Use LEFT and RIGHT arrow keys to navigate between flashcards;
Use UP and DOWN arrow keys to flip the card;
H to show hint;
A reads text to speech;
92 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
|
Mimetic |
Art forms that imitate, or play on people's emotions (Plato) |
|
|
Simulacrum |
Arguments in art that are literally convincing, though fallacious (Plato) |
|
|
Pliny the elder
|
Zeuxis and Parrhasios (grapes and drapery) Idea that deception is the truth, and vice versa. Jacques Lacan loved to quote this
|
|
|
Aristotle |
Art is more about the status and interaction of pleasure, understanding and emotion in art appreciation (vs. Platonic concepts). Art is still mimetic, but more about audience interaction. Forms are independent of structure and forms in reality. Status is 'fictional' |
|
|
Catharsis |
Idea developed by Aristotle. Distance in art allows an audience to take ethical, sympathetic pleasure in painful scenarios. |
|
|
Saint Augustine |
Underlying (Platonic) metaphysical order. Proportion and numerology. Beauty correlation to reason and the mind, and perceiving inherent order. Sense of smell and taste are base. |
|
|
Thomas Aquinas |
Beauty correlates to cognition (the act of knowing). 'Cognition abstracts the essential form of things, producing a harmonious state'. |
|
|
Byzantine ideals |
Imagery has a teaching function, a priestly and austere symbol of divine power and order |
|
|
Matsilo Ficino |
The idea of 'melancholy'. 15th century. One of four humors. Thought it important for intellectual creativity and spirituality. |
|
|
Melancholy |
Idea initiated by Matsilo Ficino. 'School of Night'- Edmund Spenser, Walter Raleigh, George Chapman. 'Meloncholia 1' by Albrecht Durer as definitive depiction. |
|
|
Leon Battista Alberti |
Wrote 'On Painting' (1435). Concept of memesis revised. Naturalistic effects. Imitation must be an interpretation based on ethical/religious ideals. |
|
|
De Vinci |
Eyes as 'windows to the soul'. Nature as divine creation, art as a mirror. |
|
|
Rafael |
Rise of the bourgeoisie and the capitalistic market. Large projects. |
|
|
Lives of the most excellent Italian artist, painters and sculptors |
1550. Giorgio Vasari. Elevated social status of artists. |
|
|
Michel Foucalt |
The Order of Things (1966). Renaissance and following period were the 'Classical episteme. (System of knowledge). Linked to absolute monarchy. |
|
|
Classical episteme |
Foucalt. Subject stands literally and figuratively before a pictured world like an omnipotent god. Rafeal's 'School of Athens' as an example. |
|
|
Alberti |
Linked to idea of 'perspective'. Treatise of 1435. Supportive of classical episteme. |
|
|
Las Meninas |
Diego Velasquez (1657). Epitome of the classical episteme ideal of the sovereign eye. Displacement of King and Queen seems to contradict this... but the viewer sees exactly what they see. |
|
|
Arcadian Shepherds |
Nicolas Poissan (1638). Message on stone informs of mortality, but flatters the patron. Linked to the idea of the sovereign subject. |
|
|
Impact of capitalism on the idea of the 'subject' |
'Subject' seen as a engaging with the other for profit, rather than dominating in imperialistic conquest. |
|
|
Alerity |
Relationship of the subject to that which is different. Related to the idea of the 'Other' |
|
|
'The Other' |
Nested within the concept of alerity. An absolute difference which is unknowable and by definition unrepresentable. |
|
|
The Enlightenment |
Inception of a more secular questioning of imperialist and absolutist ideologies. Kant, Rousseau, Denis Diderot. 'Alerity' remains a sticking point. |
|
|
Kant's critical philosophy |
Knowledge is created through a 'synthesis' with 'the other'. Exchange with 'what cannot be known' Retained idea of a controlling subject. 'Controlling Subject' relates to 'A priori' knowledge. |
|
|
The Critique of Judgement |
Kant. Introduces the idea that 'beauty is subjective'. However, retains the idea of a 'projected community of engaged participants', the 'sensus communis' |
|
|
The Sublime |
Conceptually developed by Kant (Originally from Loginus). Experience of synthesis with the 'other'. Exceeds the grasp of cognition and feeling. Delight. 'The other is always less than the subject might justifiably fear'. Experience ultimately governed by reason. |
|
|
Critique of Pure Reason |
Kant introduces the idea of 'Noumenon' (the unknowable). 'Marks the limits of sensible knowledge'. In theory, this obliterates the idea of limits (since knowledge can't be defined in relation to anything unknowable). |
|
|
G.W.F. Hegel |
'Noumonen' recategorized from 'the sublime' to 'non-being'. Associated with death and mankind's finitude. Anticipated an inability to represent non-being, leading to an embracing of this condition as God-given. |
|
|
Hegel's three phases |
Phases lead to 'the dawn of spirit. Symbolic, Classical, Romantic. Anticipated an end to art. Appeal to a divine and transcendent order as a way of synthesizing all forms of experience |
|
|
Nietzche |
Discarding of distinction between the subject and the 'other'. Described his philosophy as 'the revaluation of all values'. What is absolutely false (Plato's simulacrum) is not comparable with the truth. |
|
|
Apollonian and Dionysian Energy
|
Apollonian tendency towards form and images, and the Dionysian tendency towards intoxication and excess. The later arises from an instinct to oppose fixed values and forms. Supersedes moral agendas. 'Beauty' resides in the collapse of predetermined oppositions.
