ART 100: Art Appreciation: Part III 

Instructor: Diane Weintraub           

Cultures & Contexts

 

Traditional Arts of Asia, The Islamic World, Africa, Oceania, And the Americas

NOTE: Our objective for this section is not to provide an in-depth experience of any of the above cultures or their art. Rather, the objective is to give the learner a feel for the characteristics of each culture’s art that is unique to them. Additionally, please remember that our focus is on the traditional arts of a culture and not present-day art forms.

Looking and Seeing Tips: Across Cultures

There are relatively few universal elements of art that translate across cultures. The symbolic meaning of colors, for example, changes greatly from culture to culture. Good examples of this are the colors that are associated with mourning. Black, white, red… whatever!

One of the few universal values shared by all cultures is the love of family and reverence for ancestors.

Our conclusion about looking at art that’s not from our culture of origin? Make no assumptions! Learn before you look if you want to be able to SEE.

Chapter Eighteen: Traditional Arts of Asia

Reading assignment: Chapter Eighteen, pages 314 - 340. Be sure to keep up with the reading assignment!

Along with Africa, one of the oldest of ancient cultures. Many of the threads of ideas throughout Asia began in India, however, each region also has its own local cultural forms such that outright borrowing is rare.

India: Ancient Indus Valley cultural forms employ sensual naturalism that characterizes much of later Indian art. Look for Bodhisattva in Buddhist art.

Early Buddhist art: did not include images. But eventually religious practice needed visual icons for contemplation and images began to appear.

Spreading Buddhist art: influenced and was influenced by native aesthetic traditions. The sensual tradition continues.

Influenced by Western art: 4^th century BCE, Alexander the Great conquered what’s now Pakistan and Afghanistan bringing classic Roman forms into the artistic practice, which moved the art to a more naturalistic expression.

Gupta Dynasty: (320 – 540) Brings in more native visual style to form a period of high achievement. Rounded forms, curves, elegance, and linear refinement.

Hindu Art: Recognizes three gods: Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva. The Hindu temple is a major architectural form. Krishna is a major deity.

China:

Early bronzes: 16^th to 11^th century BCE. Ritual vessels.

Terra cotta tomb objects: About 300 – 200 BCE. Symbolic of items taken into the after world.

Painting: Calligraphy highly valued. Landscapes using stylized brush strokes. Early southern work is delicate and later northern work is bold.

Ceramics: Long history of technical developments. Porcelain at the peak.

Japan: Alternating periods of national styles and borrowing.

Painting: Pushes the influence from China with action and dramatically expressive brushstrokes.

Woodcuts: Mid-17^th century marks the beginning, which continues for 200 years. Called ukiyo-e meaning “picture of the floating world,” or everyday life.       

Chapter Nineteen: The Islamic World

Reading assignment: Chapter Nineteen, pages 341 - 348. Be sure to keep up with the reading assignment!

Early Muslims adapted and built on the achievements of their predecessors. As medieval Europe languished, Islamic civilization flourished.

Orthodox Islam prohibits the representation of human figures in art that will be used in a religious context therefore figural arts are rare in Islam, and sculpture gives way to other forms finding excellence especially in decorative arts and architecture.

Ceramic arts: Lusterware: a polished ceramic with a metallic sheen.

Architecture decorated with tiles: An important offshoot of ceramics. Often employs writing.

Calligraphy: Highly honored, especially when used to write religious text: divine word in visible form. Decorative quality combines well with both geometric as well as floral designs.  

Books and illustrations: Outside of religious usage the prohibition against figurative images was relaxed and illustrations for hand-copied book reached a high level of accomplishment.  This art form, originally inspired by Chinese work, migrated to the Indian subcontinent and the Mughal Empire where it also reached amazing heights of accomplishment. 

Chapter Twenty: African, Oceania, and the Americas

Reading assignment: Chapter Twenty, pages 349 - 370. Be sure to keep up with the reading assignment!

“Primitive?” NOT!

Africa: Many diverse cultures and art forms in this huge continent.

North of the Sahara: traditional art forms fell under the influence of Egyptian, Roman, or more recently, Islamic influence. 

Sub-Saharan Societies: Traditional art form mostly abstract in nature.

