## What is art? **Art**: the expression or application of human creative skill. art must: - be made with the intent to convey emotion - should "satisfy the senses" - be made with intent - have attention to feeling and emotion art may: - be a relay of experience or emotion from one person to another ## Medium A particular material, along with an accompanying technique (plural: media). Example include: - Acrylic, enamel, gesso, glaze, ink, oil ## History 1. The branch of knowledge dealing with past events ## How do you look at art? Purposes and functions of art include: - Communicating information: - In non-literate societies, art was used to teach. - Today, film and television are used to disseminate information. - Spirituality and Religion - All of the world's major religions have used art to inspire and instruct the faithful - Personal and cultural expression - Social and political ends - Artists have criticized or influenced values or public opinion - Often it is clear and direct - Other times, however, it is less obvious - Monarchs who commissioned projects to symbolize their strength and power Generally, art can be broken down into two parts, *form*, and *content*. - Form relates to the "formal" aspects of art, composition or medium. - Content relates to the subject. What's being portrayed, how are they portraying it? - The distinction should be made between fact and opinion/guessing. Parts of form: 1. Line and Shape - Lines define space and may create an outline or contour, as style called "linear" - They can be *visible* or *implied*, and may be a part of composition - It may be 2 dimensional, 3 dimensional, suggested, or implied. - *Wherever there is an edge 2. Color - Hue: The name of the color (red, blue, yellow) - Saturation: The quality or vibrancy of those values - Value: The addition of white, black, or grey to the value - Tint: pure hue + white - Tone: pure hue + grey - Shade: pure hue + black 3. Texture - Texture is an element of art pertaining to the surface quality or "feel" of the work of art - Texture can be described as smooth, rough, soft, etc. Some textures are real, and others are simulated - Textures that can be *felt* are ones that fingers can actually touch. 4. Space and Mass - Space references to what contains objects: may be 2D or 3D. - Mass refers to the effect and degree of the bulk, density, and weight of matter in space. - In architecture or sculpture, it is the area occupied by a form. - Perspective: Foreshortening is a way of representing an object so that it conveys the illusion of depth; an object appears to be thrust forward or backward in space. 5. Composition - How are items arranged or organized in art - Symmetrical, asymmetrical - Static or dynamic - Picture space is comprised of foreground, middle ground, and background. 6. Scale - As an art history term, scale refers to the size of an object or object represented - Size of things, conveyed or literal Parts of style: - Cultural style - Societies develop their own beliefs and style of material forms - Artists are a product of their culture - Period style - Style changes over time - Art changes because of economic and political changes - Regional style - Geography leads to diverse styles - Personal style - Individual artists often have distinct styles Two basic forms of style: - Representational: Seeks to create recognizable subject matter (this is a picture of a dog) - Abstract: Seeks to capture the essence of a form, not the literal representation (this picture captures the feeling of a dog) | Phrase | Definition | | ---- | ---- | | | |