art appreciation essay conclusion

Essay on Art

500 words essay on art.

Each morning we see the sunshine outside and relax while some draw it to feel relaxed. Thus, you see that art is everywhere and anywhere if we look closely. In other words, everything in life is artwork. The essay on art will help us go through the importance of art and its meaning for a better understanding.

What is Art?

For as long as humanity has existed, art has been part of our lives. For many years, people have been creating and enjoying art.  It expresses emotions or expression of life. It is one such creation that enables interpretation of any kind.

It is a skill that applies to music, painting, poetry, dance and more. Moreover, nature is no less than art. For instance, if nature creates something unique, it is also art. Artists use their artwork for passing along their feelings.

Thus, art and artists bring value to society and have been doing so throughout history. Art gives us an innovative way to view the world or society around us. Most important thing is that it lets us interpret it on our own individual experiences and associations.

Art is similar to live which has many definitions and examples. What is constant is that art is not perfect or does not revolve around perfection. It is something that continues growing and developing to express emotions, thoughts and human capacities.

Importance of Art

Art comes in many different forms which include audios, visuals and more. Audios comprise songs, music, poems and more whereas visuals include painting, photography, movies and more.

You will notice that we consume a lot of audio art in the form of music, songs and more. It is because they help us to relax our mind. Moreover, it also has the ability to change our mood and brighten it up.

After that, it also motivates us and strengthens our emotions. Poetries are audio arts that help the author express their feelings in writings. We also have music that requires musical instruments to create a piece of art.

Other than that, visual arts help artists communicate with the viewer. It also allows the viewer to interpret the art in their own way. Thus, it invokes a variety of emotions among us. Thus, you see how essential art is for humankind.

Without art, the world would be a dull place. Take the recent pandemic, for example, it was not the sports or news which kept us entertained but the artists. Their work of arts in the form of shows, songs, music and more added meaning to our boring lives.

Therefore, art adds happiness and colours to our lives and save us from the boring monotony of daily life.

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Conclusion of the Essay on Art

All in all, art is universal and can be found everywhere. It is not only for people who exercise work art but for those who consume it. If there were no art, we wouldn’t have been able to see the beauty in things. In other words, art helps us feel relaxed and forget about our problems.

FAQ of Essay on Art

Question 1: How can art help us?

Answer 1: Art can help us in a lot of ways. It can stimulate the release of dopamine in your bodies. This will in turn lower the feelings of depression and increase the feeling of confidence. Moreover, it makes us feel better about ourselves.

Question 2: What is the importance of art?

Answer 2: Art is essential as it covers all the developmental domains in child development. Moreover, it helps in physical development and enhancing gross and motor skills. For example, playing with dough can fine-tune your muscle control in your fingers.

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Art Appreciation, Essay Example

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Works of visual art that are of different styles and even different mediums still maintain a commonality in basic elements and principles. The basic elements and principles of art are often referred to as aesthetics. The following examination of the way that basic aesthetics extend across individual themes and styles involves examination of three works of art, each distinct in theme and type from the other. The three works are: “Autumn Aglow” by James Scoppertone, “Freestyle” by Anton Arkhipov, and “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse” by Gib Singleton. The three paintings represent three separate styles, as well as three separate themes. That said, each of the works relies on the use fundamental elements of composition and on similar fundamentals of the theory and practice of the visual arts.

To begin to compare the three works in regard to both differences of style and theme and similarity of fundamentals, a definition of elements and principles is needed. The following examination will proceed with a survey of the artistic elements elements of each work. A survey of the principles of art that underlie the three works will follow. Five elements of art will be discussed and five principles of art will be discussed after which the three works will be compared with one another and the common elements and principles. The examination of the three works in regard to the elements of art begins by defining the following five elements, as suggested by Herberholz: “line, color, shape/form, texture and value” (Herberholz). These elements are present in all three of the works under discussion no matter how varied the three works may prove to be in technique, theme, or medium.

The first work under examination is “Autumn Aglow” by James Scoppertone. This work is a 48 x 36 painting created with oil on canvas and is currently on display at the Galerie Zuger in Dallas Texas. In this painting the elements of art are brought into common function under the general guidelines of Impressionism. Because Impressionism moves away from a strictly realistic depiction of subjects, Scoppertone’s vision of a wooded lane in autumn uses line, color, and shape in an expressive rather than realistic way. In Impressionism, as in Abstract art, “the sheer amount of reflection devoted to color sometimes far exceeds the attention devoted to line and composition” (Barasch 320). However, the most important elements in the painting are value and texture. The interplay of light and color in the leaves and in the foreground road distinguish this work as Impressionistic. The shadings of color (value) combine with the texture of the brushstrokes and interplay of color to create the feeling of the outdoors.

By contrast, in “Freestyle” by Anton Arkhipov, the use of the elements of art is directed at creating a surrealistic, rather than Impressionistic image. This work is a 65 x 45 oil on canvas currently on display at the Summit Galerie in Breckenridge, Colorado. In this painting, the use of line is more important in some ways than the use of value or texture. Color in the painting is expressive rather than realistic, but the primary agent of emotion and feeling in the work is the use of line. The two skiers are so awkwardly close and intertwined that the contrast between the idea of balance and chaos is expressed in a powerful way. The shapes that are present in and around the figures are expressive in an abstract, geometrical way, just as the overall form of the painting is to pit the idea of geometrical perfection against human clumsiness. This contrast, expressed by form, line, color, texture, and value indicates a theme of humanity’s estrangement from the harmony of nature and the longing to return to balance.

Extending a similar theme of disharmony, Gib Singelton’s “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse” is a Biblically themed bronze sculpture exhibited at the Masters Gallery in Vail Colorado. This work depicts a scene from the Book of Revelations. As such, it is the most realistic work even though it depicts a mythological theme. The use of line in this work is used to create a sense of motion and speed, while color is muted to earth tones of muted bronze and orange. The texture of the pace is very important because it is three-dimensional, heavy, and solid as befits a prophesy of doom. The value of the colors is significant because they are lowered to the level of gloom. The shape and form of the work expresses the interconnectedness between the four symbols of destruction and the earth they are sent to destroy. The theme of this work is, obviously, much darker than the two paintings under discussion, but its tone and expression rests on the same shared set of expressive elements.

