1. Intro to Critical Analysis
Aesthetic Approaches to Art

2. Discussion Question
What is an aesthetic theory?

3. Aesthetic Approaches the purpose served by a work of art
the quality that makes a work of art beautiful/good
the quality/qualities that are appreciable in art
Formalism
Realism
Expressionism
Instrumentalism

4. Formalism Art for art’s sake!
Note: formalism is a theory about art…form is a property of art…they are different
Asserts that form is the only criterion by which art should be judged
Aesthetic value is independent and autonomous and independent of other values

5. Formalism
Art therefore has very little to do with morality, religion, politics, etc.
Subject doesn’t count…context doesn’t matter
Art and social concerns are separate and in two distinct realms….

6. Formalism
Critiques other critical approaches as taking the attention away from the artwork itself (with reference to biographical and psychological approaches, etc.)

7. Formalism
“There’s something inexpressibly lyrical, even uncharacteristically happy, in the boldness with which the dripped paint arcs, loops, pounces, and dribbles across the picture surface, to be thereafter punctuated, and in places effaced by bursts and smudges of white and drips and splatters of red”
[Michael Fried on Jackson Pollock]

8. Formalism
"very, very beautiful. They are so positive and affirmative and tense, the energy is so compact and controlled, it's just incredible. This piece is so graceful, so delicate, I can't get most of my students to fill a page like this.”
[Jerome Witkin, Syracuse University, on the drawings by Siri, an elephant]

9. Jackson Pollock, Lavender Mist, 1950

10. Clive Bell: Significant Form
Visual arts based
Argues that “all sensitive people agree that there is a peculiar emotion provoked by works of art…This emotion is called the aesthetic emotion.”
“… for either all works of visual art have some common quality, or when we speak of works of art we gibber…What is this quality?...Only one answer seems possible-significant form.”
Aesthetic emotion is peculiar….it is not like joy, anger, etc.

11. Cecil Cooper, Night Horse, 1992

12. Kofi Kayiga, Blue Leopard, 1992

14. Realism
Nature “is the standard of truth and beauty and that the artist can do no better than try to accurately protray the universe in its infinite variety.”
Strongly connected to the theory of imitation presented by the Greeks; this theory dominated aesthetics up until the mid 19th century

15. Albert Huie, The Counting Lesson, 1938

16. Alvin Marriott, Boysie, 1962

17. Realism
“the world exists independent of human attention…it contains discoverable patterns of intrinsic meaning…”
It is “a stark presentation of image”… a “refusal of painterly self indulgence or ‘personal sensibility’” (Linda Nochlin)

18. Alvin Marriott, Banana Man, 1955

19. Realism
Acknowledges something outside of itself in the world (avoids self and issues of self)
Handles materials in a manner that is “not overly self-indulgent”
Technique is subservient to the subject of the work
The work is exact in depicting the subject

20. Imitation Theory
What is produced as art is imitates things that exists outside of the artist. The view was held by many but was championed by Plato and Aristotle

21. Barrington Watson, Mother and Child, 1968

23. Expressionism
Meanings in the world are dependent on our own understanding
“…..[favours] artists and their sensibilities rather than nature”
Medium and form are used to express the inner lives of artists.

24. Expressionism
Intensity of expression is much more crucial than accuracy of representation
This does not mean that expressionists are insensitive to formal problems, etc.
Art about life!

25. Thomas Cole - Notch of the White Mountains, c. 1840s

26. Art as Expression: the 19th Cent.
“Art is the manifestation of emotion, obtaining external interpretation, now by expressive arrangement of line, form or color….” Eugene Veron
“Art is a human activity consisting in this, that one man consciously, by means of certain external signs, hands on to others feelings he has lived through, and that other people are infected by these feelings and also experience them.” Leo Tolstoy

27. Collingwood: His Conclusion
Gives art the same expressive status as language
Argues that we cannot know ahead of time what we will create when we make art…in fact, all art exists in the head only!

28. Ralph Campbell, Ecce Homo, 1955

29. Osmond Watson, The Lawd is My Shepherd, 1969

30. Ras Dizzy, Rasta Says, 1987

32. Instrumentalism
“…art serves values larger than aesthetic and issues bigger than art”
Art can have an impact…see Plato, Tolstoy, Lenin, Collingwood
It is about the function of the work of art in a certain context, social and otherwise

33. Instrumentalism
Art should not only be true…it should be persuasive, and didactic
Usually present in critiques about underrepresented artists…females and racial minorities
Art exhibitions of older art (for e.g.) could be designed with an instrumentalist end.

34. Samere Tansley, Ancient Memories, 1983

35. Everald Brown, Lion Rider, c. 1972

37. Other Criteria
Originality
Craftsmanship

38. The End