|
|
|
Nietzche's 'Will to Power' |
Ability to embrace change and convert it into creative energy. |
|
|
Intoxication of Change |
Nietzsche's vision of humanity "perpetually engaged in overthrowing and changing values before they fall back into the paradoxes of metaphysics." |
|
|
Freud |
Undermines the idea of a subject that is conscious and in control of the thought process. Notion of the unconscious. |
|
|
Freud and the Oedipus complex |
Formation of subject's psyche through consciousness of gender. Rife with conflict. Subjectivity is fragmented and discontinuous. Pablo Picasso (1881– 1973) and Georges Braque
|
|
|
Sublimation |
Freud developed a theory of artistic representation and transformation which he termed “sublimation”. Sublimation gives form to repressed unconscious feelings through narratives and representations. Used Michelangelo's 'Moses' and 'St Anne with the Madonna and Two Others' by Leonardo as examples. . |
|
|
Marx and the Alientation of Capitalism |
In modern, Capitalist societies Man is alienated both from himself and from his human possibilities. Means of production owned by the bourgeoisie.
|
|
|
Marx and classical art |
Argues that ancient art is not truly timeless, and the means and conditions of production are concealed. Popular because of nostalgia... but original purpose (making sense of nature through mythology) has been superseded. |
|
|
Marx and 'independent fantasy' |
An imaginative ability to represent the world in ways that science and technology cannot, and a capacity to grasp universal meanings concerning class inequality. |
|
|
Aestheticism |
Walter Pater. The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry (1873), Pater celebrated experience as an end in itself.
|
|
|
Oscar Wilde |
The Aesthete (Picture of Dorian Gray) (1891) 'No artist has ethical sympathies' 'All art is useless' 'Art for art's sake' Opposition to bourgeois values of commercialism |
|
|
Modernism |
Works of art are autonomous and independent of materialistic concerns |
|
|
Synaesthesia
|
Modernist idea. Wassily Kandinsky (1866– 1944) Correspondence of the senses |
|
|
Matisse and Modernism |
Sympathetic to appeal to the bourgeois- as long as 'balance, purity and serenity' were retained |
|
|
Romanticism |
Linked to Kant- autonomy of aesthetic judgement. Precursor of modernism
|
|
|
Excessive behavior in Romantisicm |
Joseph Turner (lashed to mast during storm) Théodore Géricault (reckless riding) (Raft of Medusa) Caspar David Fredrich (The Wreck of Hope)
|
|
|
Marxists responses to modernism |
Art (plus human experience) not autonomous, but impacted by ideology (particularly Capitalist ideology) |
|
|
Critical Realism |
George Lukács (1885– 1971) Admired Cervantes, Mann, Balzac etc. Tradition of complex characterization- responsive to Capitalistic social processes
|
|
|
Bertolt Brecht |
Reponse to Lukács and critical realism Realism should be... “discovering the causal complexes of society / unmasking the prevailing view of things as the view of those who are in power etc."
Realism should be contemporary, avante-gard. incorporated multiple, current stimulii into his plays. |
|
|
Communist Aesthetics |
Grounded in Marx's notions of a 'base' and a 'superstructure' Base = economy Superstructure = ideology |
|
|
Lenin vs' Trostsky |
Lenin- economic base (distribution of production) determines superstructure Trotsky- superstructure elements may be more advanced in revolutionary potential than base |
|
|
Socialist Realism |
Stalin Opposed to Trotsky and Avante-Gard Looked to classical forms to appeal to the masses |
|
|
Walter Benjamin |
Bourgeois apparatus can co-opt revolutionary themes without being threatened
Technical radicalism should challenge the manner in which ideas are represented/understood |
|
|
The 'Aura' |
Walter Benjamin's notion of the bourgeois ascribing 'authenticity, uniqueness, and originality' to art.
Cultic substitution for religion
Benjamin hoped with photography and modern reproduction would ameliorate this |
|
|
“A Small History of Photography” (1931). |
Walter Benjamin Immediacy about early photos David Octavius Hill (1802– 70)- Portrait of a Newhaven fishwife,
|
|
|
Imagist |
Water Benjamin's concept. Seizing the past as an instantaneous image. “The Arcades Project” (1927– 40).