Just as each of the three works shares basic elements of expression, they also share a set of principles. The principles that are common to the works are “balance, emphasis, proportion, movement [….] and unity” (Herberholz). These principles help to define each of the three works despite their obvious differences in medium, technique, and theme. In other words, just as the elements of expression were shown to be commonly held in each of the works, the basic principles are also present.

For example, in Scoppertone’s “Autumn Aglow,” the sense of balance is harmonious. The trees are in an almost dance-like relation on either side of a smooth and easy road that flows through the painting’s center. The emphasis in the image is placed on the road which invited the viewer to “enter” the balance depicted in the nature-image of the Fall forest. The proportions of the painting are almost natural, but smoothed over to seem more dream-like. The sense of motion in the image is conveyed through the Impressionistic brushstrokes that make all that is show seem in motion with scattered leaves in the air and on the lane. These elements all coalesce in an essential unity of all the aspects of the painting, but especially that which unites the various principles to the theme of the painting which is: nature.

Unity is also present in Arkhipov’s “Freestyle” where the sense of motion and exaggerated proportions of the work are used to convey an overall sense of imbalance. This sense is contrasted against the essential unity of nature for ironic impact. The irony of the painting is the primary way in which the work’s theme is presented. In other words, it is the imbalance and disproportion of the human figures on skis as contrasted with the balanced, natural valley below them that creates the tension and meaning of the work. The contrast between the human world and nature results in a unified expression of theme and image.

Similarly, in Singelton’s “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse” a sense of irony is also generated through the use of the principles of composition. In this work, balance is present and is contrasted fro dramatic effect with the sense of motion that is conveyed through the figures. At the same time, the overall unity of the work is conveyed despite its theme of chaos and destruction. This reinforces the unchanging nature of Biblical prophecy and so, the emphasis of the work is on the simultaneous expression of heaviness and speed. It is as though the horsemen are about to trample the observer.

Although the viewer is invited to participate in each of the three works, a comparison of the works shows that the themes imparted to the viewer are vastly different in each of the three. In each case, there is a connection between technique, medium, and theme that allows the underlying elements and principles to be used for various effects. “Autumn Aglow” by Scoppertone is an affirmative vision of nature and the potential of man’s harmonious relationship with natural world. It is suitably painted with an Impressionistic technique which lends it a depth of unity in theme and image. The way that the elements of composition are used in this painting is to emphasize the role of light and color and the influence of value and texture while letting the “constrictive” elements of form and line be diminished. This also ties to athematic statement made in the painting regarding nature: that it is based not on restrictive line and form but on feeling and freedom and on the interaction between colors and light.

The feeling for nature that is present in Arkhipov’s “Freestyle” is slightly darker and is presented in a stylized technique that emphasizes form, proportion, and imbalance to create an ironic them about man’s disharmony with nature. Color is expressive and form and line are used to create contrast in this work. Essentially the painting aims to gently criticize the modern world with a reminder that human folly is often a consequence of trying to master the natural world. Singleton’s “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse” extends this disharmony to overwhelmingly dark and tragic proportions. The way that the disharmony is shown is to diminish the role of color and decrease the value of expressive color to only those which indicate sadness and gloom. Furthermore, motion is contrasted with the heaviness of the figures to suggest immovable fate. A sense of dramatic urgency is created by the sculptures proportions which are realistic but stylized to an almost mythical level. The impact of the sculpture is to personify a Biblical symbolism in one of the least expected ways: cast in bronze to achieve a feeling of revelation that mirrors the theme of the work.

Taken together, the three works show a “degenration” of the harmony between human imagination and the natural world. In my opinion, Scoppertone’s work lives up to its billing of being “infused with an intensely dramatic sense of color” (Scoppertone). Arkhipov’s “Freestyle” seemed to me to be refreshingly ironic and “free of any political or popular trends” (Arkhipov). The sculpture of “The Four Horseman of the Apocalypse” was my least favorite of the pieces. This was due to the fact that the realistic depiction of Biblical symbols simply seemed to be a weak combination . That said, I do agree that “Singleton lends a very human vulnerability to his otherwise divine subjects” (Singleton). This is something that any artist should attempt to do, although it is not as easily quantified as the elements and principles just examined.

Works Cited

Adelstein,Edie. Review: Gib Singleton and Earl Biss at the FAC. 8-12-2010; Colorado Springs Independant Online ; accessed 3-14-12; http://www.csindy.com/IndyBlog/archives/2010/08/12/review-gib-singleton-and-earl-biss-at-the-fac

Arkhipov, Anton. “Bio” www.aarkstudio.com; access 3-13-12 ; www.aarkstudio.com/Bio.htm

Barasch, Moshe. Modern Theories of Art . New York: New York University Press, 1990. .

Herberholz, Barbara. “. When We Review the Principles of Art.” Arts & Activities Nov. 2010: 15+.

Singleton, Gib. “About.” www.gibsingleton.com; accessed 3-15-12; http://www.gibsingleton.com/aboutgib.html

Scoppertone, James. “An American Impressionist” www.scoppettone.com; accessed 3-15-12; http://www.scoppettone.com/About.html

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1.1: What Is Art Appreciation?

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• Evergreen Valley College via ASCCC Open Educational Resources Initiative

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What Is Art Appreciation?

Appreciation of the visual arts goes beyond staring at a painting hanging on the wall of a museum—art is in everything and everywhere you look. Opening your eyes to the world of art is essential in understanding the world around you. Art is more than pretentious museums; only a few enter and comprehend. Instead, art appreciation is:

• Gaining the knowledge to understand the art.
• Acquire the art methods and materials to discuss art verbally or by the written word.
• Ability to identify the movements from ancient cultures to today's contemporary art.

Learning how to appreciate art is a necessary cultural foundation enabling people to critically analyze art, art forms, and how cultures used art. All it takes to understand the art is just to look!

