Art 100 midterm
The meaning of 'Vanitas'.
(latin = emptiness): meaninglessness of earthy life and the transient nature of vanity. Vanitas paintings encourage somber reflection on the certainty of death and the impermanency of our lives and earthy pleasures.
What are the twelve cross-cultural qualities and/or aesthetic experience (The Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure, and Human Evolution)?
-Direct pleasure -Skill & virtuosity -Style -Novelty & Creativity -Criticism -Representation -Special focus - frames --> separating from something else -Expressive individuality -Emotional saturation -Intellectual challenge -Art traditions & institutions -Imaginative experience.
What are the meanings or ground?
1) A coating applied to a surface to prepare it for painting (etc.); ie:gesso 2) A prepared support is also called a ground. 3) The illusion or reality of a flat plane upon which rests a figure.
In art what does the term 'Form' refer to?
1) The literal shape and mass of an object or figure. 2) More generally, the materials used to make a work of art, the ways in which these materials are used in terms of the formal elements (line, light, color, etc.), and the composition that results.
What is a mimetic sculpture?
A copy of a sculpture.
In art formalism is?
A way of looking at art works, including representational and narrative works, that emphasize their formal properties. It is the attitude that a work of art's value and meaning is determined by its formal properties alone (medium, visual and tactile aspects).
Materialism is the belief that?
All exists in the universe are things and their relationships.
What is an autographic or signature line?
Any use of line that is distinct to the artist who employs it and it therefore recognizable as a kind of signature style.
Who coined the term 'The Art World' in 1964?
Arthur Danto.
Michelangelo's sculptures and paintings of men have small sex organs because?
Because it depicts the youthfulness might also be because large sex organs were not seen as desirable.
Which artist from the class (student) presentations is best known for using shoes, suitcases, and golf bags to make their assemblage sculptures?
Brian Jungen.
What are the traditional signifiers of the vanitas theme in still life paintings?
Candles, mirror, photo of loved ones, fruit, hourglass, makeup, books, clock.
Which artist from the class (student) presentations signs the land?
Cheryl L'Hirondelle.
Definition of classical line or analytic line: Artist best known for using classical line or analytic line: Title or clear description of an example of an art work by this artist that uses classical or analytic line:
Definition: A kind of line that is mathematical, precise, and rationally organized, epitomized by the vertical and horizontal grid, as opposed to expressive line. Artist: Piet Mondrian Example: Red, Yellow, and Blue (1935).
Definition of expressive line: Artist best known for using expressive line: Example:
Definition: A kind of line that seems to spring directly from the artist's emotions or feelings - loose, gestural, and energetic - epitomized by curvilinear forms; as opposed to classical or analytic line. Artist: Jackson Pollock Example: #5 (1948).
Definition of a non-objective work of art: Artist best known for his or her non-objective sculptures: Title or clear description of an example of a non-objective sculpture by this artist:
Definition: Art that makes no reference to the natural world and that explores the inherent expressive or aesthetic potential of the formal compositional principles of a given medium. Artist: Alexander Calder Example: Red Mobiles (1956).
Definition of an abstract work of art: Artist best known for his or her abstract paintings: Example:
Definition: The rendering of images and objects in a stylized or simplified way, so that though they remain recognizable, their formal or expressive aspects are emphasized. Artist: Still need to find one and an example.
Which artist from the class (student) presentations plays with figure-ground reversal?
Greg Payce.
In art what does the term 'convention' mean?
How things are done in a specific community; an agreement. A traditional, habitual or widely accepted method of representation. Art conventions include methods of display.
What is a signifying field?
Is the place (context) in which a sign has meaning, where it is read.
What is a signifying chain?
It is a group of signifiers that lead to the same signified.
The great chain or being is a metaphor for? Explain the metaphor.
It is a metaphor for Plato's ontological hierarchy. The realm of archetypes (metaphycisal realm) is like a magnet whose force is felt in diminishing degrees in the material realm, the further a being or object is from the source the weaker the archrtypal influence.
Jan Van Eyck is credited with inventing (but really only perfected)?
Oil paint.
A signifier is always?
Part of a sign; a thing that refers to a concept when read as a sign.
What does Memento Mori translate as?
Remember you will die.
Which artist from the class (student) presentations creates surreal, multi-media installations and sculptures about gender?
Shary Boyle.
The name of the art critic who visited our class is?
Sky Godden.
Why did so few women make figurative sculptures and paintings prior to the late 19th century.
Still need to find exact answer.
In art, what does the term 'content' refer to?
The meaning of an image, beyond its overt subject matter, as opposed to form.
In semiotics a sign is?
The moment of reading; a pairing of the signifier and signified.
What is iconography?
The study or description of images and symbols.
According to the axiomatic claims about art, cats are not artists because?
They do not know they are making art, they are simply doing.
Plato had mixed feelings about representational art, he thought that art?
Was a distortion of reality and was removed down the ontological hierarchy.
What is a denotative sign?
is a set of meanings that a social group agrees are conventionally associated with a specific signifier. Membership in a social group is dependent on knowing and using these signs.
