1. THE ARTS
The Arts
Jackson Pollock

2. Introduction to the Arts from the perspective of the creator
Next day, come to class prepared to share something you have created. It could be a painting, music, digital art, dance, poem, literature, play, movie, and much more. Be prepared to discuss the following:
What motivated you to do it?
What were your intentions in creating this piece? What were you trying to communicate?
What did you get out of it? / What did you come to know through doing this? – information, something about yourself or others . . .
What knowledge/skills did you need to do this?
Do you think someone from another culture or generation would understand your meaning? What would an ‘expert’ in the field say about it?
Justify that your creation can be called ‘art’.

3. What is art? Three possible criteria for identifying Art?
The intentions of the artist
Made by someone with the intention of evoking an aesthetic response in the audience. It is a deliberate, conscious intentional activity.
The quality of the work
Shows a high level of skill, technical competence. Work has good form (way it is put together, how its uses the different elements of art like unity, order, balance, harmony, symmetry, color) and content (what the art depicts/portrays/shows)
The response of the spectators
Spectators are responsive, the work appeals to them.

4. Issues / criticisms with the three criteria

5. 1. The intentions of the artist
If art is made by someone with the intention of evoking an aesthetic response in the audience then intending something to be art doesn’t make it art.
If I say that unmade bed is art, does it make it art? However, if I put it in a gallery, and invite people to look at it from an aesthetic point of view is it now art?
Something that was not intended to be art may end up being treated as art.
Something that was intended to be art may be junk.

6. Tracey Emin My Bed
Intended to be art
An unmade bed with condoms and a bottle of vodka next to it. Sold for ₤ to an art collector.

7. 2. The quality of the work
What about work that is technically competent but lacks originality or work that is original but has little technical skill?
Are technical skill and originality both necessary conditions for a piece of art?

8. Pablo Picasso Bull’s Head
Head is made from an old leather bicycle saddle and a pair of rusty handle bars.
Not technically competent or skillfully made (could you have made this?) but it is original. Shows that art does not have to be technically competent.

9. Hans van Meegerens The Disciples of Emmanus
Vemeer was a 17th century Dutch artist
Hans van Meegerens 1930’s forgeries of Vemeers’ painting fooled many in the art world.
When van Meegeren was exposed some art critics refused to believe that this was not an orginal Vemeer.
van Meegerens work was technically competent but not original.

10. 3. The response of the spectators
The spectators are responsive, it appeals to them
The general public usually respond best to the familiar than the strange.
New ideas can be criticized and dismissed but with time can become accepted as great works of art.
English Poet Percy Shelley ( ), said ‘Time reverses the judgment of the foolish crowd’
How an individual responds can be a matter of taste.

11. Picasso (1907) Demoiselles d’Avignon
Met with shock and outrage at the time.
Now considered to be one of Picasso's greatest works.
It caused a revolution in the development of modern art.

12. Igor Stravinsky The Rite of Spring (1913)
When this ballet opened in Paris in 1914 it was booed off the stage because its unique form (rhythm, melody and harmony) gave it a strained quality. The dancers and the music totally shocked audiences more accustomed to the demure conventions of classical ballet.
However, it caused a revolution in modern music and since that time has been recognized by critics and audiences as a musical work of art.
Previous pieces were favorably received by the audience.

13. What is Good Art? Art can be appreciated from many perspectives.
Our beliefs about what is good art is often justified using value judgments. Value judgments however are personal, and they involve making an evaluation about something on a scale that can’t be reliably measured.
So how do we evaluate the quality of the work? What makes a work of art good?

14. Some criteria for evaluating good art
What would make a work of art excellent or good in
each of these areas? Which of these perspectives is
the most important?
From the perspective of the creator or creative process.
From a perspective that stresses aesthetics.
From a perspective that stresses its effect on the audience.
From a perspective that stresses the context, what it is about.
From the perspective that shows the personal growth / development of the artist.
Depends on the critic. Some stress the importance of aesthetics – composition, balance, use of color etc

15. 1. Creator
Some critics say to be art the artist needs to intend it to be art.
However we need to know what the artist’s intention was if we are to judge art using this criteria.
What about works intended for some functional purpose such as furniture, buildings, appliances?