Art appreciation centers on the ability to view art throughout history, focusing on the cultures and the people, and how art developed in the specific periods. It is difficult to understand art without understanding the culture, their use of materials, and a sense of beauty. Art is conveyed by the simple act of creating art for art's sake. Every person is born with the innate desire to create art, and similar to other professions, training is essential in honing skills to produce art. Art education broadens a person's comprehension, development, and visions of art. Art brings an understanding of diversity, how people lived in the past, and connects the issues concerning contemporary life and art today.

The history of the world is similarly the history of art, continually intertwined. For millions of years, as humans roamed the earth, evolution, and environment shaped many different cultures depending on location, weather, natural resources, and food. These cultures formed the foundation of all art today. Art appreciation analyzes art using the methods and materials, allowing people to make connections to the context of art and the interactions of societies.

It is difficult to understand the art without understanding the culture.

Art Appreciation. Inspiration of an Artwork Essay

Contemporary renaissance, emotions between inspiration and presentation, works of art, works cited.

The inspiration from the works of the Italian Renaissance artist such as Leonardo and Botticelli brought the idea of works that can fit within the same context. The idea was supplemented with new elements which are combining works that are represented on different mediums to create a certain context. In that sense, I would like to thank each of the following galleries, museums, and individuals for their kind support in providing the works for the time of the gallery:

• The government of France and the Louvre Museum.
• Uffizi Gallery in Florence.
• Iona Rozeal Brown.
• Kara Walker
• Saatchi Gallery
• Hirshhorn Museum and sculpture garden

It was always interesting to ling the inspiration of an artwork and the way it was represented. In that sense the gallery is attempting to establish such a link by titling the works in such manner. In that way a general context can be observed through the artist’s inspiration. Taking the work of Birth of Venus by Sandro Botticelli, where the inspiration might be stated as Poliziano’s poem of the Giostra, (“Birth of Venus by Sandro Botticelli”) and the representation can be stated as grace, thus the title within the gallery will be poetry and grace. Accordingly, the rest of the artworks will be titled in such manner giving the exhibition a mutual context, where the emotions of the visitors should differ according to the established title. Looking at another exhibit, Memory of My Youth in the mountains by Joseph Beuys, the inspiration is self-explanatory from the title, whereas the representation can be summarized as stone, resulting in a new title the memory of a stone.

In that sense, it can be seen that the emotions can be changed observing, for example, Andy Warhol’s commercial self-portrait within the context of monitorial pop culture, and Untitled by Wangechi Mutu within the context of disjoint Africa and glamour fashion(“Untitled by Wangechi Mutu”) Such implementation unites works from different epochs and different styles within a single frame outlining how each artists’ inspiration was translated into the representation of the work using different types of artistic works, different styles, and different materials.

The exhibition is an attempt to look at familiar works by popular artists from a different perspective. With the main emphasis that art is first of all a matter of an idea that uses different forms for aesthetic delivery.

• Artist: Leonardo da Vinci
• Title of Work: Mona Lisa
• Year: 1503-1506
• Medium: Oil on poplar wood
• Location: Louvre Museum

• Artist: Sandro Botticelli
• Title of work: The birth of venus

• Medium: Oil on canvas
• Location: Uffizi Gallery in Florence
• Artist: Iona Rezeal Brown
• Title: a3 blackface #62

• Medium: acrylic on paper
• Location: Courtesy of the artist
• Artist: Kara Walker
• Title: Untitled

• Medium: Gouache, paper collage on wood panels Location: Courtesy of the author
• Artist: Wangechi Mutu
• Title:Untitled

• Medium: Mixed media on mylar
• Location: Saatchi Gallery
• Artist: Any Warhol
• Title: Self Portrait

• Location: Hirshhorn Museum and sculpture garden
• Medium: Acrylic and silkscreen on canvas
• Location: Courtesy of Mrs. Vera G.
• Artist: Mona Hatoum
• Title: Entrails Carpet

• Medium: silicone rubber
• Artist: Willem de Kooning
• Title: Woman/Verso: Untitled

• Medium: Oil and enamel on fiberboard
• Location: Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
• Artist: Joseph Beuys
• Title: Memory of My Youth in the mountains

• Medium: Tallow, wax, wood, metal, oil, and carpenter’s rule
• Artist: James Van Der Zee
• Title: Jean Michel

“Andy Warhol”. 2009. Works of Art. Web.

“Birth of Venus by Sandro Botticelli”. 2008. TheBirthofVenus.com. Web.

“Iona Rozeal Brown”. 2009. Spelman College Virtual Museum. Web.

“James Van Der Zee”. 2006. The African American Registry. Web.

“Joseph Beuys- Memory of My Youth in the Mountains”. 2009. Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. Web.

“Kara Walker”. 2007. PBS. Web.

“Mona Hatoum: Entrails Carpet, 1995”. 2009. Fabric Workshop. Web.

Vasari, Giorgio. “Leonardo Da Vinci”. Minnesota State University. 2009. .

“Willem De Kooning -Woman/Verso”. 2009. Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. Web.

“Untitled by Wangechi Mutu” . 2009. Web.

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• Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2022, December 2). Art Appreciation. Inspiration of an Artwork. https://ivypanda.com/essays/art-appreciation-inspiration-of-an-artwork/

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IvyPanda . "Art Appreciation. Inspiration of an Artwork." December 2, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/art-appreciation-inspiration-of-an-artwork/.

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Home — Essay Samples — Arts & Culture — Creativity — My Experience With Art Essay

My Experience with Art Essay

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Published: Mar 5, 2024

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Commection in Art Appreciation

This essay about the profound connection between viewers and artwork in the realm of art appreciation. It highlights how empathy and shared experiences serve as the cornerstone of understanding and interpreting artistic expression. Through the exploration of individual and collective engagement with art, the essay underscores the transformative power of human connection in fostering unity and belonging within the artistic community. Additionally, it discusses the role of technology in revolutionizing the way people interact with art, emphasizing the importance of virtual platforms in facilitating global dialogue and accessibility. Overall, the essay celebrates the intertwining threads of empathy, shared experience, and digital innovation that enrich the art appreciation process.

How it works

Art appreciation transcends the mere act of viewing; it is a profound journey of connection between the observer and the artwork, akin to unraveling the intricate threads of a tapestry. This connection, woven from the fabric of empathy and shared experience, forms the foundation of our understanding and interpretation of artistic expression.

