Pete &  Poker

Pete and Poker Try Being Aestheticians: Pete: Check out "Sphinx" at http://wwol.inre.asu.edu/fiskus.html Poker: I think the work functions as a protector of a Pharaoh in the tomb. Pete: Don't be ridiculous. It's a sample of Expressionism. The woman artist is expressing her ideas and emotions about society. Poker: What society? Pete: Don't confuse me. The work can fit under other art theories, but don't force it. Maybe one is enough.

List of Art Theories and Explanations

Here are six theories that are often used to analyze a work of art - to judge its effectiveness.

Expressionism
The artist conveys an indirect idea, a mood through the use of color and symbols, etc.. The image may not be recognizable or photographically accurate. Here is a familiar example:

The Scream. Oils

Also check out Robert Motherwell
Running Elegy II, Red State at the ASU Art Museum, Contemporary Collection
http://asuartmuseum.asu.edu/mthrwell.htm

Also search the web for a painting by Wassily Kandinsky.

Some artists use only color to express feelings. Search the web for a painting by Jackson Pollack.

Representationalism - Imitation Theory
The artist tries to imitate life, accurately (photographically) representing people and objects. The work may leave in all the details, even if they are unpleasant. Or it may idealize the scene, leaving out the unpleasant details as in some landscape paintings.

Gilbert Stuart. Mrs. Stephen Peabody.
Oil on wood panel 1809, 36-3/4" x 21-1/4."
ASU Art Museum, American Collection

Winslow Homer. Oil on Canvas, c. 1874
ASU Art Museum, American Collection

Look the Getty collection http://www.getty.edu/art/collections/ Click on Artists: then on R to find Rembrandt van Rijn portraits. Click on Collection Types/Paintings, then on Landscapes to find Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century landscapes.

Functionalism
The artist intended the work to be useful, such as a pot, a chair, a ritual object or a building.

Tempe Sculptural Bus Stop

Look up functional objects displayed in a museum. You can find them in "Collections: Furniture" in the Getty at http://www.getty.edu/art/collections/ or "Architecture and Design" in MoMA, the Museum of Modern Art in New York city at http://www.moma.org or "The Collection" and then "Fashion Design" at the Phoenix Art Museum at http://www.phxart.org.

Formalism
The artist experiments with art forms-lines, shapes, colors, space and their relationships. The composition is more important than the subject matter or theme.

Michael McCleve. Untitled.
Junk materials.

Or check out Frances Whitehead, halve.
http://herbergercollege.asu.edu/museum/cocat.htm

Search for Frank Stella in the Guggenheim Collection and look at Cubist and Bauhaus paintings http://www.guggenheimcollection.org/index.html. Also check out Cubism at http://artlex.com to find out how Picasso used cubist forms in his paintings.

Open Concept
This view maintains that ideas about art are always open to change. This is a flexible idea that claims there can be no one theory of art. Environmental art might be explained by this theory.

Check out Christo's work at http://www.christojeanneclaude.net/index.html

Institution Theory

An institution is an established practice that is determined as important by two or more people forming a group. Some institutions are a church, the shopping mall, even florists. The theory "says that whether or not something is art is determined by the reactions that a group of people have to an object. This theory emerged partly as a reaction to the open concept. . .

"In other words, if you want to know whether or not something is art, don't look at the object in question; instead, look to see how people are treating it, where they put it, and what they are saying about it. If people value an object highly, protect it, study it, exhibit it in art galleries and museums, and write about it in art magazines and art history books, then it's clear that people involved have decided that the object is art."

Katz, Lankford, Plank. Themes and Foundations of Art. (Minneapolis: West Publishing Company) 1995, Appendix A-4.

Check out Marcel Duchamp's Bicycle Wheel as an example of a "ready made" object displayed and valued as art by a group of Surrealist painters that were first "bar buddies."