Masks and heads: terra cotta, bronze, stone, and wood. Most made for royal or honorific uses.

Power figures: an example of personal art.

Pattern and design: highly developed in many parts of Africa. Gourds. Textiles.

Oceania and Australia: (See map on page 356 if you are not familiar with this part of the world.) Oceania is the collective name for the thousands of Pacific islands that compromise Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia (including New Zealand.) Shared common beliefs:

            The world came into being because of the union of the Earth Mother and the Sky Father.

            View ancestors as intermediaries between us and the gods.

            Mana, or spiritual power. It resides in persons, places or things.

Use wood, bark, and small plants, as well as feathers, bone, and shell.

Native North America: A rich and varied collection of cultures existed in North America long before the arrival of the Europeans, and as far back as 20 to 30 thousand years ago. They produced an astonishing variety of art forms depending on materials available and cultural traditions. Here are some examples:

            Hopewell culture, in what’s now Ohio. Burial mounds.

            Navajo of Arizona: weavers.

            Pueblo peoples of the Southwest, best known for pottery. Zuni and Hopi: kachina.

            Plains Indians: traditional art of painting on buffalo hides.

            Northwest Coast tribes: abstraction of animals as part of tribal mythology.

Pre-Columbian Central and South America: A variety of highly sophisticated agricultural civilizations flourished in Mexico until the arrival of the Spanish.

            Olmec: Gulf Coast near Veracruz.

The Teotihuacan peoples: the Pyramid of the Sun, larger that the Egyptian pyramids.   Also The Temple of the Feathered Serpent.

The Maya: Mexico, Guatemala, and Honduras areas. Hundreds of stone temples at Tikal.

The Toltec civilization: Central Mexico, between the 9^th and 13^th century and forms a bridge between the Mayan and Aztec civilizations. Chichen Itza, Chacmool.

The Aztecs: The most powerful kingdom in Mexico at the time of the Spanish conquest. Their art sums up preceding styles.

Inca culture: The Andes of South America. Flourished several centuries prior to the Spanish conquest. Gold objects. Machu Picchu. 

Be sure to read the article about returning cultural property on page 370. You’ll find it fascinating!
 

Modern Art after 1945

Looking and Seeing Tips: Dealing with art you know nothing about! (And don’t like!!)

One of the most difficult things to do while looking at new art is keeping an open mind. Do you find it ugly? Offensive? Just plain dumb? Well, that’s OK because it’s an honest reaction, and a strong one too.

But now that you’ve reacted to it spontaneously, why not ask yourself what the artist had in mind when she/he created it, and what group or period it comes from.

Remember that even though you might at times feel on the outside of new art looking in, no art is beyond your grasp to understand it. The only trick is in knowing whom to ask about it. It is very acceptable to ask the docent in a museum or anyone who works in a gallery or other art space what the work is about. Say something like, “Hi. I was looking at that work over there and wondering what the artist had in mind. What can you tell me about it?”

The aspect of the art you react strongly to – even in a negative way – is especially important to take note of because there IS something there in the art that you ARE reacting to. Now the only question is, “What is it that pushes my buttons and why?”

Chapter Twenty-Four: Accelerated Change: Modern Art After 1945

Reading assignment: Chapter Twenty-four, pages 443 - 472. Be sure to keep up with the reading assignment!

After World War II, Europe lay in ruins. Many artists had fled Paris, which had been the capital of the art world but was overtaken by the Nazis, and lived in exile during the war years in and around New York City. They brought with then Modernism, which ceased to be a distant and European thing. The result was that the center of the art world moved permanently to New York.

Abstract Expressionism: An art movement that served as the culmination of expressive tendencies starting with Vincent van Gogh. Most of the output of this movement was large non-representational paintings emphasizing personal expression of internal emotional states.

So… Abstract, or non-representational, plus Expressionism, expressing internal emotional states. This moved US artists away from the dominant style, which was realism.

            Action painting: Associated with Jackson Pollack. Emphasis is on the act of painting.

Color Field: A style of painting that uses large areas of color, usually with no central focus.

