Art Appreciation

This is my dissertation for my Masters in Applied Theology completed in 2014. I explored the relationship between faith development (mostly using James Fowler's model but with reference to others) and the way people respond to images. I also propose a possible narrative model for faith development which I am continuing to explore.

South Africa’s educational landscape is scarred with economic and educational inequalities. South African tertiary education today has to deal with a variety of challenges including the lack of funding, both on the student’s side and on the side of the institution.  The most prominent challenge relevant to our research is the extensive lack of skills and knowledge of students when coming from secondary school where they are rarely exposed to cognitive skills. Our students struggle to understand the notion of a ‘concept’ or ‘metaphor’ in an artwork: that art is not just representative or aesthetic, but communicates a message, an idea, a criticism, or appreciation. This requires creative and critical thinking. We present a case study of a drawing and animation project that aimed to facilitate this. We argue that through the integration of art theory and drawing practice, students came to understand not only how to detect critical thinking by other artists, but how to implement concepts, metaphors, or symbols in their own work. Through this project we explored drawing
• as a bridge to close the gap between theory and practice,
• as a tool for creative and critical thinking, and
• as a means to introduce technology on a basic (low-cost) level.
We found that our integrated approach narrowed the theory/practice gap and enhanced creative and critical thinking, resulting in student work of greater conceptual quality.

Evolution of an Art Appreciation Teaching Philosophy From the Point-of-View of a Teaching Artist.
Jones, Carola
A reflective account of the "reconceptualization" of teaching strategies associated with art appreciation at Chowan University.  Focusing on two essential questions: 1) What Do I Want To Make Today?” and 2) What If?” I am researching instructional designs to construct an inclusive model to enhance student success.  Fashioning an art appreciation college course using “effective teaching practices” based on the elements of art and principles of design combined with Google for Education.

The Table of Contents, Forwards to the student and instructor and Introduction to a new art appreciation textbook using progressive pedagogy and learning strategies for the post millennial learner. Designed for use in GenEd, On-line, Community College, and High School Art Appreciation courses, the book is in a spiral-bound portfolio format that coordinates with the university's on-line course management system. No images are included, allowing freedom for instructors to choose their own works of art to discuss. Group activities, assignments, room for class notes and daily journals are included. The price is 60% lower than a standard art appreciation textbook - $50 for spiral bound soft cover, and $35 for the e-book.

Combining psychology, art theory and cross-cultural studies, this book explores ways in which our minds construct meaning from visual information. It discusses how the mind attributes meaning to things and events, the structure and functioning of eye and brain, how we perceive color, space, depth and distance, motion, the development and mechanics of photography and how the camera affects our definition of reality and the way we think about the world, the incursion of electronic and mass-communication media, and finally, making and looking at works of art with greater awareness.

First edition published in 1976: NY: Van Nostrand Reinhold / Prentice Hall, 1976-86 (six printings).  Translation of first edition published in 1987 by Beijing University Press as Shijue Yuanli视觉原理，Zhang Gongqian 张功 钱, translator, author name transliterated as Kaluolin M Bulumo 卡鲁琳 M 布鲁墨 (print run: 28,500).

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Readers of literature, listeners of music, appreciators of visual art-indeed, all recipients or "audiences" in any form of the creative and performance arts-do sometimes connect with the artistic work on a deeply personal and subjective level when the work strikes a relatable chord in them. Audiences tend to find themselves and their everyday reality mirrored, or "place-able," in the work's creative or enacted reality. This subjective experience has been termed "Psychofictive Reality".

Reflection on the history and practice of art history has long been a major topic of research and scholarship, and this volume builds on this tradition by offering a critical survey of many of the major development in the contemporary discipline, such as the impact of digital technologies, the rise of visual studies or new initiatives in conservation theory and practice. Alongside these methodological issues this book addresses the mostly neglected question of the impact of national contexts on the development of the discipline. Taking a wide range of case studies, this book examines the impact of the specific national political, institutional and ideological demands on the practice of art history. The result is an account that both draws out common features and also highlights the differences and the plurality of practices that together constitute art history as a discipline.

This paper presents a discussion of the Japanese philosophical, aesthetic attitude known as Wabi Sabi.  Tracing the history of Wabi Sabi from ancient times to the modern day this paper examines the tea ceremony in Japan, the production of handmade pottery, and the Zen way of artistic creation.  Intermixed I offer a view of my artistic development and personal evolution of consciousness as I have come to understand them through the lens of Wabi Sabi.

"Selections from the Collection: Museum offered 2010 Art History Online Course.

