Lesson 1.
As I walked in the room of the North Carolina Museum of Art, I overheard a couple speaking about a work of abstract art. The woman thought that the picture meant hope, dream and desire. The man thought the painting meant desperation, death and sadness. Curious, I decided to take a look and judge the painting for myself. The painting was a swirl of red, pink, orange, and black colors. The edges of the painting held no recognizable form, while the center had pronounced lines. The feeling that was evoked within me was one of goals, determination, and grandeur. The lines in the center were pronounced because they were purposeful. The smeared edges were there to hold in the purpose and to pronounce it; however, I am sure that hundreds more came along and felt completely different about the same painting. In the assigned reading, “What is Art For” by Ellen Dissanayake, art is described as “for nothing but itself (p 40).” There are no rules in art. There is no way to state that this type of art or form displays a certain type of feeling or truth (p 41). The United States is a country of immigrants and each has put their mark on the art world.
I would best describe metropolitan cities like New York and Chicago as a hub of cultural arts in US culture. There are so many different types of art that it’s difficult to choose just one type to represent “the heart of America.” Historically, before cameras and video cameras; paintings, drawings and sculpture, and weaving are some of the methods used as the sole use in depicting images for viewing and recording purposes. In the reading, it was mentioned that Winston Churchill’s portrait was not favorable to his wife and she destroyed it. The realistically painted portraits were most popular in the 19th and 20th century, but today the use of abstract painted portraits is more main stream. Portrait paintings were and still are important in recording history. Each United States president gets his or her portrait painted during their time in office and it is displayed in the White House. So if I were to choose one of the many types of art forms to portray the “the heart of America” I would select the realistically painted portrait as a historical favorite.
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2 comments:
Hi Christina! That's really interesting about your time in the museum and a great example of the various reactions, interpretations which one art work can facilitate through different people's perspectives. Color tones have such different reactions from people...just fascinating. Psychology, personal history, tradition, experiences all interplay within a reaction to say the color red for instance or yellow which is my favorite color if it's a mid to pale yellow but bright yellow I can do without ;)
Hi Christina, what I like about the story of the couple at the museum is that they were both essentially right even though their interpretations were quite contrary to one another. Art works can be and often are ambiguous in this way; their visible properties can support rival interpretations, and so long as any interpretation gives an account of those properties in a way that is useful to the interpreter and perhaps to others, the interpretation is valid and sound. This kind of ambiguity often puts people off from art, though, because they want a more orderly and clearly defined world, a "this way or that way" world, but not a "both of these ways, and perhaps more ways as well" world. A valuable feature of art is that it teaches us the tolerance and even the love of ambiguity and nuance.
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