INTERPRETATION AND ANALYSIS

IN CONTEMPORARY ART
IMMANUEL KANT
- German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) is considered the most
influential thinker of the Enlightenment era and one of the greatest
Western philosophers of all times. His works, especially those on
epistemology (theory of knowledge), aesthetics and ethics had a
profound influence on later philosophers, including contemporary ones.
- According to Kant, the viewers of art should put themselves in a state of
sensory awareness, give up their personal interests and not associate art
with anything when they respond to it. Therefore, they should consider
art as independent of any purpose or utility other than aesthetic value.
AESTHETICS
- is a branch of philosophy that deals with the nature, beauty and value of art
objects and experiences . It involves appreciating, understanding, and
judging the value of art. An aesthetic judgment should be neither personal
nor relative. The viewer should rise above time, place, and personal biases
to reach a judgment of art to which all reasonable people would agree. This
is called “PHYCHIC DISTANCE”
 CLIVE BELL
- Bell’s most important contribution to art criticism was the theory of
“significant form,” as described in his books Art (1914) and Since
Cézanne (1922). He asserted that purely formal qualities—i.e., the
relationships and combinations of lines and colors — are the most
important elements in works of art. The aesthetic emotion aroused in the
viewer by a painting springs primarily from an apprehension of its
significant form, rather than from a “reading” of its subject matter. Bell
pointed to the works of Paul Cézanne as those in which formal
properties were manifested most purely, and Bell also attacked the
public’s preoccupation with the anecdotal, narrative, and morally
didactic functions of traditional realistic painting.
 ROGER FRY
- The question that opens Art is therefore, “What quality is shared by all
objects that provoke our aesthetic emotions?” The answer, a concept the
book dedicates itself to explaining, is “significant form”
- The other, an influence strained by friendship and competition, was the
criticism of Roger Fry, the art critic and lecturer. 2 Bell met Fry on a
train platform in spring 1910. (Bell’s wife introduced them.) 3 Bell was a
young book reviewer and journalist, independently wealthy, who six
years earlier in Paris had been among the earliest British writers to fall
for the French Post-Impressionists. Fry had come more recently to Post-
Impressionism, and he wrote out of necessity rather than love, but he
was a distinguished critic at a radiant cluster of magazines, and his
companion knew his name.
 HAROLD
ROSENBERG
- was the most influential critic and supporter of the Abstract
Expressionists in the 1950s. His description of them as "action painters,"
and his stress on their dramatic and personal confrontation with the
canvas, provided a compelling image of their creative process, and one
that also proved popular with the artists themselves. He believed that
the action painters worked almost without regard for conventional
standards of beauty: their achievement was an authentic expression of
individuality and humanity.
- Rosenberg saw Abstract Expressionism as a major rupture within the
history of modern art. He declared, “a painting is not a picture of a
thing; it’s a thing itself. Artist should “just paint” and not care about
anything else.
ARTHUR DANTO
- To Danto, Warhol, Lichtenstein, Rauschenberg, and Oldenburg were
ambassadors of a new aesthetic reality that did not distinguish between
‘high’ art and mass culture—alien creatures that could be understood
only by other artists, academics, critics, and curators inhabiting the
same world. This new “reality theory” was to replace the outdated
“imitation theory” and The Artword, in which Danto formulated it,
eventually became one of the key texts of what came to be known as the
institutional theory of art.
- Proclaimed that art need not be beautiful; it need not have a pictorial
subject; and need not deploy its forms in pictorial space.
ARNOLD HAUSER
- Hauser's suggestion that art does not merely reflect but interacts with
society is a widely accepted premise. He also saw the art establishment
and art reviewers as servers of commercial interests. As in his Social
History of Art, Hauser's approach was Euro-centered and did not pay
much attention to non-Western art.Proclaimed that art need not be
beautiful; it need not have a pictorial subject; and need not deploy its
forms in pictorial space.
- He insist that visual image is a window to a specific time and space, to
culture or to a social condition. An artwork can infer into the milieu or
social environment in which the artist lives or from where the artworks
comes.
POST MODERNISM
- Artists believe that it is alright to copy masterpieces and exhibit it as their
own. The term is used for this is appropriating or borrowing. For them,
originality has to do with raising an issue rather than with inventing a new
image.
- Invention and uniqueness are no longer essential in making art.
- can be seen as a reaction against the ideas and values of modernism, as well
as a description of the period that followed modernism's dominance in
cultural theory and practice in the early and middle decades of the
twentieth century. The term is associated with scepticism, irony and
philosophical critiques of the concepts of universal truths and objective
reality.
POST MODERNISM
ART ANALYSIS
- Starts with a description of an artwork. Hence, the viewers focuses on
beauty design qualities and the value of an artwork.
- This where to determine what the features suggest and decide why the artist
used to convey specific ideas.
- Analysis requires an understanding of the content by separating the parts
of the subject matter. This can lead to grasping the artwork’s organizational
structure, nature, function, and value.