At its core, art appreciation is an exercise in empathy—a willingness to immerse oneself in the artist’s perspective and vision. Each brushstroke, each hue, carries with it a piece of the artist’s soul, inviting viewers to delve into the depths of their creativity and emotion.

Whether admiring the vibrant strokes of a contemporary masterpiece or pondering the delicate lines of a classical sculpture, viewers are drawn into a dialogue with the artwork, engaging in a silent conversation that transcends time and space.

Moreover, the connection forged through art appreciation extends beyond the individual encounter to encompass a collective experience shared amongst viewers. In museums and galleries around the world, strangers from diverse backgrounds come together to contemplate and discuss the beauty and meaning of art. Through this shared engagement, barriers are broken down, and bonds are formed, creating a sense of unity and belonging within the artistic community.

In today’s digital age, technology has further revolutionized the way we connect with and appreciate art. Virtual galleries and online exhibitions allow individuals from all corners of the globe to access and explore artworks with unprecedented ease. Through interactive platforms and social media, people can share their thoughts, interpretations, and experiences, contributing to a global conversation surrounding artistic expression and interpretation.

In conclusion, the connection forged through art appreciation is a testament to the power of human empathy and shared experience. Whether viewing a painting in a museum or scrolling through images on a screen, individuals are united by their collective engagement with the artistic process. As we unravel the intricate threads of artistic expression, we not only gain a deeper understanding of the artist’s vision but also forge connections that transcend boundaries and enrich our lives in profound and unexpected ways.

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By Will Fenstermaker

June 14, 2017

There has never been a time when art critics held more power than during the second half of the twentieth century. Following the Second World War, with the relocation of the world’s artistic epicenter from Paris to New York, a different kind of war was waged in the pages of magazines across the country. As part of the larger “culture wars” of the mid-century, art critics began to take on greater influence than they’d ever held before. For a time, two critics in particular—who began as friends, and remained in the same social circles for much of their lives—set the stakes of the debates surrounding the maturation of American art that would continue for decades. The ideas about art outlined by Clement Greenberg and Harold Rosenberg are still debated today, and the extent to which they were debated in the past has shaped entire movements of the arts. Below are ten works of criticism through which one can trace the mainstreaming of Clement Greenberg’s formalist theory, and how its dismantling led us into institutional critique and conceptual art today.

The American Action Painters

Harold Rosenberg

Harold Rosenberg, a poet who came to art through his involvement with the Artist’s Union and the WPA, was introduced to Jean-Paul Sartre as the “first American existentialist.” Soon, Rosenberg became a contributor to Sartre’s publication in France, for which he first drafted his influential essay. However, when Sartre supported Soviet aggression against Korea, Rosenberg brought his essay to Elaine de Kooning , then the editor of ARTnews , who ran “The American Action Painters” in December, 1952.

RELATED: What Did Harold Rosenberg Do? An Introduction to the Champion of “Action Painting”

Rosenberg’s essay on the emerging school of American Painters omitted particular names—because they’d have been unfamiliar to its original French audience—but it was nonetheless extraordinarily influential for the burgeoning scene of post-WWII American artists. Jackson Pollock claimed to be the influence of “action painting,” despite Rosenberg’s rumored lack of respect for the artist because Pollock wasn’t particularly well-read. Influenced by Marxist theory and French existentialism, Rosenberg conceives of a painting as an “arena,” in which the artist acts upon, wrestles, or otherwise engages with the canvas, in what ultimately amounts to an expressive record of a struggle. “What was to go on the canvas,” Rosenberg wrote, “was not a picture but an event.”

Notable Quote

Weak mysticism, the “Christian Science” side of the new movement, tends … toward easy painting—never so many unearned masterpieces! Works of this sort lack the dialectical tension of a genuine act, associated with risk and will. When a tube of paint is squeezed by the Absolute, the result can only be a Success. The painter need keep himself on hand solely to collect the benefits of an endless series of strokes of luck. His gesture completes itself without arousing either an opposing movement within itself nor the desire in the artist to make the act more fully his own. Satisfied with wonders that remain safely inside the canvas, the artist accepts the permanence of the commonplace and decorates it with his own daily annihilation. The result is an apocalyptic wallpaper.

‘American-Type’ Painting

Clement Greenberg

Throughout the preceding decade, Clement Greenberg, also a former poet, had established a reputation as a leftist critic through his writings with The Partisan Review —a publication run by the John Reed Club, a New York City-centered organization affiliated with the American Communist Party—and his time as an art critic with The Nation . In 1955, The Partisan Review published Greenberg’s “‘American-Type’ Painting,” in which the critic defined the now-ubiquitous term “abstract expressionism.”

RELATED: What Did Clement Greenberg Do? A Primer on the Powerful AbEx Theorist’s Key Ideas

In contrast to Rosenberg’s conception of painting as a performative act, Greenberg’s theory, influenced by Clive Bell and T. S. Eliot, was essentially a formal one—in fact, it eventually evolved into what would be called “formalism.” Greenberg argued that the evolution of painting was one of historical determinacy—that ever since the Renaissance, pictures moved toward flatness, and the painted line moved away from representation. Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso were two of the landmarks of this view. Pollock, who exhibited his drip paintings in 1951, freeing the line from figuration, was for Greenberg the pinnacle of American Modernism, the most important artist since Picasso. (Pollock’s paintings exhibited in 1954, with which he returned to semi-representational form, were regarded by Greenberg as a regression. This lead him to adopt Barnett Newman as his new poster-boy, despite the artist’s possessing vastly different ideas on the nature of painting. For one, Greenberg mostly ignored the Biblical titles of Newman’s paintings.)

