Art is trapped in the cage of society, constantly being judged and interpreted regardless of the artist’s intent. There is no escaping it, however, there are ways to manage and manipulate the cage. Two such examples are Kandinsky 's Little Pleasures, and Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain. Both pieces were very controversial and judged for being so different in their time, but they also had very specific ways of handling the criticism and even used it to their advantage. We will be looking at the motivations for each artwork, what made the art so outrageous, and the public’s reaction to the pieces. Both pieces were made with the publics reaction in mind, however, both artists desired a different outcome than the other. Duchamp created Fountain after one of his previous paintings had been rejected from the cubist room at the Salon that his brothers …show more content…
Duchamp’s piece was not controversial because of the simplistic nature of the piece, nor the oddity of it- it was controversial because he had not made it himself. People were very opposed to this idea because they believed that art was something made and not found. Duchamp’s “ready-made” art, which were always mass produced objects made by machines, was offensive to them and so they rejected it wholeheartedly. Unlike Fountain, Kandinski’s Little Pleasures was not rejected because of the nature of its ’creation’, it was rejected because people had never before seen art with such a lack of recognizable forms. Before Kandinski, art had always had representations of things from life, and Little Pleasures seemed almost completely arbitrary to them with no connections to the world they lived in. As such, both pieces were, at first, denied the title of “art” because society was unable to break from tradition and admire something
Through successful conceptualization and execution of his “action” installations, Joseph Beuys was able to present how he and many others felt about such matters related to psychology, the social structure, and politics. The messages in Beuys’s works may not have been clear to many, but he sought to show that all humans are creative and that art is not meant to be easily understood because there wouldn’t be a need for art if is was. I believe Joseph Beuys can be considered one of the greatest time-based performers of his time.
In existential thought it is often questioned who decides what is right and what is wrong. Our everyday beliefs based on the assumption that not everything we are told may be true. This questioning has given light to the subjective perspective. This means that there is a lack of a singular view that is entirely devoid of predetermined values. These predetermined values are instilled upon society by various sources such as family to the media. On a societal level this has given rise to the philosophy of social hype. The idea of hype lies in society as the valuation of something purely off someone or some group of people valuing it. Hype has become one of the main driving forces behind what society considers to be good art and how successful artists can become while being the main component that leads to a wide spread belief, followed by its integration into subjective views. Its presence in the art world propagates trends, fads, and limits what we find to be good art. Our subjective outlook on art is powered by society’s feedback upon itself. The art world, high and low, is exploited by this social construction. Even when objective critique is the goal subjective remnants can still seep through and influence an opinion. Subjective thought in the art world has been self perpetuated through regulated museums, idolization of the author, and general social construction because of hype.
In this essay I will be discussing what, in my own opinion, makes good art. To justify what I consider to be a good standard of art, I will be analyzing the work of French symbolist Eugene Carriere and contrasting this with artwork I consider to not be 'good art'.
In conclusion we can see that even worlds apart artists can still find inspiration from unlikely subject matter. Watteau’s from the theater. Picasso’s from the street. Both artists not only showed their era in their art but also themselves and others. Even when it comes to entertainment it seems that not artist can escape the idea of shaping their own worlds into their piece of art. As well, both also showed not only the similarities but also differences of their era and how art was viewed.
Many of us visit art galleries and wonder what an artist is trying to tell us with his paintings or sculptures. It's never easy to interpret a piece of art as everyone sees it from their own perspective. Many of the master pieces of Salvador Dali have been replicated and volumes have been written about his artwork. Two of those will be compared and analyzed in this essay ; "Apparition of Face and Fruit- dish on a Beach" and "The Persistence of Memory". One is about the inseparable fate of humanity from nature the other is about memories that we create at every step and that come back to us and keep haunting us.
Art is a very important part of humanity’s history, and it can be found anywhere from the walls of caves to the halls of museums. The artists that created these works of art were influenced by a multitude of factors including personal issues, politics, and other art movements. Frida Kahlo and Vincent van Gogh, two wildly popular artists, have left behind artwork, that to this day, influences and fascinates people around the world. Their painting styles and personal lives are vastly different, but both artists managed to capture the emotions that they were feeling and used them to create artwork.
I believe that Matisse and Picasso can be simultaneously seen as inspired by and breaking free from Paul Cezanne. Below I have attached all three paintings that we are going to talk about. The first one is Paul Cezanne’s the Large Bathers. To me this is a painting of a bunch women bathing out in the open. The colors are more neutral and bland, but still has a claiming effect on you. According to Wikipedia, this is the last of the oil paintings by Cezanne, and they consider this one to be unfinished. After seeing the other paintings of bathers, I would agree with that statement. His other paintings have more life in them.
