Art 411 Theory and Methods

  This week in Art Theory and Methods, we read, “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” by  Linda Nochlin. Nochlin goes through and describes how women have been related to art in the art  world throughout time and especially at times when famous artists we know today existed like Van  Gogh and Picasso. She discusses how the question, “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?”  does more harm than good and how its not the question we should be asking, and how the narrative  around “great art” has been molded by the white cis male gaze. I completely agree with the statements  that she makes in her article. Firstly, the question, “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?”  contributes to the negative connotation of that question in itself. There have been great women artists.  They were just never given the spotlight, recognition, or studied like their male counterparts. When we  do hear of women artists, they are fit into this...

      This week, we read ,”The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”, by Walter Benjamin. This week's reading, to me, was a lot easier to understand than the previous readings we have done. In the article, Benjamin argues that the mass reproduction of artworks hinder them rather than help them, and he believes that every artwork has its own “aura” that can be killed by the mass reproduction of artworks. Within the article, Benjamin states,  “Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be,” (1).  He goes on after this to explain that the time and circumstances surrounding the artwork as it was created determines how it survived and was treated over time. He explains that this also includes how it changed physically, if it was damaged or developed cracks of any kind, and it also includes changes of ownership over the years...

  In the article, Bryson discusses how signs in artwork are interpreted and how he believes art is  made up of the signs artist put into them. He discusses how through the lenses of Perceptionalist  viewpoints, an artist and the viewer should have the same thought patterns and interpretation of the  artwork if they are reading the symbols the same. However, he also discusses that the importance of  context means this doesn’t always happen, one person might interpret art differently because of their  lived experiences and what they recognize about the symbols in the painting. If you do not know that in  Christianity, a white dove is used to represent peace, then you will not know to think of that when  interpreting art with doves in it. You would have to have the prior knowledge of the particular sign or  symbol before being able to interpret it the way the artist intended. Also, not all art is meant to be  realistic or naturalistic,...

       This week in Theory and Methods we read and annotated “Every Man Knows Where and How Beauty Gives Him Pleasure: Beauty Discourse and the Logic of Aesthetics” by Amelia Jones. It was a hard read to annotate but it presented a lot of very thought provoking and important points in regards to beauty standards and how we all individually imply that and then how people apply that when talking about and interpreting art. The purpose of the article was to evaluate how traditionally interpreting beauty in art is not the best for a variety of reasons and how people should interpret art in a way that doesn’t suffocate the standards of beauty down to heterosexual white male standards. The issue is that beauty is completely subjective, what I may find beautiful, someone else may find it not beautiful at all. The other issue is, the people in authoritative positions in the art world over time often set the standards of what is considered beautiful in art, and then...