Greenberg’s formalist theories were immensely influential over the subsequent decades. Artforum in particular grew into a locus for formalist discourse, which had the early effect of providing an aesthetic toolkit divorced from politic. Certain curators of the Museum of Modern Art, particularly William Rubin, Kirk Varnedoe, and to an extent Alfred Barr are credited for steering the museum in an essentially formalist direction. Some painters, such as Frank Stella , Helen Frankenthaler , and Kenneth Noland, had even been accused of illustrating Greenberg’s theories (and those of Michael Fried, a prominent Greenbergian disciple) in attempt to embody the theory, which was restrictive in its failure to account for narrative content, figuration, identity, politics, and more. In addition, Greenberg’s theories proved well-suited for a burgeoning art market, which found connoisseurship an easy sell. (As the writer Mary McCarthy said, “You can’t hang an event on your wall.”) In fact, the dominance of the term “abstract expressionism” over “action painting,” which seemed more applicable to Pollock and Willem de Kooning than any other members of the New York School, is emblematic of the influence of formalist discourse.

The justification for the term, “abstract expressionist,” lies in the fact that most of the painters covered by it took their lead from German, Russian, or Jewish expressionism in breaking away from late Cubist abstract art. But they all started from French painting, for their fundamental sense of style from it, and still maintain some sort of continuity with it. Not least of all, they got from it their most vivid notion of an ambitious, major art, and of the general direction in which it had to go in their time.

Barbara Rose

Like many critics in the 1950s and 60s, Barbara Rose had clearly staked her allegiance to one camp or the other. She was, firmly, a formalist, and along with Fried and Rosalind Krauss is largely credited with expanding the theory beyond abstract expressionist painting. By 1965, however, Rose recognized a limitation of the theory as outlined by Greenberg—that it was reductionist and only capable of account for a certain style of painting, and not much at all in other mediums.

RELATED: The Intellectual Origins Of Minimalism

In “ABC Art,” published in Art in America where Rose was a contributing editor, Rose opens up formalism to encompass sculpture, which Greenberg was largely unable to account for. The simple idea that art moves toward flatness and abstraction leads, for Rose, into Minimalism, and “ABC Art” is often considered the first landmark essay on Minimalist art. By linking the Minimalist sculptures of artists like Donald Judd to the Russian supremacist paintings of Kasimir Malevich and readymades of Duchamp, she extends the determinist history that formalism relies on into sculpture and movements beyond abstract expressionism.

I do not agree with critic Michael Fried’s view that Duchamp, at any rate, was a failed Cubist. Rather, the inevitability of a logical evolution toward a reductive art was obvious to them already. For Malevich, the poetic Slav, this realization forced a turning inward toward an inspirational mysticism, whereas for Duchamp, the rational Frenchman, it meant a fatigue so enervating that finally the wish to paint at all was killed. Both the yearnings of Malevich’s Slavic soul and the deductions of Duchamp’s rationalist mind led both men ultimately to reject and exclude from their work many of the most cherished premises of Western art in favor of an art stripped to its bare, irreducible minimum.

How I Spent My Summer Vacation

Philip Leider

Despite the rhetorical tendency to suggest the social upheaval of the '60s ended with the actual decade, 1970 remained a year of unrest. And Artforum was still the locus of formalist criticism, which was proving increasingly unable to account for art that contributed to larger cultural movements, like Civil Rights, women’s liberation, anti-war protests, and more. (Tellingly, The Partisan Review , which birthed formalism, had by then distanced itself from its communist associations and, as an editorial body, was supportive of American Interventionism in Vietnam. Greenberg was a vocal hawk.) Subtitled “Art and Politics in Nevada, Berkeley, San Francisco, and Utah,” the editor’s note to the September 1970 issue of Artforum , written by Philip Leider, ostensibly recounts a road trip undertaken with Richard Serra and Abbie Hoffman to see Michael Heizer’s Double Negative in the Nevada desert.

RELATED: A City of Art in the Desert: Behind Michael Heizer’s Monumental Visions for Nevada

However, the essay is also an account of an onsetting disillusion with formalism, which Leider found left him woefully unequipped to process the protests that had erupted surrounding an exhibition of prints by Paul Wunderlich at the Phoenix Gallery in Berkeley. Wunderlich’s depictions of nude women were shown concurrently to an exhibition of drawings sold to raise money for Vietnamese orphans. The juxtaposition of a canonical, patriarchal form of representation and liberal posturing, to which the protestors objected, showcased the limitations of a methodology that placed the aesthetic elements of a picture plane far above the actual world in which it existed. Less than a year later, Leider stepped down as editor-in-chief and Artforum began to lose its emphasis on late Modernism.

I thought the women were probably with me—if they were, I was with them. I thought the women were picketing the show because it was reactionary art. To the women, [Piet] Mondrian must be a great revolutionary artist. Abstract art broke all of those chains thirty years ago! What is a Movement gallery showing dumb stuff like this for? But if it were just a matter of reactionary art , why would the women picket it? Why not? Women care as much about art as men do—maybe more. The question is, why weren’t the men right there with them?

Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?

Linda Nochlin

While Artforum , in its early history, had established a reputation as a generator for formalist theory, ARTnews had followed a decidedly more Rosenberg-ian course, emphasizing art as a practice for investigating the world. The January 1971 issue of the magazine was dedicated to “Women’s Liberation, Woman Artists, and Art History” and included an iconoclastic essay by Linda Nochlin titled “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?”

RELATED: An Introduction to Feminist Art

Nochlin notes that it’s tempting to answer the question “why have there been no great women artists?” by listing examples of those overlooked by critical and institutional organizations (a labor that Nochlin admits has great merit). However, she notes, “by attempting to answer it, they tacitly reinforce its negative implications,” namely that women are intrinsically less capable of achieving artistic merit than men. Instead, Nochlin’s essay functions as a critique of art institutions, beginning with European salons, which were structured in such a way as to deter women from rising to the highest echelons. Nochlin’s essay is considered the beginning of modern feminist art history and a textbook example of institutional critique.

There are no women equivalents for Michelangelo or Rembrandt, Delacroix or Cézanne, Picasso or Matisse, or even in very recent times, for de Kooning or Warhol, any more than there are black American equivalents for the same. If there actually were large numbers of “hidden” great women artists, or if there really should be different standards for women’s art as opposed to men’s—and one can’t have it both ways—then what are feminists fighting for? If women have in fact achieved the same status as men in the arts, then the status quo is fine as it is. But in actuality, as we all know, things as they are and as they have been, in the arts as in a hundred other areas, are stultifying, oppressive, and discouraging to all those, women among them, who did not have the good fortune to be born white, preferably middle class and above all, male. The fault lies not in our stars, our hormones, our menstrual cycles, or our empty internal spaces, but in our institutions and our education.

