My photo
Full-time College Student, Full-time Mom, Conservationist, Nature Lover, & Eighties Baby. I believe in looking forward, and not dwelling in the past. There's nothing one can do to change the past, but everything one can do about their future!

Monday, September 7, 2009

Goin to HVCC

So I haven't posted since last week bc my brain got it's butt handed to it on a platter.... um what a visual, I'll have to draw that.



Here's my school ID!



Anyway, I have Western Civ I, Intro to Gallery Management (which is my major), and Modern Art History and Survey to Art History II, which are online, and with the same teacher, but she is really good, so it seems doable...


My first Discussion question was basically "What is Art, what is it to you?" and then we had discuss three different materials that we were assigned. We also had to say which art classes we had already taken.


My answer:
Up until this point in my life I have defined “art” as a physical representation or material “placeholder” that enables the viewer to step inside the artist's perspective and experience a “slice of life”, whether it be a perfect apple, an agonizing scream, a calm, uniform cool palette of color, a sample of that era's architecture, or a political moment in history.

Hands on, as an artist, I see art as a medium of communication where I can share what's in my heart or head without fear or reproach or need for excuse, at times a selfish pleasure in just being myself with no regard for civilized or social restriction (alas, precious freedom!!).

I would say that my view of art relates closely to Britannica Online's ”use of skill and imagination in the creation of aesthetic objects, environments, or experiences that can be shared with others” as quoted in the intro of the “What is Art” Modernism Essay. For example, I had said art could be as simple as a representation of a cool palette of color, such as demonstrated in Josef Alber's “
Homage to the Square: 'Ascending'” (shown on page xli of our textbook)- the colors chosen for this painting evoke the feelings of a foggy morning sunrise or the sun emerging from the rain; a cool/warm aesthetic experience unfettered by language or literal thought without representing any specific subject! As the gorilla says in the video, when comparing the painting elephant to the poo-throwing monkey, it's all about “Living the experience”.

From an art historian's point of view, I would argue that the same concepts prevail, but as a means of demonstrating history and the preservation of such in a visual sense... evoking an experience. A very simple example would be the exciting stormy hope of triumph that is experienced when viewing Emmanuel Gottlieb Leutze's “
George Washington Crossing the Delaware”, 1851.

I am an artist who loves art, am a curious student of the arts, and who now might even be pleased to add “art historian” to that list. The more I understand how art has evolved through the years, and it's influence on society, science, and architecture, the more I appreciate it's history. This class and the Survey Art History II class I am also presently taking are my first art classes besides a 2D art class I took in 1987.

Bookmark and Share

2 comments:

Liquidambar Studio said...

I'd give you an "A+"!!!

Vicki Bower said...

Awww, thanks, you're Aces in my book! I am slowly shaking the rust off lol!