Our goal is to understand art, its history and its context. We aim to identify works of art based on their period, and know a little something extra about them. The course runs in chronological order. There are 8 sections in total, the links to each can be found on the online course page 

This course is under construction. Feel free to browse around. Example of an online art history course. This could be used by a Museum for their education department. Based on a Survey I of Art History, utilizing a museum collection for study."

The objective of this paper is to make a Formal Analysis of Ansel Adams’ photograph titled "From Glacier Point." This analysis will reveal the details, history from the era it was created, the use of artistic resources and assets, and the overall meaning of this achromatic photograph. This analysis will also decipher what the landscape and Adams himself are attempting to tell us, the viewer. In the end, we will have a new understanding of this photograph, its hidden characteristics, and its outwardly visible and sophisticated detail.

Developments in the arts associated with modernism began in the latter part of the nineteenth century with Impressionism and Post-impressionism.  These movements were followed by a succession of stylistic innovations that came to a head in the second half of the twentieth century. In the 1960s and ‘70s, a proliferation of artistic practices emerged that trespassed conventional boundaries.  Innovative practices gave rise to new perceptual features in the arts, breaking out of the frame of the canvas and extruding from its flat surface, descending from the proscenium stage into the audience, and other such modifications of appreciative experience that discarded the traditional separation of audience and art object.  Not only did the arts incorporate new materials and practices; they reached out to incorporate surprising subject-matters.  All the arts began to intrude on the formerly safe space of the spectator by demanding active involvement in the appreciative process. Audience participation became overt and necessary for the fulfillment of the art, not only in the visual arts but in theater, fiction, sculpture, and other art forms.  The traditional separation between the sequestered, contemplative experience of art and the world of ordinary experience was deliberately breached.

Theorized as a Bourdieusian field, this article examines changes inside the tattoo world resulting in the valuation of certain tattoo practices as art and some actors taking ‘fine art’ positions within it. The category of tattoo art is distinct from tattoo because it positions the practice away from its traditional historic moorings as a lowbrow craft and occupation requiring a rudimentary level of technical skill. In contrast, tattoo art is created and evaluated within academic discourses and traditional fine art ideologies that stress innovation, creativity, and exclusivity. In addition to mastery of the medium, that is, applying the tattoo to skin, tattoo artists create original works that qualify as artistic by art world conventions. This process of artification has changed the symbolic meanings and valuation of a practice, imbuing tattoo art with cultural legitimacy from the inside.

Although the arts in Effutu festivals make a particularly vibrant and far-reaching contribution to their culture, little or no attention has been given to it. The energetic and enthusiastic characteristics associated with the involvement of these arts in the festivals play functional, economic and aesthetic roles which are indispensable to their culture. The Aboakyer festival involves two Asafo cohorts and they use different artworks for the celebration which widens the artistic scope of the festival. These art works involved in the festival have direct link with the culture, history and traditions of the Effutus, making them requisite for the celebration. Since these art works have a direct link with the culture there is the need to document them for cultural perpetuation. The Akomase festival, which is the second festival for this study has received less attention by writers due to the low patronage also needs a scholarly documentation. The study made use of the qualitative research which employed the descriptive and narrative design for data presentation. The study concluded that the artistic elements in the festivals of the Effutus are enormous especially the Aboakyer festival. However, it is recommended that Effutu Traditional Council should have a museum or gallery for keeping the artworks used in their festivals and train personnel to educate people about the roles they play in the festival and artistic elements in relation to their culture.

Art is (or should be) interpreted according to a number of principles, more or less clearly stated throughout the existence of what is generally called art criticism. The language (discourse) used to do that presents some particularities which may be inscribed within what a scholar named "a hermeneutic circle."

The better quality pdf is downloadible from here: "http://www.leoalmanac.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/LEAVol19No3-Mailman.pdf
Through recent artistic practices and technology of interactive systems for music, composition and improvisation have more and more blended and interconnected with each other – a sui generis situation now called comprovisation. The concept of comprovisation applies equally well to the spontaneous generation and manipulation of computer graphics, especially as such graphics are systematically coordinated audio-visually, while being subject to spontaneous manipulation by a performer.
This is explained in terms of the Fluxations and FluxNoisations Human Body Interfaces, interactive dance systems that generate music and graphics spontaneously in response to hand and body movement. They enable spontaneous expressive shaping of coherent complexity and variety. Thus a multi-layered multimodal experience arises. The aesthetic experience of this multimedia spectacle relates to experiences of various prior music and visual art of the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries, as well as to hypothetical physical realities. Thus a kind of cybernetic phenomenology of art is pursued and enacted through an embodied cybersynthesis of art with simulated alternate reality. Call it a pragmatic speculative realism, an adventurous technoetic ‘what if.’ As compared to more traditional forms of improvisation, the opportunities for risk-taking and aesthetic exploration rise to a new level of uncertainty, as the reactions of the improviser simultaneously draw from and target both visual and aural modalities, such that the intentions toward each fuse together."