Doctor, Lawyer, Indian Chief

Thomas McEvilley

One of the many extrapolations of Nochlin’s essay is that contemporary museum institutions continue to reflect the gendered and racist biases of preceding centuries by reinforcing the supremacy of specific master artists. In a 1984 Artforum review, Thomas McEvilley, a classicist new to the world of contemporary art, made the case that the Museum of Modern Art in New York served as an exclusionary temple to certain high-minded Modernists—namely, Picasso, Matisse, and Pollock—who, in fact, took many of their innovations from native cultures.

RELATED: MoMA Curator Laura Hoptman on How to Tell a Good Painting From a “Bogus” Painting

In 1984, MoMA organized a blockbuster exhibition. Curated by William Rubin and Kirk Varnedoe, both of whom were avowed formalists, “‘Primitivism’ in 20th Century Art: Affinity of the Tribal and the Modern” collected works by European painters like Paul Gaugin and Picasso with cultural artifacts from Zaire, arctic communities, and elsewhere. McEvilley takes aim at the “the absolutist view of formalist Modernism” in which MoMA is rooted. He argues that the removal tribal artifacts from their contexts (for example, many were ritual items intended for ceremonies, not display) and placement of them, unattributed, near works by European artists, censors the cultural contributions of non-Western civilizations in deference to an idealized European genius.

The fact that the primitive “looks like” the Modern is interpreted as validating the Modern by showing that its values are universal, while at the same time projecting it—and with it MoMA—into the future as a permanent canon. A counter view is possible: that primitivism on the contrary invalidates Modernism by showing it to be derivative and subject to external causation. At one level this show undertakes precisely to coopt that question by answering it before it has really been asked, and by burying it under a mass of information.

Please Wait By the Coatroom

Not content to let MoMA and the last vestiges of formalism off the hook yet, John Yau wrote in 1988 an essay on Wifredo Lam, a Cuban painter who lived and worked in Paris among Picasso, Matisse, Georges Braque, and others. Noting Lam’s many influences—his Afro-Cuban mother, Chinese father, and Yoruba godmother—Yau laments the placement of Lam’s The Jungle near the coatroom in the Museum of Modern Art, as opposed to within the Modernist galleries several floors above. The painting was accompanied by a brief entry written by former curator William Rubin, who, Yau argues, adopted Greenberg’s theories because they endowed him with “a connoisseur’s lens with which one can scan all art.”

RELATED: From Cuba With Love: Artist Bill Claps on the Island’s DIY Art Scene

Here, as with with McEvilley’s essay, Yau illustrates how formalism, as adapted by museum institutions, became a (perhaps unintentional) method for reinforcing the exclusionary framework that Nochlin argued excluded women and black artists for centuries.

Rubin sees in Lam only what is in his own eyes: colorless or white artists. For Lam to have achieved the status of unique individual, he would have had to successfully adapt to the conditions of imprisonment (the aesthetic standards of a fixed tradition) Rubin and others both construct and watch over. To enter this prison, which takes the alluring form of museums, art history textbooks, galleries, and magazines, an individual must suppress his cultural differences and become a colorless ghost. The bind every hybrid American artist finds themselves in is this: should they try and deal with the constantly changing polymorphous conditions effecting identity, tradition, and reality? Or should they assimilate into the mainstream art world by focusing on approved-of aesthetic issues? Lam’s response to this bind sets an important precedent. Instead of assimilating, Lam infiltrates the syntactical rules of “the exploiters” with his own specific language. He becomes, as he says, “a Trojan horse.”

Black Culture and Postmodernism

Cornel West

The opening up of cultural discourse did not mean that it immediately made room for voices of all dimensions. Cornel West notes as much in his 1989 essay “Black Culture and Postmodernism,” in which he argues that postmodernism, much like Modernism before it, remains primarily ahistorical, which makes it difficult for “oppressed peoples to exercise their opposition to hierarchies of power.” West’s position is that the proliferation of theory and criticism that accompanied the rise of postmodernism provided mechanisms by which black culture could “be conversant with and, to a degree, participants in the debate.” Without their voices, postmodernism would remain yet another exclusionary movements.

RELATED: Kerry James Marshall on Painting Blackness as a Noun Vs. Verb

As the consumption cycle of advanced multinational corporate capitalism was sped up in order to sustain the production of luxury goods, cultural production became more and more mass-commodity production. The stress here is not simply on the new and fashionable but also on the exotic and primitive. Black cultural products have historically served as a major source for European and Euro-American exotic interests—interests that issue from a healthy critique of the mechanistic, puritanical, utilitarian, and productivity aspects of modern life.

Minimalism and the Rhetoric of Power

Anna C. Chave

In recent years, formalist analysis has been deployed as a single tool within a more varied approach to art. Its methodology—that of analyzing a picture as an isolated phenomena—remains prevalent, and has its uses. Yet, many of the works and movements that rose to prominence under formalist critics and curators, in no small part because of their institutional acceptance, have since become part of the rearguard rather than the vanguard.

In a 1990 essay for Arts Magazine , Anna Chave analyzes how Minimalist sculpture possesses a “domineering, sometimes brutal rhetoric” that was aligned with “both the American military in Vietnam, and the police at home in the streets and on university campuses across the country.” In particular, Chave is concerned with the way Minimalist sculptures define themselves through a process of negation. Of particular relevance to Chave’s argument are the massive steel sculptures by Minimalist artist Richard Serra.