Some say that Marcel Duchamp, also known as Rrose Selavy, is one of the most influential artists of the 20th century. From a young age Duchamp was under a heavy influence of art. For instance, his grandfather “...practiced engraving…” (Lebel). Duchamp’s mother even painted landscapes. This resulted in, “Four of the six Duchamp children [becoming] artists.” (Lebel). Duchamp was influenced by his two older brothers who encouraged him to pursue art. He was also heavily influenced, in his early art stages, by, “...Paul Cezanne…” (Lebel). In 1906, Duchamp moved to Paris at the time when modernism was about to explode. “...[Duchamp] was part of the generation who were influenced and inspired by this revolution.” (Jones). When Duchamp reached the age of twenty five, he started getting influenced by the,”...theater adaptation of Raymond Roussel's Impressions d'Afrique with Picabia and Guillaume Apollinaire.” (“Marcel Duchamp Biography, Art, and Analysis of Works”). The plots of this story and the puns, which Duchamp used in many of his works, are what influenced him the most. He "’felt that as a painter it was much better to be influenced by a writer than by another painter.’" (“Marcel Duchamp Biography, Art, and Analysis of Works”). In this same year, 1911, Duchamp may have also been influenced by, “allusions to homosexual intercourse, Kabbalism and tantrism…” (Girst). Girst says this may have been the only work of art Duchamp
I chose Auguste Rodin’s The Thought as the artwork to write about in this paper. This paper will introduce the style, context, and subject of Rodin’s The Thought. Besides that, the paper will also demonstrate that although Rodin is considered as forerunner of modern sculpture, he didn’t reject elements of great artists of the past.
This art, like most, can be applied to the viewer in any way they wish. A person may look at one of the sculptures and see themselves. They may see a man who is going through challenges similar to their own; someone who is trying to free himself from these bounds. Such challenges may include an attempt to escape financial bounds or personal weaknesses. The interpretations are only limited to the comparisons a viewer
Jackson Pollack and Vincent van Gogh are some of most famous artist before and after their time. Each artist has a similar and different painting methods that they use when painting pictures. There most well-known paintings are called “Number 1” and “The Starry Night”. The paintings give off emotion by how they look, but each one is painted in different ways. The public did not find their paintings wanting when they were made. The difference was how long it took for them to get recognized for their work. Lastly, the paintings gave different and similar reactions to people that have changed over the years of their existence.
Even to those void of a formal art background, the world of traditional art is a realm held in high regard by nearly all. This elevation of art and artists is engrained into our culture, evident even in our own language – with common phrases such as ‘a work of art’ or ‘masterpiece’ used to express utmost skill and admiration. Yet, when asked to define art most would be clueless as where to begin, other than to perhaps describe feelings of awe at the skill of artists. However, admiration is a subjective matter so is clearly not a solid foundation for such a definition. To truly explore the definition of art, a fitting example would be to examine the work of French artist Marcel Duchamp and his famed ‘readymades.’ By placing these ordinary articles of life under the spotlight of a gallery, Duchamp shattered the traditional process of producing art that had existed for centuries, and subsequently triggered thinking about what constitutes as art.
Transgression suggests operating beyond accepted norms and radically reinterpreting practice by pushing at the boundaries of both what art is or even what it could be. Transgression opens up a wide range of possibilities for the artists which I will be showing through the first part of this essay. I will be showing and discussing the work of Carolee Schneemann, Rick Gibson and Gunther von Hagens.
The nature that these two artist are expressing is not pretty much relative to each other. Conceptual art involves the work of an artistic idea that takes precedence over traditional artistic and material concerns.
The contrasts between depth and surface, figure and landscape, promiscuity and modesty, beauty and vulgarity all present themselves in de Kooning’s Woman and Bicycle. Although the figure is a seemingly normal woman out for an afternoon with her bike, she becomes so much more through the artist’s use of color, contrast, and composition. The exotic nature of woman presents itself in her direct stare and slick buxom breasts in spite of a nearly indiscernible figure. It is understood that, on the whole, de Kooning did not paint with a purpose in mind, but rather as an opportunity to create an experience, however, that does not go to say that there isn’t some meaning that can come of this work. Even Willem de Kooning once said that art is not everything that is in it, but what you can take out of it (Hess p.144).