Abstract Expressionism was heavily influenced by Surrealism with its emphasis on our internal states of being and emotions as a sur-reality quite different than the outer reality of the world we usually see.

Neo-Dada: Blurs the line between life and art and begins by combining abstract expressionistic brush strokes with objects.  Rauschenberg is a Neo-Dada artist who includes objects from our daily lives in his work. Provides a bridge between Abstract Expressionism and Pop art.

Events and Happenings: Artists continued to expand the boundaries of the realm of art to events. Happenings are art events in which the viewers become participants.

Pop Art: Art the deals with popular culture especially mass media marketing and advertising. Cool mechanical images with no “hand of the artist” (as there was in Ab. Ex.) evident. Slick images produced in a slick manner… and sometimes with a sense of humor.

Minimal and Hard-Edge: The art object becomes simple, less dramatic. Works have a geometric structure. Painting as well as sculpture.

Conceptual Art: The next reductive step after Minimalism: no “art” in the traditional sense at all. The idea takes the place of the art object. A reaction to the materialism of the art market: the emotional outbursts of Ab. Exp., and the object and mass culture interests of Pop Art in particular.

Site Works and Earth Works: (Site-specific works were covered previously. Notice the photo of Running Fence on page 462.) Earth works are mad of earth materials, such as rocks and dirt, arranged in a specific manner.

Installations and Environments: Artists moved beyond the traditional concepts and limits of painting and sculpture. A work in which the artist assumes the entire space is part of the work of art, including the viewer.

Early Feminism: Late 1960s and early 70s. New York and California. California women artists worked collectively, and often incorporated craft into their work. New York women artists were more political.

Performance art: Somewhat like drama, in this art form the artist performs a sequence of actions. Can be done in any type space and with or without an audience. Often documented through photos, video or film.

Photorealist painting and Superealist sculpture: An extension of the sensibility of Pop Art. Intense realism. These works are laboriously done paintings and sculptures finished to a high degree so as to be as real as possible.

Chapter Twenty-Five: Recent Diversity

Reading assignment: Chapter Twenty-five, pages 473 - 493. Be sure to keep up with the reading assignment!

During roughly the late 1970s and early 1980s Modern Art came to an end and new thoughts entered the mainstream of artist’s thinking. This happened just as Modern Art was generally accepted by the public. At this point in time, it seemed like there were no more rules for the practitioners of Modernism to break and no new territory to discover. Color, line, form, and reality – both personal internal and invented “sur-reality” or super-reality – had all been explored and examined in depth. NOW WHAT??!! The answer to that question is the subject of this chapter.

One of the most difficult tasks for art critics is determining the importance of whatever is going on at the moment. It’s only after decades pass that everything can be put in perspective and the true profile of any time period can be seen. But there are aspects of recent art forms that can be commented upon.

Art since the early 1980s has been diverse and defies placement into a single category or movement. There are some elements that much of the art produced in the last 20 years seems to share. These elements are:

            To comment on daily life.

            To explore our changing reality as we live it in daily life.

            To explore, examine, and use objects that are laden with information about our culture.

Other elements contributing to art now are:

            Cultural diversity

            Rapid change

Postmodern Architecture: The departure from the sterile “glass box” style of modern architecture let architects to look once again at meaning, history, tradition, and content. Their departure from traditional modernist architecture was called Postmodern in the late 1970s.

Painting: As the coolness of modernism came to an end, many artists yearned for personal expression and returned to an expressive, even narrative, form of painting. They were called the Neo-Expressionists.

Photography: Interest in the way in which photography influences how and what we see and our attitudes toward our perceptions of reality: our seeing is never pure but always tainted by culture and training.

Sculpture: In response to Minimalism, today’s sculpture is likely to be any material, methods, or subject matter. Many use the range of materials to explore the idea of shapes and their symbolism.

Public Art: Art designed from the outset to be exhibited in and a public space.

Issue Oriented Art: The linkage of art directly to important or controversial issues and questions.

The Global Present: Because the world is getting smaller by the day, so is the art world. The globalization of the world in general means the globalization of art. Artists and their art forms are increasingly concerned with the interconnectedness of social and political issues. The personal has become universal and the universal can be (and many critics say should be) concerned with the personal.