Chapter Five Transcript -

Chapter five Evaluating Art

We need to evaluate art in order to determine if an artwork is worthwhile—whether it will stand the test of time to take its place in art history, or just be something that is popular for a very short time.  OR just to know WHY you like or dislike something you see.

Quality in art is connected to the values that a society holds, again showing that art is part of the culture in which it is created.

So you know what you like, but you don’t know much about art? After the prior chapters on design elements and principles, you do know what makes up art in general. But does it have value for when it was created?

So quality is personal, and relative. When we say we like something and dislike something else, we are evaluating, whether it is art or the choice in what we eat. It is relative to your own opinion. And each culture also has its own opinion.

There’s a place online to visit…the Museum of Bad Art. ( www.museumofbadart.org ) It takes our own culture today and presents artwork that is considered “bad” by the values we hold right now. Yet many of the paintings you may like, such as this one on the left, “Lucy in the Sky with Flowers”, or the one in your book, “Shy Glance”. You definitely will have reactions to art, and this chapter is about why you have those reactions. It is not enough to just say, “I don’t like it”, but to know why and in this course, to be able to write about that.

Art criticism falls into three broad categories for evaluation. One can use all three or any one in evaluating art. This chapter looks at three artworks in relation to these three categories.

The first is formal theories, which means the criticism is based upon the artist’s training and how he or she expresses that in the art.  Knowledge of design and art history are attributes of a person who critiques art using formal theories. Art that is meritorious in formal theories is innovative and builds upon earlier artwork in new ways.

Here’s Thomas Kinkade, technically masterful in his use of the media (paint) and design. However he falls flat on being meritorious for his building upon what went before.

And now I show you a painting also in oils, by William Scott Jennings. This artist stands critical review on formal theories, because he DOES build on what went before in landscape painting, and is meritorious in showing through is work that landscape painting has evolved from the days of the early artists showing the magnificence of the natural world.

The second way of evaluating art is through Socio-cultural theories. Critics look first at the environmental influence on the work, which may include politics, culture and economy. This way of critiquing art requires a clear knowledge of the period of time in which the art was created. Evaluation comes by connecting the messages in the art to the times in which it was made.

When Claude Monet exhibited this painting for the first time, critics raised an uproar because of its departure from the mainstream. One called it an “impression of a sunrise” in distain, not realizing that he had just named a brand new movement in fine art.

I refer to socio-cultural evaluation as the “intellectual” way of looking at art. “The Pieta” by Titian from your book connects to his time when he painted it by the plague going on and the symbolism of portions of the design. It’s all there in your book.

Finally there are Expressive Theories. Here the person evaluating the art looks at the artist first and foremost.  With these two paintings by the well-known artist Matisse, who is to say which is “better”? Both fit into the history of how the artist worked.

Art critics are paid good money to write for the masses about art. I highly recommend that after you have done your evaluations of Basquiat/Robert Hughes and John Seed, that you subscribe to the Huffington Post online (free) for the excellent articles written there on art and art evaluation.

What we gather from evaluating art in summation, is that art is very subjective. Knowing the three ways that art is measured can give us the tools we need to know HOW we are looking at a work of art. Please, no more, “I know what I like, but I don’t know art” after this lecture. Look for your reactions to art as a journey into understanding either or all of the three ways to measure art: Formal, Socio-cultural or expressive. Then you have the tools to figure out whether art has merit for yourself, or art history! 

This ends the lecture on Chapter 5.