Architecture as the making of metaphors not only is the stasis to why architecture
is art but also explains the formation of architectural aesthetic vocabulary.
The below is predominantly developed from a study of “Metaphors and Thought” by
Andrew Ortony, and, is in addition to over forty years of my work about “architecture as
the making of metaphors. It is my hope that this monograph will introduce to aesthetics
an architectural vocabulary to further the appreciation of works of architecture.
Arnold Berlant’s writes that: “Sense perception lies at the etymological (history
of words) core of aesthetics (Gr. aesthesis, perception by the senses), and is central to
aesthetic theory, aesthetic experience, and their applications. Berlant finds in the aesthetic
a source, a sign, and a standard of human value”. It is this human value which is one leg
of the metaphor and the very basis for the view that metaphor is the foundation for both
art, architecture and aesthetics, and why I have spent over forty years researching the
stasis to architecture being an art (because it too makes metaphors) it can also be shown
that this same stasis is the commonplace to the works of aesthetic thought and
investigation. . This coincidence (between aesthetics and art) confirms the intrinsic nature
of this study of epistemology of architecture and aesthetics. The metaphoric evidence I
believe will prove both useful to the creation, teaching and valuation of works of art as
well as their architectural off-spring. In fact metaphor is the driving parte for most
creative arts and architectural works.
Some contemporary aesthetic theory differs with how best to define the term
“art”, What should we judge when we judge art?, What should art be like?, The value of
art, things of value which define humanity itself; contrasted to Raymond Williams who
argues that there is no unique aesthetic object but a continuum of cultural forms from
3
ordinaryspeechtoexperiencesthataresignaledasartbyaframe,institutionorspecial
event.Conversationsaboutaesthetics,metaphorsandarchitecturereassesscurrentand
traditionalissuesbyprovidingascientificanalysisforthewaymetaphorsworkin
architecture.
Thisisthe“stasis”(thestateofequilibrium{equipoise}orinactivitycausedby
opposingequalforces)ofthecontroversyofarchitecturebeinganart;thatifarchitecture
behaves,acts,looksandworkslikeartthanittoomustbeanart.Why?Becauseit,too,
makesmetaphors,andthosemetaphorsarevariedindepth,kind,scopeandcontext.Itis
thestasisbecauseitiswhereartandarchitecturemeet.Themetaphoristheconceptual
focalpoint.Whilemanyclaimthatthearchitectisthe“techne”artistbeingacraftsman
pointhasbeenconceptualandsousefulastobridge,carry-overandprovidebothartist
andarchitectacommonauthorityoverthemakingofthebuiltenvironment.
Asstasis,“architectureasthemakingofmetaphors”enablesthecenterofthe
disputetobearguedwithcommonpurpose.Sothisisastasisindefinitionwhich
concedesconjecture.
Withallthecontroversyaround"knowing";howdoweknowweknowandthe
inaccuracyoflanguageanddubiousnatureofscientificconclusionsIhavewrittenover
fifteenmonographsabout“architectureasthemakingofmetaphors”Thisisthefirstwith
thesciencesoflinguistic,psychologyandcognitiondefinitionsofthemetaphorandthere
foreasetofthirdpartyfactsbywhichtobaseourcomparison.Itwasmyhopethatthese
commonalitiesprovidedsubstantivereasonstoallowthemetaphorlinkingarchitectureto
metaphorsasmytheorem(stasis):"architectureisthemakingofmetaphors”.
4
“Ifartisthemakingofmetaphorsandarchitectureisanartthenittoomustmake
metaphors.Butuntilnowasideformthisformallogicwehavenotshowntheinformal
logic,argumentandevidenceofthisproposition.
Thebelowareexcerptsformmymonographofparadigmsandaxiomsabout
architecturebasedonMetaphorandThought.IneachofthebelowcasesIhavefist
paraphrasedthescientist'sconclusionsbasedonanotablecommonalitytoarchitecture
wherespacealloweddescribedanarchitecturalprocessorproductinthetermsofeach
finding.Outthesecomparisonstherecametopoi(Zaretsky,D(2005)(Atraditionaltheme
ormotif;aliteraryconvention.)whichwecanusetodescribearchitectureandaesthetics,
allbelowsectionsandparagraphsreferenceMetaphorandThoughtbyA.Ortony.
(Ortony,A)
Whetherbyformalorinformalreasoning,whetherbydeductiveorinductive
reasoningitisnecessarytoknowthataesthetics’fundamentalbasisforlinkingaspecific
casetogeneralreferentis,asart,bridgingthecrafttothecraftsman,theconcepttothe
craftandtheobservationtoamodel..WhileinearliermonographsIhavedealtwiththe
specificsoftheserelationshipsthismonographpresentsthewaysmetaphorsworkandby
inductionsupportclaims.
Thestudyshowsthatmetaphorsarenotallthesameandworkindifferentways.These
differentwaysaretheevidencefortheinferencestotheclaimsandresolutionsignificant
toaesthetics,art,andarchitecture;namelythatartist,artcritiques,philosophers,
architectshaveanawarenessofmanytheshapesandformsofmetaphorsandtheir
possibleinclusioninwhatcanbejudgedandincluded.

