Humanities Visual Art
What Is Visual Art? -Unlike the performing arts (music, drama and dance) visual art is generally produced without an audience. -The audience typically sees the work after it has been completed. Visual art is usually a finished product.
What is it made of? -Visual art can be made from almost any type of material (medium/media).
Medium: paint The Blue Boat 1892. Winslow Homer Museum of Fine Arts, Boston watercolor on paper
Medium: paint Mona Lisa, 1503-05. Leonardo da Vinci The Louvre, Paris Oil on poplar
Medium: paint Separation of Light from Darkness, 1512. Michelangelo Sistine Chapel, Vatican. Fresco (paint in/on plaster)
Medium: drawing materials Saskia Asleep, c.1642. Rembrandt. British Museum, London. ink wash on paper
Medium: drawing materials Self Portrait, 1512. Leonardo da Vinci. Biblioteca Reale, Turin. red chalk on paper
Medium: sculpture Mother and Child, 1971. Elizabeth Catlett. Collection of Alan Swift walnut
Medium: sculpture The Three Soldiers, 1984. Frederick Hart. The Mall, Washington, D.C. bronze
Medium: sculpture Pieta, 1498-99. Michelangelo St. Peter’s Basilica, Vatican.
Medium: environmental art Spiral Jetty, 1970. Robert Smithson. Great Salt Lake, Utah basalt, sand
Medium: pottery Amphora, c. 520 b.c. The Andokides Painter. Munich, Germany.
Medium: found materials Bull’s Head, 1943. Pablo Picasso. Galerie Louise Leiris, Paris. bicycle parts
Medium: photography Clearing Winter Storm, 1944. Ansel Adams. Yosemite National Park, California.
Medium: film Fantasia, 1940 Walt Disney
Medium: architecture Flat Iron Building, 1902. Daniel Burnham, Frederick Dinkelburg New York, NY.
Medium: Performance art Coyote: I Like America and America Likes Me. 5/23-25 1974. Joseph Beuys. Performance at Rene Block Gallery, New York.
So, what is art? Just about anything can become art.