeling which such a society found limited or irrelevant.’
 What objections might we make to the claim that no work of art
is valuable in itself?
In education, why does it matter what we think
is, or is not, ‘art’?
Further Reading
 Cooper, D. E. (Ed.) (1997).
Aesthetics: The Classic
Readings. Oxford: Blackwell
Publishing.
Main Library, Level 4, 111.85
AES
• Cooper, D. E. (Ed.) (1997). Aesthetics: The Classic
Readings. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
• Eagleton, T. (2003). Literary Theory: An Introduction.
Second Edition. Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota
Press.
References Feldman, E. B. (1992). Formalism and its

•
discontents. Studies in Art education, 33(2), 122-126.

• Fleming, M. (2012). The Arts in Education. Abingdon:
Routledge.
• Schatzberg, E. (2012). From Art to Applied Science. Isis,
103, 555–563. From Art to Applied Science (uchicago.edu)
• White, R. (1992). Beyond art: toward an understanding of
the origins of material representation in Europe. Annual
Review of Anthropology, 537-564.

Art Theories

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Art Theories

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Art Theories

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

3.

Marcel Duchamp (1917) ‘Fountain’

 The Treachery of Images is a 1929 painting

 ‘…our “reality” is linguistic

“Whereof one cannot

Do the arts give ‘voice’ to experiences that

Enough of Science and of Art;

References Feldman, E. B. (1992). Formalism and its

discontents. Studies in Art education, 33(2), 122-126.

You might also like