Chapter 1.1- The Impulse for Art

to make, to experience, to understand

Last class• appreciation=recognizing good qualities of

something or someone, having full understanding

• art appreciation=recognizing good qualities of art and having understanding of art

• knowledge leads to increases appreciation

• knowing context (circumstances of work)

• appreciation does not mean “like”

• rationale of course (discernment of good=

being good)

Why Art?

•Making

•Experiencing

•Understanding

Utilitarian

•made to be useful rather than attractive

•attitude or method

•synonyms = practical, functional, pragmatic,

•utility

Utilitarian-plus

Ellen Dissanayake

Ellen Dissanayake

•created field of study that looks at biological and evolutionary reasons why humans make art

•only holds undergraduate degree (no PhD)

•began studies independently as housewife of biologist husband

•“first to take a serious Darwinian look at art and human ornamentation as genuine adaptation”

Dissanayake’s observations

•art is universal

•takes up vast resources and time

•gives pleasure similar to sex, food , intimacy

•young children engage in art sponaneously

Dissanayake’s conclusions

•natural selection long ago rendered art a standard component of human behavior

•evolutionary advantage for survival (Darwin had hunch with the Bowerbirds)

•art is tied to ritual

•“making-special”• how we use art today is very different than in the past

Dissanayake’s evidence

Paleolithic/Neolithic Record

The Acheulean hand axe•made by Home Erectus (500,000-200,000 b.c)•many extremely symmetrically fashioned•any intrinsic element like a fossil is featured•utilitarian-plus

Jamon period storage jar, Japan

2500-1500 BC

Socio-biological Play

• inherent in children• inventiveness, make-believe, imitation, movement• play is for its own sake• ties in with desire for novelty and entertainment• learning social behavior• art derivative from play

Socio-biological Ritual• involves all the arts (multi-media)

• elevated experience, separate from ordinary• unified experience, everyone participates• important for social cohesion of tribe• hunting, healing, life markers, religious

vsArt in Past Art Todaypart of everyday lifeseparate from everyday life

everyone participatesspecialists called “artists”

socially cohesive, unchanging

ever-changing, need for the unique

communicates a community’s ideals

communicates an individual’s ideals

“Art”“making special”

making special• Dissanayake coined to describe human

tendency to differentiate between the ordinary and more than ordinary

• root of art

• again, biologically programmed via evolution

• involved in ritual, toolmaking, symbol making

• promotes social cohesion which increases chance for survival

making special game

•Class enacted the making, experiencing and the understanding

•Introduced idea of utilitarian-plus vs art

The aesthetic experience

• Ferris Bueller video

• a feeling or set of feelings one gets encountering stimuli

• varying degrees of delight, exhilaration, increased awareness, feeling fully present

• to savor, attention is fixed, captivated

• perceiving something that you have no desire to change, just extend

• like “making special”, heightened state

Aesthetics•field of philosophy concerned with the nature of beauty and art

•finding agreeable definitions, broad appeal

•the “aesthetic experience” is more personal, can apply to the generally agreed beautiful (faces, nature, art) but could also apply to the irregular, grotesque, scary, unusual, perplexing, the everyday, fleeting

Johannes VermeerThe Milkmaid

c. 1658

Johannes Vermeer

The Girl with the Pearl Earringc. 1665

Andy Goldsworthy

Andy Goldsworthy

Tara Donovan

"Good art is not what it looks like, but what it does to us."- Roy Adzak