Although I was absent from this lecture I did review the PowerPoint from the lecture, read classmates’ blogs, and touched base with Chris P about what was discussed. I gathered terms from the blogs and researched – both online and other sources – for information on those terms.
Contemporary Art; Hearing the Call, by Laurie Pace
Contemporary: wikipedia defines it as work produced at this present point in time or art produced since World War II. That definition being undefinite for me led to more comprehensive study and “googling” whereup I came across an article posted on About.com Art History. Put simply, contemporary just means “art that has been and continues to be created during our lifetimes.” In other words, contemporary to us. The article addresses it in relative terms as well, if you’re a 96 year old then obviously “your lifetime” encompasses a large span of art. So a good rule of thumb is: Modern Art is art from the Impressionists (1880) up until the 1960’s or 70’s and contemporary art is from the 1960’s or 70’s ‘til the present.
Modern: Modern art includes artistic work produced from the 1860 to 1970s. The traditions of the past have been “thrown” aside in a spirit of experimentation.
- post enlightenment
- opposite of classic/traditional
- industrial
- techy
- 1780-1790
- birth of science
Modernism: is a broad set of artistic tactical approaches to the world around us. It seems to make people aware of how language stipulates reality and how the corporate landscape shapes our notion of nature, of where reality stops and art/media begins (or sometimes doesn’t).
- the best is possible (deeply visual)
- the new is possible (tomorrow will be better) – makes me think of Scarlett from Gone with the Wind
- forward thinking
- about the visible – how things look
- style has an essence
- refers to art
- experimental
- avant-garde
- elitist and confident
- san-serif fonts
- utopian in essence
- ideal society
Piet Mondrian Composition
A more radical approach was to reduce the non-recognizable to the most basic colours, lines, and shapes. This was the approach of the Dutch painter Piet Mondrian in his Composition with Yellow, Blue, and Red, for example, painted in 1921 and now in the Tate Gallery, London, in which three colours plus black and white are arranged as rectangular shapes in a grid.
Modernity: refers to culture
Post-modern: just an adjective
American Telephone and Telegraph Building, New York
Post-modernism: is the art, vague term used to describe approaches to art that came after modernism; the concept of something being a version of itself; all about irony. Postmodernism postulates that many, if not all, apparent realities are only social constructs and are therefore subject to change. Philip Johnson was a postmodernist architecturer. An example of his work, the American Telephone and Telegraph Building on Madison Avenue, New York is a Postmodernist interpretation of the conventional office block. It uses a Classical pediment, but instead of positioning it above the door where it should be, this feature is expanded in scale and carved into the top of the building. Johnson is using a Classical detail in an absurd, deliberately incorrect way. Likewise, the conjunction of a modern office block and neo-classical details is a deliberate anachronism.
Post-modernity: is the culture post modernism is about
Enlightenment artist Joseph Wright, the wonders of science mesmerize everyone present.
Enlightenment: a cultural movement of intellecturals in 18th-century Europe that sought to mobilize the power of reason in order to reform society and advance knowledge. The Enlightenment was a new way of thinking critically about the wold and about humankind, independently of religion, myth, or tradition. The basis of Enlightenment thought was empirical evidence. Enlightenment thinkers promoted the scientific questioning of all assertions and rejected unfounded beliefs about the nature of humankind and of the world. Of particular importance for Enlightenment thought was the work of Great Britain’s Isaac Newton, John Locke and Voltaire. The printing press made possible the rapid dispersion of knowledge and ideas which precipitated the Enlightenment.
Mimi's Dada Catifesto by Shelley Jackson
Dada: an artistic and literary movement that began in 1916 in Zurich, Switzerland. A reaction to World War I and the nationalism and rationalism which many thought brought war about. Mockery of materialistic and nationalistic attitudes. Born out of a pool of avant-garde painters, poets and filmmakers who flocked to neutral Switzerland before and during WWI; ready-made art; Dada artworks present an intriguing paradox in that they seek to demystify artwork in the populist sense but nevertheless remain cryptic enough to allow the viewer to interpret works in a variety of ways. Like the Cubists, some Dadaists portrayed people and scenes representationally in order to analyze form and movement.
François-Marie Arouet, better known by his pen name, Voltaire: French Enlightenment writer, historian and philosopher; Voltaire claimed that the problem with society was that people were all irrational and that everybody needed to become rational, have a hold of their reactive emotions, if they really wanted to rid the world of war and famine.
Jean-Jacques Rousseaux: Genevan philosopher, writer and composer of 18th-century Romanticism; believed that society was the problem, that humans kept repressing their natural instincts and that in order to have a better world, everybody needed to embrace their animal nature.
The first man who, having fenced in a piece of land, said “This is mine,” and found people naïve enough to believe him, that man was the true founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars, and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows: Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody.
— Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on Inequality, 1754
Spock
Rationalists: believe in reason and logic; complete opposite of the absurd. Where absurd is the absense of sense, in rationalism reason takes precedent over all other ways of thinking. Rationalists have claimed that the ultimate starting point for all knowledge is not the senses but reason. They maintain that without prior categories and principles supplied by reason, we couldn’t organize and interpret our sense experience in any way. We would be faced with just one huge, undifferentiated, kaleidoscopic whirl of sensation, signifying nothing. Some rationalists have claimed that we are born with several fundamental concepts or categories in our minds ready for use. These give us what the rationalists call “innate knowledge.” Plato was a rationalist. He thought the visible world, the world which is reported by the senses, is not completely real and therefore not an object of knowledge at all.
The optimist says, ”The glass is half full.”
The pessimist says, ”The glass is half empty.”
The rationalist says, “This glass is twice as big as it needs to be.”
From Plato and a Platypus walk into a bar by
Thomas Cathcart & Daniel Klein
Empiricists: have to experience something to know what it is, direct experience. Empiricists have always claimed that sense experience is the ultimate starting point for all our knowledge. The senses, they maintain, give us all our raw data about the world, and without this raw material, there would be no knowledge at all. Perception starts a process, and from this process come all our beliefs. In its purest form, empiricism holds that sense experience alone gives birth to all our beliefs and all our knowledge. Aristotle was a down-to-Earth philosopher. Dubbed the Father of Empiricism, he broke eggs at different points in their gestation to see how a chick was formed.
Romanticism: idea of man against nature; a Western cultural phenomenon beginning around 1750 and ending about 1850, that gave precedence to feeling and imagination over reason and thought. Rousseau’s ideas contributed to the rise of Romanticism.
Futurists: another modernist group, art is about speed, movement and machines, technology and moving towards the future
Modernists: believe tomorrow is going to be better than today, highly optimistic. Can we say, “Tara” anyone?
Bauhaus: form follows function
Impressionism: isn’t romantic, it’s rational experiments with color and movement. It was a 19th-century art movement that originated with a group of Paris-based artists including Edgar Degas, Claude Monet, Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, Auguste Renoir, and Georges Seurat. Characteristics included relatively small, thin brush strokes, open composition, emphasis on accurate depiction of light and unusual visual angles.
Claude Monet, Impression, soleil levant (Impression, Sunrise), 1872, oil on canvas, Musée Marmottan
Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Dance at Le Moulin de la Galette (Bal du moulin de la Galette), Musée d'Orsay, 1876
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