Tilted Arc was installed in Federal Plaza in lower Manhattan in 1981. Chave describes the work as a “mammoth, perilously tilted steel arc [that] formed a divisive barrier too tall to see over, and a protracted trip to walk around.” She writes, “it is more often the case with Serra that his work doesn’t simply exemplify aggression or domination, but acts it out.” Tilted Arc was so controversial upon its erecting that the General Services Administration, which commissioned the work, held hearings in response to petitions demanding the work be removed. Worth quoting at length, Chave writes:

A predictable defense of Serra’s work was mounted by critics, curators, dealers, collectors, and some fellow artists…. The principle arguments mustered on Serra’s behalf were old ones concerning the nature and function of the avant-garde…. What Rubin and Serra’s other supporters declined to ask is whether the sculptor really is, in the most meaningful sense of the term, an avant-garde artist. Being avant-garde implies being ahead of, outside, or against the dominant culture; proffering a vision that implicitly stands (at least when it is conceived) as a critique of entrenched forms and structures…. But Serra’s work is securely embedded within the system: when the brouhaha over Arc was at its height, he was enjoying a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art…. [The defense’s] arguments locate Serra not with the vanguard but with the standing army or “status quo.” … More thoughtful, sensible, and eloquent testimony at the hearing came instead from some of the uncouth:

My name is Danny Katz and I work in this building as a clerk. My friend Vito told me this morning that I am a philistine. Despite that I am getting up to speak…. I don’t think this issue should be elevated into a dispute between the forces of ignorance and art, or art versus government. I really blame government less because it has long ago outgrown its human dimension. But from the artists I expected a lot more. I didn’t expect to hear them rely on the tired and dangerous reasoning that the government has made a deal, so let the rabble live with the steel because it’s a deal. That kind of mentality leads to wars. We had a deal with Vietnam. I didn’t expect to hear the arrogant position that art justifies interference with the simple joys of human activity in a plaza. It’s not a great plaza by international standards, but it is a small refuge and place of revival for people who ride to work in steel containers, work in sealed rooms, and breathe recirculated air all day. Is the purpose of art in public places to seal off a route of escape, to stress the absence of joy and hope? I can’t believe this was the artistic intention, yet to my sadness this for me has become the dominant effect of the work, and it’s all the fault of its position and location. I can accept anything in art, but I can’t accept physical assault and complete destruction of pathetic human activity. No work of art created with a contempt for ordinary humanity and without respect for the common element of human experience can be great. It will always lack dimension.

The terms Katz associated with Serra’s project include arrogance and contempt, assault, and destruction; he saw the Minimalist idiom, in other words, as continuous with the master discourse of our imperious and violent technocracy.

The End of Art

Arthur Danto

Like Greenberg, Arthur Danto was an art critic for The Nation . However, Danto was overtly critical of Greenberg’s ideology and the influence he wielded over Modern and contemporary art. Nor was he a follower of Harold Rosenberg, though they shared influences, among them the phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Danto’s chief contribution to contemporary art was his advancing of Pop Artists, particularly Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein .

In “The End of Art” Danto argues that society at large determines and accepts art, which no longer progresses linearly, categorized by movements. Instead, viewers each possess a theory or two, which they use to interpret works, and art institutions are largely tasked with developing, testing, and modifying various interpretive methods. In this way, art differs little from philosophy. After decades of infighting regarding the proper way to interpret works of art, Danto essentially sanctioned each approach and the institutions that gave rise to them. He came to call this “pluralism.”

RELATED: What Was the Pictures Generation?

Similarly, in “Painting, Politics, and Post-Historical Art,” Danto makes the case for an armistice between formalism and the various theories that arose in opposition, noting that postmodern critics like Douglas Crimp in the 1980s, who positioned themselves against formalism, nonetheless adopted the same constrictive air, minus the revolutionary beginnings.

Modernist critical practice was out of phase with what was happening in the art world itself in the late 60s and through the 1970s. It remained the basis for most critical practice, especially on the part of the curatoriat, and the art-history professoriat as well, to the degree that it descended to criticism. It became the language of the museum panel, the catalog essay, the article in the art periodical. It was a daunting paradigm, and it was the counterpart in discourse to the “broadening of taste” which reduced art of all cultures and times to its formalist skeleton, and thus, as I phrased it, transformed every museum into a Museum of Modern Art, whatever that museum’s contents. It was the stable of the docent’s gallery talk and the art appreciation course—and it was replaced, not totally but massively, by the postmodernist discourse that was imported from Paris in the late 70s, in the texts of Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Jean Baudrillard, Jean-François Lyotard, and Jacques Lacan, and of the French feminists Hélène Cixous and Luce Irigaray. That is the discourse [Douglas] Crimp internalizes, and it came to be lingua artspeak everywhere. Like modernist discourse, it applied to everything, so that there was room for deconstructive and “archeological” discussion of art of every period.

Editor’s Note: This list was drawn in part from a 2014 seminar taught by Debra Bricker Balken in the MFA program in Art Writing at the School of Visual Arts titled Critical Strategies: Late Modernism/Postmodernism. Additional sources can be found here , here , here (paywall), and here . Also relevant are reviews of the 2008 exhibition at the Jewish Museum, “Action/Abstraction: Pollock, de Kooning, and American Art, 1940–1976,” notably those by Roberta Smith , Peter Schjeldahl , and Martha Schwendener .

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All prints are hinged to a conservation quality, acid-free and lignin-free Alpha Cellulose matboard, using an acid-free linen tape. The mat's surface paper is fade and bleed resistant and is attached to a conservation quality foam-core mounting board that will keep the work safe from deterioration over time. Artworks with a deckled or decorative edges will be floated on the matboard, with acrylic spacers to separate the art from the glazing. All mounting is fully reversible, without any potential damage to the art.

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The Elements of Art Eight tools, infinite expression

All artwork speaks the same language through a vocabulary of eight terms expressed in infinite ways. We all understand the vocabulary of art subconsciously, but recognizing how it’s applied enriches our experience of art and allows for nuanced discussion of artworks and appreciation of the artist's passion and skill. The vocabulary of art is made up of the Formal Elements of Design:  line, shape, form, space, color, texture, motion, and time.

The most basic element of design is the line: a mark with greater length than width, the path traced by a moving point. In mathematics, a line has no width, but in art, lines can be thin, thick, rough or smooth. Lines can convey tremendous emotion, from aggressive zig-zags or tranquil waves to nauseating spirals. Artists can convey confidence in bold lines, or precision with straight lines. 

