Search results
Definition. A work of art in the visual arts is a physical two- or three- dimensional object that is professionally determined or otherwise considered to fulfill a primarily independent aesthetic function. A singular art object is often seen in the context of a larger art movement or artistic era, such as: a genre, aesthetic convention, culture ...
- Introduction
- Representational Theories of Art
- Formalism
- Expression
- The Aesthetic Attitude
- The Institutional Theory of Art
- Anti-Essentialism
- Conclusion
- References
- Further Reading
George Dickie’s (1974) “What is Art? An Institutional Analysis” begins by surveying historical attempts to define art according to necessary and sufficient conditions. As such, it would seem to serve as a useful point of departure to the subject of this chapter. However, reading this essay today, with knowledge of the various challenges to classifi...
The words “representation” or “imitation” generally signify philosophical theories of art which, if not directly, can be traced back to the work of Plato (424/423–348/347 BCE) and Aristotle (384-322 BCE). Following Plato, such theories suggest art is essentially mimetic, meaning its primary objective is to represent an exterior and more authentic r...
Throughout modernism, critics have consistently correlated form with aesthetic value mediated by judgments of taste. Clement Greenberg considered the aesthetic to be a test of whether a given practice qualified as art. His early text “Avant-Garde and Kitsch” (1939) was a defence of taste (high culture) against kitsch, or culture generated out of ma...
If we define art according to its expressivity, we immediately have to contend with the diversity of practices people have considered expressive. For example, the colour harmonies of Wassily Kandinsky’s abstract compositions and Stuart Brisley’s visceral performances are obviously very different types of art practice, but both artists describe thei...
Theories of “aesthetic attitude” are less concerned with isolating essential characteristics of artworks, than with describing a certain state of receptivity or the conditions of spectatorship which make the experience of art possible. According to these theories, to attend to art properly we must enact a special kind of distancing, or “disinterest...
This chapter opened by discussing Dickie’s (1974) “What is Art? An Institutional Theory of Art.” Alongside Arthur Danto’s “The Artworld” (1964), these two texts outline an “institutional theory of art.” For Danto, “The Artworld” describes an enclosed and self-reproducing system of institutions, discourses, critics, publishers, and artists, all of w...
Representation, formalism, expression, aesthetic attitude, and institutionality each constitute dimensions of art practice, but they do violence to the heterogeneity of art practice when we make them function as art’s necessary and sufficient conditions. To traverse the impasse, we might address the question differently, by asking what variable con...
From narrow definitions of art based on representation, form, expression, or residing in a specific aesthetic attitude or institutional framework, we have developed a position that insists upon such criteria as mutable and historically contingent. This contingency is revealed by both careful philosophical reading and the agency of contemporary artw...
Aristotle. (335 BCE) 1996. Poetics. Translated by Malcolm Heath. London and New York: Penguin. Bell, Clive. (1914) 2002. “The Aesthetic Hypothesis.” In Art in Theory 1900–2000: An Anthology of Changing Ideas, edited by Charles Harrison and Paul Wood, 107–110. Oxford: Blackwell. Barthes, Roland. (1971) 1977. Image, Music, Text. New York: Hill and Wa...
Brunette, Peter, and David Wills, eds. 1994. Deconstruction and the Visual Arts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cazeaux, Clive, ed. 2000. The Continental Aesthetics Reader. London: Routledge. Foster, Hal, Rosalind Krauss, Yve-Alain Bois, and Benjamin H.D Buchloh. 2004. Art Since 1900: Modernism, Antimodernism and Postmodernism. London: Tham...
Accessed 12 November 2024. Art, a visual object or experience consciously created through an expression of skill or imagination. The term ‘art’ encompasses diverse media such as painting, sculpture, printmaking, drawing, decorative arts, photography, and installation. Learn more about art in this article.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
WORK OF ART definition: 1. an object made by an artist of great skill, especially a painting, drawing, or statue: 2. an…. Learn more.
Oct 12, 2024 · The meaning of WORK OF ART is a product of one of the fine arts; especially : a painting or sculpture of high artistic quality. How to use work of art in a sentence.
Britannica Dictionary definition of WORK OF ART. [count] 1. : something that is made by an artist : a painting, sculpture, etc., that is created to be beautiful or to express an important idea or feeling. a beautiful work of art. 2. : something that is attractive and skillfully made. The wedding cake was a real work of art.
Oct 23, 2007 · When fully spelled out, the definition is disjunctive: x is a work of art if and only if x is a work belonging to art 1 or x is a work belonging to art 2 or x is a work belonging to art 3 …. Most of the explanatory work is done by the theories of the individual arts, since, given the assumption that every artwork belongs to at least one art, possession of theories of the individual arts ...
People also ask
What does work of Art mean?
What is an example of a work of Art?
What does art mean?
Are art works based on physical objects?
What makes a piece of Art an art?
What does oeuvre mean in art?
