The Arts- Scope • What is the area of knowledge about? • What practical problems can be solved through applying this knowledge? • What makes this area of knowledge important? • What are the current open questions in this area? • Are there ethical considerations that limit the scope of inquiry?
What is Art? The Fountain- Marcel Duchamp (1917)
A closer winter tunnel- David Hockney (2006)
The Representation of Reality
The Flagellation- Piero della Francesca (1450)
Tramonto sulla Senna- Claude Monet (1874)
Gertrude Stein and Picasso’s Portrait- Man Ray (1922)
Weeping Woman- Pablo Picasso (1937)
The spectator The artist The work of art
Art and Beauty Beauty is truth, truth beauty, that is all Ye know on Earth, and all ye need to know - John Keats
The Divine Proportion The Vitruvian Man- Leonardo da Vinci (1490)
Significant Form I do not disbelieve in absolute beauty any more than I disbelieve in absolute truth. On the contrary, I gladly suppose that the proposition- this object must either be beautiful or not beautiful- is absolutely true. Only, can we recognise it? Certainly, at moments we believe we can...Every now and then the beauty, the bald miracle, the ‘significant’ form...of a picture, a poem or a piece of music, springs from an unexpected quarter and lays us flat...When we have picked ourselves up we begin to suppose that such a state of mind must have been caused by something of which the...value was absolute. ‘This’, we say, ‘is absolute beauty’. Perhaps it is. - Clive Bell- Art
Benefit Supervisor Sleeping- Lucian Freud
Sue Tilley
Art v Kitsch The Singing Butler- Jack Vettriano (1992)
The Price of Art Nafea Faa Ipoipo or When Will You Marry?- Paul Gaughin (1892)
Original v Fake Sunflowers- Van Gogh (1888)
The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction What the modern means of reproduction have done is to destroy the authority of art...For the first time ever, images of art have become ephemeral, ubiquitous, insubstantial, available, valueless, free. - John Berger- Ways of Seeing
Advertising
The Purposes of Art
The Holy Trinity- Sandro Boticelli (?)
Women of the Kolkhoz by an unknown Ukrainian artist
All art is completely useless- Oscar Wilde
Art as education Art can amplify man’s short time on this earth by enabling him to receive from another the whole range of someone else’s lifelong experiences with all their problems, colours and flavours. Art recreates in flesh experiences that have been lived by other men, and enables people to absorb them as if they were their own. - Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Art and Morality
Judgement in the Arts 1 ‘I like this painting’ 2 ‘This painting is beautiful’
Art and Truth Lying, the telling of beautiful untrue things, is the proper aim of art - Oscar Wilde
Art and Truth Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth- at least the truth that is given us to understand - Pablo Picasso
Progress in Art To talk about progress in art makes no sense, there is change but not progress. Art is not constrained by reality. It cannot be shown to be wrong Lewis Wolpert
Progress in Art All Art aspires to the condition of music -Walter Pater
Art and Science
WOKs Memory Sense Perception Language Reason Emotion Intuition Imagination Faith
Knowledge Questions
Linking Questions