Art Introduction

Art (or the creative arts) commonly refers to the act and process of making material works (or artworks) which, from concept to creation, hold a fidelity to the creative impulse. Art is a broad term, which may be interpreted in different ways, often relating to creativity, aesthetics and generation of emotion.

The creative arts denotes a collection of disciplines whose principal (or sole) purpose is, compelled by a personal drive, to create material works which echo or reflecting a message, mood, and symbology for the viewer to interpret. Ergo art is work distinct from creative work that is driven by necessity (ie. vocation), by biological drive (i.e. procreation), or (in art-purist contexts) by any undisciplined pursuit of recreation.

Hence the term 'art' may be taken to include forms as diverse as prose writing, poetry, dance, acting, music, sculpture and painting. However, the term 'art' most commonly refers to the visual arts- in particular painting, sculpture, drawing, engraving, conceptual art and installation art.

These tend to be regarded as the 'fine arts', whereas furniture, industrial design, graphic design and others come under the umbrella of applied art, although they feature in several 'museums of art' and indeed 'histories of art'.

Characteristics Of Art

There follow some generally accepted characteristics of art; after this there is some lengthier discussion of several of those facets perceived as universal or central to art :

w Encourages an intuitive understanding rather than a rational understanding,    as, for example, with an article in a scientific journal.
w Was created with the intention of evoking such an understanding, or an    attempt at such an understanding, in the audience.
w Was created with no other purpose or function other than to be itself (a     radical, "pure art"definition).
w Elusive, in that the work may communicate on many different levels of    appreciation one may take the example of Gericault's Raft of the Medusa, in the    case of which special knowledge concerning the shipwreck the painting depicts    is not a prerequisite to appreciating it, but allows the appreciation of Gericault's    political intentions in the piece.
w In relation to the above, the piece may offer itself to many different     interpretations, or, though it superficially depicts a mundane event or object,     invites reflection upon elevated themes.
w Demonstrates a high level of ability or fluency within a medium; this    characteristic might be considered a point of contention, since many modern    artists (most notably, conceptual artists) do not themselves create the works    they conceive, or do not even create the work in a conventional, demonstrative    sense (one might think of Tracey Emin's controversial My Bed).
w The conferral of a particularly appealing or aesthetically satisfying structure or    form upon an original set of unrelated, passive constituents.

Art Criticism

Art criticism is the study and evaluation of art. This criticism usually involves the use of aesthetics or the philosophy of beauty although there are other techniques. Part of the purpose of art criticism is to have a rational basis for the appreciation of art and avoid subjective opinions of taste but this is not always achieved.

Art critics have probably existed for as long as there has been art and some people may argue that art is pointless without criticism. Usually though art criticism refers to a systematic study of art performed by people dedicated to that task rather than personal opinion.

Throughout history wealthy patrons have been able to employ people to evaluate art for them in jobs similar to the art critic but it's probable that only from the 19th century onwards criticism had developed formal methods and became a more common vocation.

The variety of artistic movements, particularly in the late 19th and 20th century, means that art criticism is frequently divided into different disciplines, frequently using very different criteria for their judgements. The most common division in the field of criticism is between historical criticism and evaluation - really a form of art history - and contemporary criticism of the new work of living artists. Though it has been said that art criticism is a much lower risk activity than making art, opinions of current art is always liable to drastic corrections with the passage of time. Critics of the past are often held up to ridicule for either favoring artists now debunked (like the academic painters of the late 19th C.), or debunking artists now venerated (like the early work of the Impressionists).

Some of the art movements themselves were named in a spirit of disparagement by critics, with the name later adopted as a sort of badge of honor by the artists
themselves; see "Impressionism" and "Cubism", the original critic being forgotten.

Artists have often had an uneasy relationship with their critics. The artist usually needs positive opinions from the critic for their work to be viewed and purchased but it may be some time before a new form of art is properly understood and appreciated. Some critics are unable to adapt to new movements in art and allow their opinions to override their objectivity, resulting in inappropriately dated critique. John Ruskin famously compared one of James Whistler's paintings to "flinging a pot of paint in the public's face".

Some artists, however, owe their reputations to being championed by a particular critic, as in the relationship between Clement Greenberg and Jackson Pollock.
Other artists, long dead, were brought back from obscurity by the efforts of a particular critic, as was the case with Vermeer, rediscovered in the 19th C. by Thore, and Caravaggio.

Criticism usually takes place in books, magazines and newspapers and more recently on television and the internet.

Differences In Defining Art

Definitions of art and aesthetic arguments usually proceed from one of several possible perspectives. Art may be defined by the intention of the artist as in the writings of Dewey. Art may be seen as being in the response/emotion of the viewer as Tolstoy claims. In Danto's view, it can be defined as a character of the item itself or as a function of an object's context.

Plato

For Plato, art is a pursuit whose adherents are not to be trusted; given that their productions imitate the sensory world (itself an imitation of the divine world of forms)
art necessarily is an imitation of an imitation, and thus is hopelessly far from the source of the truth. Plato, it may be noted, barred artists from access to his ideal city,
in his Republic.

Aristotle

Aristotle saw art in less of a bad light; though he shared Plato's poor opinion of it, he nevertheless thought that art might serve the purpose of emotional catharsis.
That is, by witnessing the sufferings and celebrations of actors onstage onlookers might vicariously experience these same feelings themselves, and thereby purge
such negative feelings.

Institutional Definition

Many people's opinions of what art is would fall inside a relatively small range of accepted standards, or "institutional definition of art" (George Dickie 1974).
This derives from education and other social factors. Most people did not consider the depiction of a Brillo Box or a store-bought urinal to be art until Andy Warhol and Marcel Duchamp (respectively) placed them in the context of art (i.e., the art gallery), which then provided the association of these objects with the values that define art (Although, strictly speaking, Warhol's artwork was not an actual Brillo box but an exact replica of one - so it met the traditional criterionof skill at the very least).

Most viewers of these objects initially rejected such associations, because the objects did not, themselves, meet the accepted criteria. The objects needed to be absorbed into the general consensus of what art is before they achieved the near-universal acceptance as art in the contemporary era.

Once accepted and viewed with a fresh eye, the smooth, white surfaces of Duchamp's urinal are strikingly similar to classical marble sculptural forms, whether the artist intended it or not. This type of recontextualizing provides the same spark of connection expected from anytraditionally created art. It should be noted, however, that Duchamps act might be as readily interpreted as a demonstration of the (not always beneficial) power of artistic institutions, rather than the universal art potentially inherent in all objects.

The placement of an object in an artistic context is not taken as a universal standard of art, but is a common characteristic of conceptual art, prevalent since the 1960s; notably, the Stuckist art movement criticises this tendency of recent art.