16. 2. Aesthetic Form
Depends on the critic. Some stress the importance of aesthetics – composition, balance, use of color etc.
In English the assessment of a commentary stresses the importance of the shape of the work, rhetorical devices used, skill in creating meaning. Similar to the aesthetic judgment of art.
American artist Kenneth Noland – subject is color
Kenneth Noland Across Center 1966

17. 3. Audience
Some critics believe the intention of the artist is irrelevant.
It doesn’t matter if you love it or hate - each member of the audience will have a difference response.
Some works ‘speak’ to a greater audience.
Bomberg, The mud bath
Turner, The lake – Petworth
Learn more about printmaking and see the extraordinary care Turner took to produce the finest prints of his time. You can also experience the scientific experiments with colour which formed a vital background to his work.
See the changes in Turner’s watercolour palette as he travelled across Europe, responding to different light effects, and using newly-developed colours and paints.

18. What is Hirst’s intention?
Damien Hirst (1965) is an English artist. Many people have difficulty responding to his work.
What is Hirst’s intention?
Intention to portray death. He became famous for a series in which dead animals (including a shark, a sheep and a cow) are preserved—sometimes having been dissected—in formaldehyde.

19. What was Warhol’s intention?
Andy Warhol (1928 –1987), was an American artist and a central figure in the movement known as Pop art.
What was Warhol’s intention?
Intention – produce art that can be mass produced, commercial art

20. 4. Context
Some critics think how art portrays the real world, society, record of events is important.
In literature and performing arts – how people behave and feel, their strengths and weaknesses is considered important.
Guernica (1937) Pablo Picasso's Spanish Civil War

21. 5. Growth How the artist grows over two years is important in IB art.
All artists grow - through the process of asking questions and conclusions they can achieve something new through an image.
Artists in chosen for museums have demonstrated growth in their work.
Demonstrating growth is a lengthy process.
When a teacher at my old school was looking for a gallery to exhibit her work, the gallery owner wouldn't even look at her until she could show then 150 works demonstrating her growth on a particular theme.
American artist Jackson Pollack’s work should considerable growth over 10 years.
Exhibition of Pollock's work from 1938 to

22. Jackson Pollock, 1942
Early typical works

23. Jackson Pollock,
His work grew into his well known drip or poured paintings
1948

24. Jackson Pollock, 1953
And then changed again. . .

25. Link to Ethics
Guernica (1937) Pablo Picasso Spanish Civil War
“ The world has changed since Picasso painted that first political masterpiece, but it has not necessarily grown easier. We are near the end of a tumultuous century that has witnessed both the best and worst of human endeavor. Peace spreads in one region as genocidal fury rages in another. Unprecedented wealth coexists with terrible depravation, as a quarter of the world remains mired in poverty.”
Kofi Annan, 1998

26. Among all the arts – paintings, plays, novels, poems, dance some artists’ intention is to invite the audience to make value judgments concerning right and wrong human actions.
These works praise, condemn, counsel, declare and imply that people should act or not act in particular ways.
These art works force us to think about what it means to be good, what we should do or not do, how do we justify our moral decisions

27. Ben Shahn was born in Lithuania in 1898
Ben Shahn was born in Lithuania in His family emigrated to America in Shahn had strong socialist views and his art (paintings, photographs, lithographs) often referred to cases of social injustice like war, slavery, executions, poverty, imprisonment.
The Cotton Picker,1935. Photograph
WWII poster(1942)
Cotton Picker
For All These Rights We've Just Begun to Fight/Register/Vote, Lithograph.

28. Conclusion
In the arts the role of the critic is to look closely at the work; however there is not a single set of criteria for judging what is art and what is good art, nor need there be. This can lead to much discussion and debate among artists -- and TOK students!
The strength of the arts is that it provides us with different views allowing us to create knowledge through an appreciation of different perspectives.
On the right is a landscape painting from a Chinese artist and on the left a landscape painting from a European artist both of the British lake district painted at the same time (no details of the artists were available and I couldn’t find colored copy of Chinese painting).
Same scene, same time, one artist European, the other Chinese. Which is which?

29. Final thoughts . . .
Challenge yourself to think about the arts and allow yourself to reflect on how it offers you different perspectives towards knowing.
We will talk again after Spring Awakenings! Even if you don’t personally like a piece of art/drama piece/music piece, we will reflect on what the artist is trying to convey.