Comparing the study of Spanish and Japanese textbooks, relating to the subject of “Artistic, Plastic and Visual Education”, one reaches the basic conclusion that the Spanish model is focused on the teaching of artistic appreciation, whereas the Japanese model is based on the children’s expressive development. Seeing how both models are complementary in their scope of the subject’s instruction, I have determined, by means of studying the reality of Japanese and Spanish schools, to design a methodological plan of artistic education based on the balance between Japanese expression and Spanish appreciation starting from each model’s strong points and good practices. This is the first in a series of four codependent articles that will endow the investigation with a global sense of improvement of Artistic Education through the importation of good international practices adapted to a new context, with a common benefit for both countries. In this specific article the teaching methodology of Spanish artistic appreciation is analyzed via the study of a global early childhood, through actual Artistic Education on the northern part of the Autonomous Community of Madrid. This “good practice” model will take us closer to the Spanish reality in the realm of artistic appreciation Education.

A 20,000-word essay on the interface between the fields of Vermeer, Art History and cognitive science, neuroscience and neuresthetics, psychology of perception, art psychology,

written by Vermeer specialist, art historian Drs. Kees Kaldenbach, Amsterdam.

Kebolehan seseorang itu mengenal keindahan adalah tidak sama. Situasi ini mempunyai persamaan dengan seseorang yang dikatakan tidak mempunyai bakat untuk melukis tetapi dia tidak akan menerima kenyataan jika dikatakan tidak ada kebolehan mengenal dan merasakan keindahan sesebuah lukisan. Menurut Winckelmann lagi, untuk menghasilkan keindahan ia perlulah melalui satu proses yang dikenali sebagai idealisasi iaitu proses menggunakan akal dan menjadi asas kegiatan seni yang utama

"Cette monographie – la première du genre – est une réflexion sur les miniatures hippiatriques grecques, où se demander pour quel usage et comment le lecteur médiéval les « lisait », conduit nécessairement à essayer d’expliciter les rapports complexes qu'entretiennent l'illustration et le texte.
Après une présentation générale de la littérature hippiatrique, l’auteur élucide des questions liées à la composition du Corpus hippiatricorum graecorum. L’intérêt est principalement porté sur les différentes recensions d’un de ses abrégés, l’Épitomé, et sur sa place par rapport au Corpus hippiatricorum. Ainsi est-on amené à mieux discerner l'histoire de ce traité et celle des deux seuls manuscrits illustrés.
Vient ensuite un chapitre consacré à l'étude minutieuse de ces deux témoins, le Leidensus Vossianus graecus Q. 50 et le Parisinus graecus 2244. Paléographie et codicologie s'en mêlent, qui révisent bien des opinions reçues sur l'origine des manuscrits.
Un re-examen des miniatures des deux témoins est alors possible. Par-delà analyses stylistique et iconographique, trop souvent attachées à la quête absolue de l'archétype, l'auteur analyse les rapports texte/image pour établir, en définitive, le modus operandi des imagiers et déterminer les fonctions concrètes pour lesquelles les figures ont été pensées et conçues. De ce regard synchronique découle naturellement une étude sur la façon dont le lecteur médiéval utilisait les images. Les conclusions pratiques se voient donc confrontées aux théories antiques et médiévales sur le rôle de l'image et celui des mots. Ainsi l'image hippiatrique ne saurait être seulement une simple illustration du texte : elle appartient à l'œuvre tout autant.
L’ouvrage s’adresse aux antiquisants et aux médiévistes, historiens de l’art et de la médecine vétérinaire antique et moderne ainsi qu’aux philologues et à quiconque s’intéresse à l’histoire de l’illustration scientifique et des relations entre l’homme et l’animal."