ARTT 150 Final: ARTT150 FULL Final Exam Study Guide
30 Apr 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
Sigmund Freud
Dates: 1856-1939
Country of origin: Austria
Language spoken/written: German
Important works: The Interpretation of Dreams
Karl Marx
Dates: 1818-1883
Country of origin: Prussia
Language spoken/written:
Important works: The Communist Manifesto
PART IV: Caves, etc.
Smithsonian Article: Blombos
• Humans occupied this cave, on the shore of the Indian Ocean over 75,000 years ago
(70,000 BCE) accumulated sand dune then closed off as a cave
• Found ochre decorated with abstract crosshatch designs
• Had been recovered, dating to at least 70,000 BCE
Lascaux and Chauvet Caves
• Lascaux: 17,000 BCE, Southwestern France, depictions of large animals
• Chauvet: 28,000-37,000 BCE, Southern France, depictions of animals and handprints
Venus of Villendorf
• Representation of fertility
• Possibly a goddess
• Fairly small figurine
S. Giedion
• “Before art, man created the symbol. It was in the tomb that the symbol was formed.”
• The symbol emerged in the Mousterian era as the trace of Neanderthal man’s first
attempts at a spiritual organization transcending simple materials and a utilitarian
existence
• Symbolic communication with a higher power that is deemed to hold the fate of the
community in its hands
• Need to give perceptible form to the imperceptible
• Early consciousness may have been especially alert to mortality
o Consciousness of death and mortality sparked the creation of these symbols
Meaning of the hand
• “Mutilated hands eternally crying out for help and mercy”
• A psychological act (eating, etc.) is in sum only an organic phenomenon but requires
taboos (rules of society)
• Modern consciousness is what separated the primitive, animalistic humans from the
more sophisticated early human species
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
• Consecration of objects- The process of making something holy
Consecration, sacred, profane, taboo
• By manifesting the sacred, any object becomes something else, yet it continues to remain
itself
• Sacred and profane are two modes of being in the world
Icons & Iconoclasts
• Iconoclasm- The practice of destroying icons
• Iconoclasts- Those who destroy sacred images, they do so for a variey of reasons
depending on time, place and culture, but are usually motivated by ethical standard or
political affiliation
• Icon- likeness, image, representation; consecrated imagery of Christ or other holy figure,
found in churches, used in devotional practices
o Three different categories of meaning:
▪ Christian religious art and doctrine
▪ Germanic art studies 19th c.- More generalized meaning virtually
equivalent to “subject matter” of works of art
▪ Certain schools of 20th c. semantics and art theory- Expresses highly
specialized concepts
o Christian art history icons are images of saints or holy personages within the
context of a cult
• Contemporary examples of attacks on objects/practices
o ISIS plowed religious sites, religious doctrine and First Amendment conflict
Osborne on Medieval aesthetics
• Sensuous qualities of the visible world were suspect to the medieval mind
• To the medieval mind the visible world was a symbol of the divine and had neither
meaning nor importance as a symbol
• The dominant motive of religious life and philosophy throughout the Middle Ages was a
desire to ascend the sensory world of shadows and images to direct contemplation of
divine perfection
• Didactic function of art
Steven Dubin
• Sacred and secular may be distinct categories in theory
• There are opportunities for them to converge in a complex, industrialized environment
such as art
• Sacred: transcendental and extraordinary, inspiring love, awe and dread
• Profane: the instrumental and mundane, transitionary nature
o Sacred and profane are opposite spheres
• Taboo: restricts contact between sacred and profane
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
PART VI: Art vs. Non-Art; Significant Form, Ready-mades, Kitsch/Camp
Clive Bell: The Aesthetic Hypothesis
• The starting point for all systems of aesthetics must be the personal experience of a
peculiar emotion
o This quality is found in works of art
o We have no right to consider anything a work of art to which we cannot react
emotionally
o We may all agree about aesthetics but differ about particular works of art
• Significant form- The relations and combinations of lines and colors of which stir our
aesthetic emotions
o One quality common to all works of visual art
o Forms arranged and combined according to certain unknown and mysterious laws
do move us in a way – that is the job of an artist so to combine and arrange them
that they shall move us
• Compare/Contrast with Kant:
o Different than Kant because “beautiful” is applied to objects that do not provoke
that peculiar emotion produced by works of art
▪ Says beautiful is more like desirable and we throw around the term
beautiful too casually so we can’t use it the same way as aesthetic emotion
o Similar to Kant because he says to appreciate a work of art we need to look at it
with no knowledge of its ideas and affairs, no familiarity, no emotion and nothing
from our lives
• Promises a definition of art, he defines it but it is a faulty definition because arguably
everything has significant form, meaning everything is art
• Representational/descriptive/picture painting
o Painting in which forms are used not as objects of emotion, but as means of
suggesting emotion or conveying information
o “They move us too in a hundred different ways, but they do not move us
aesthetically” thus, they are not works of art
• In primitive/abstract art you will find no accurate representation you will only find
significant form
o Does not create illusions, does not make displays of extravagant accomplishment
but only concentrates on the creation of form
• Three common characteristics of significant form:
o Absence of representation
o Absence of technical swagger
o Sublimely impressive form
• Bloomsbury group
o An influential group of associated English writers, intellectuals, philosophers and
artists
• Sister in law = Virginia Wolfe
• Wife = Vanessa Bell
• Susan Langer
o Does not agree with Bell; just because all things in a class have a certain quality
does not make that quality specially unique
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Lascaux and chauvet caves: lascaux: 17,000 bce, southwestern france, depictions of large animals, chauvet: 28,000-37,000 bce, southern france, depictions of animals and handprints. Venus of villendorf: representation of fertility, possibly a goddess, fairly small figurine, giedion, before art, man created the symbol. Consecration, sacred, profane, taboo: by manifesting the sacred, any object becomes something else, yet it continues to remain itself, sacred and profane are two modes of being in the world. Iconoclasts- those who destroy sacred images, they do so for a variey of reasons depending on time, place and culture, but are usually motivated by ethical standard or political affiliation. Part vi: art vs. non-art; significant form, ready-mades, kitsch/camp. Institutional theory of art: people determine what is considered art , art as a social phenomenon gives no pretext of what is considered bad art. Part vii: the artist and the artist"s self; creativity and its consequences. Part viii: the ide of progress and modernism.