A shape is formed when lines enclose a space. The edges of the shape are its contour, which can be geometric or organic, open or closed. Like lines, shapes can be expressive, sharp or soft, architecturally rigid or flowing. Simple shapes form a common vocabulary that stretches back millenia, often associated with specific attributes. Roman Architects believed the circle to be divinely perfect, and used it when designing their temples. Triangles were imagined to point to the heavens.   

Form is the real or perceived dimensionality of a shape, expressing length, width, and depth. Spheres, cubes, pyramids are three-dimensional forms, and some of the fundamental building blocks for expression in art. Form can also describe the structure of a work of art. The composition of a painting or the chapters of a book. Form can be used to talk about the arrangement of formal elements that present the whole.

Space is the area between and around objects. In art and design, the space is as important as the forms it surrounds. Space can be two or three dimensional, and is often referred to as negative space. Space holds the objects it contains, providing context. Space is as emotive as lines and shapes, and can create feelings of isolation, claustrofobia, or wide open possibility. 

Color is possibly the most complex tool at the artist's disposal. Color is scientifically defined as the light that reflects off illuminated objects, whose pigmentation absorbs some wavelengths, and the wavelengths that remain enter the eye. The colors we see are part of the visible spectrum: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and indigo, but these colors combine into millions of perceivable colors. To talk about the variations of colors, we use the terms hue, value, and intensity. Hue defines the range the color sits within, like a greenish yellow or a yellowy green. Value is the relative lightness or darkness of the color, and intensity is the relative brightness or dullness of the color.

Texture comes from the latin word texo , meaning 'to weave' and refers to the qualities of a material surface. Texture may be seen and felt in dimensional objects, such as canvas or a marble sculpture, and two-dimensional objects can create the illusion of texture, like a photograph of a rough wooden surface. Texture can be evocative. Smooth objects can feel refined, and rough surfaces may create a gritty, aggressive appearance.

Motion is the movement or change of an object over time. In art motion can be applied to sculpture, called kinetic sculpture , and is a natural element of video and performance art. 

The effect of time on artwork is an oft overlooked element of design. All objects change over time, though in different ways. A stone artifact from 30,000 BCE may be nearly unchanged from the time of its creation, but paintings fade. Time is also part of how we consume art. A book may take weeks to read, and that time creates a different context for the experience than an article read in minutes. Video uses time the same way a painter uses negative space, employing pacing, momentum, and balance over the length of the film.

Reed Enger, "The Elements of Art, Eight tools, infinite expression," in Obelisk Art History , Published June 24, 2017; last modified November 08, 2022, http://www.arthistoryproject.com/essays/the-elements-of-art/.

Is there such a thing as Bad Art?

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The Value of Art

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The Principles of Design

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Art Appreciation Essay

Type of paper: Essay

Topic: Leadership , Athens , Architecture , God , Theology , Greece , Art , Style

Published: 12/11/2019

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Archaic and Hellenistic Styles

Art in Greece went through three main periods after the Dark Ages, which epitomized the geometric style. The Grecian dark ages are usually attributed to around 1000 BC of which not much exists or been researched and hence the name. The three main periods post 7th century BC were the Archaic, immediately after Greece rose from the Dark ages; Classical, during the reign of the Persians leading to the Hellenistic periods which marked the reign of Alexander the Great.

Archaic Style

The Archaic style shows a vast difference from the earlier geometric styles that were classified under the Dark Ages. Although the architecture still came under the Doric order most temples during the archaic period transformed from the original Octastyle of Doric order to Hexastyle architecture. This meant that the Peripteral Colonnade or the outer Portico of the temples were 6:12 along the shorter side as against 8:16 in the Octastyle designs. This style is seen in the Temple of Aphaea in the Grecian Island of Aegina, which is considered one of the classic examples of the archaic period. The inner Naos which usually houses the deity or the prime statue of the temple was divided into a Cella which is the central hall, Pronaos or a portico with a 3 leading to it and balanced by a Ophisthodomos which was similar in style to the Pronaos, but with a wall but no doorway connecting to the Cella. It was mainly created to provide symmetry. This is very characteristic of archaic styles. The Cella or the inner sanctum had two rows of 5 columns with an additional row above it, which connected to the roof. The two rows of columns in the archaic style differ from the original Doric styling, which had a single row of double columns. All the columns except for three were monolithic. All the columns have the Entasis or the slight bulge towards its middle, which was characteristic of the Doric order. The Archaic period was known for its sculpture, which showed a marked transformation from the original geometric and unrealistic styles. The Archaic period was marked by sculptures of Kouros, young male and the Kore, female statues. These were often depicted with a smile, which became known as an archaic smile, devoid of any other emotion. It was known to depict the nobility of man who remained smiling despite all odds. The Temple of Aphaea has Kore statues on the Acroteria or the ornamental elements on the roof.

Hellenistic Style

The Hellenistic style was prevalent from 3 to 5th century BC and followed the reign of Alexander the Great. The architecture and sculpture of the times also reflected the prosperity that Greece enjoyed. The styles got more elaborate and embellishments abounded. Sculpture and expressionism was at its peak at the Hellenistic period. The Temple of Apollo in Didyma, modern day Turkey, is a good example for the study of Hellenistic style. The layout of the temples by the end of the Classical style had become Decastyle, 10 Peripteral columns. We see evidence of that in Temple of Apollo. The columns also got elaborate. All the columns in the Apollo temple belong to the Corinthian order. These followed the slender and elegant styles of the Ionic order. The Columns stood on a base with elaborate votive and floral embellishments in their capital. During the transformation from Classical to the Hellenistic period the Ophisthodomos was discarded and the Adytron or the inner chamber behind the Cella was introduced. The Adytron housed the cult God or the reining deity of the temple, which could only be accessed by the priests and the oracles. A wall blocked the access to the Adytron and a window at the top of the wall enabled the public to get a glimpse of the statue.

Fred S. Kleiner. (2008) Gardners Art through the Ages A global History.Wadsworth

Publishing. 013 edition

Suzanne Hill. “Three Periods of Ancient Greek Art”: The Archaic, the Classical, and the

Hellenistic. Aug 26, 2006, March 12, 2012.

http://suzannehill.suite101.com/three_periods_of_ancient_greek_art-a5827

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