Quotations from historical sources related to the origins of modernity |
|
|
Theodor Adorno |
Self as modernity's first victim. Legacy of the enlightenment- connection to holocaust.
No real history or art post-holocaust (it's all perverse) |
|
|
Adorno on art's right to exist |
Aesthetics – both art and theory – is one of the important battlegrounds where oppression and resistance are fought out.
Refutation of philosophy’s totalizing tendency to provide universal theories concerning the work of art. Books such as Negative Dialectics (1966) and Minima Moralia ( 1951 ) adopted an aphoristic style in the manner of Nietzsche’s writings in order to undermine philosophy’s former universalizing aspirations.
"Even in the most sublimated work of art there is a hidden 'It should be otherwise'
|
|
|
Adorno on naturalistic art and literature vs. modernist art and literature |
Believed that modernist art and literature possesses more suitable qualities to represent the alienation of modern life and experience under Capitalism.
Admired Kafka, Beckett |
|
|
Heidegger |
Disciple of Nietzsche.
Nietzsche’s ideas represented a “twisting free of metaphysics”. By this he meant that Nietzsche was the first philosopher to fully embrace art and the senses by assigning them the status of truth.
Art presents the paradox of the elusiveness of meaning and its paradoxical relevance for knowledge.
Admired Durer's ability to capture the essence of animals...
Art as 'The Happening of Truth'
Van Gogh's peasant shoes as an encapsulation of peasant life
|
|
|
Hermeneutics |
Work of art is seen as a clue or symptom for a wider sense of reality.
Heidegger |
|
|
Georges Bataille |
Response to Dionysian ideas in Nietzsche's 'Will to Power'
Art as experience at its limits
Admired the Aztecs- sun worship and sacrifice- unconditional expenditure
The pursuit of the extreme (Van Gogh and staring into the sun) |
|
|
Jaques Lacan |
Disciple of Freud “The Mirror-Phase as Formative of the Function I” (1949)
The Subject’s psychic roots lie in the unconscious creation of a specular, fantasized mirror image
Misrecognition- the illusion of autonomy. The Autonomous 'I' |
|
|
Ferdinand de Saussure (1857– 1913) |
Linked to Lacan's critique of the subject
Words, or 'signifiers' only gain meaning through relation
Semiotics
|
|
|
Semiotics |
de Saussure
The study of signs and their meanings
'Meaning can not be present to itself since it is dependent on other meanings'
No unified subject within the subconcious
|
|
|
The Gaze |
Lacan's critique of painting 'The Ambassadors'
'Anamorphosis' changes understanding of objects (skull in painting)
'Blind Spot' in view of subject |
|
|
Jean Paul Sartre |
Lacan's 'blind spot' explained in terms of 'anxiety'
'Being and Nothingness'- changed perspective on a park when a stranger enters
'Drain hole' in the center of the world's being |
|
|
Jouissance |
Response by Lacan to Sartre's idea of the blind spot.
Libidinal pleasure in this gap or 'hole'
Feeling of pleasure in vulnerability
Reactions to The Ecstasy of St Theresa (1644– 7) by Lorenzo Bernini (1598– 1680). |
|
|
Louis Althusser (1918– 90) |
Ideology, Althusser suggested, is the Subject’s false sense of independence from social and economic constraints.
(Extenstion of Lacan's mirror phase theory)
Illusion of a 'natural' existence |
|
|
Guy Debord (b. 1931). |
Society of the Spectacle (1960).
Influenced by Lacan
Capitalism as 'the colonization of day-to-day life.
Spectacle as illusory true state of affairs (media, commercials, etc.) |
|
|
Experience of 'Lack' |
Guy Debord
The sensation of 'lack' maintains the subject in thrall to a capitalistic system |
|
|
Situationalist International |
Guy Debord
Concept of the 'de'rive' ('drifting')
Intended to obstruct Capitalist ideology
Lead to novel psycho-geographical designs, mapping projects (very confusing in book)
|
|
|
Détournement |
Art from the Situationalist International
Intended to be 'pointless' (in lieu of offensive)
Re-use of pre-existing elements in a new ensemble |
|
|
John Berger (b. 1926) |
In contrast to the ideas of Debord (Détournement) believed that 'lack' is inherently imperious
exemplified by Holbein’s The Ambassadors (indifference to viewer)
Ways of Seeing ( 1972 ), drew analogies between classical motifs and advertising. Nudes vs. pornography- both rooted in patriarchical power |
|
|
Modernist Aesthetics: 1940– 70 |
Retention of autonomy of experience in abstract expressionism.
Robert Motherwell (1915– 91), Barnett Newman (1905– 70), Jackson Pollock (1912– 56) and Mark Rothko (1903– 70), continued to rationalize their work as a medium of “pure” emotion. |
|
|
Clement Greenberg (1909– 94) and his protégé Michael Fried (b. 1939)
|
Rather than stating that “pure” experience is derived from the emotions embodied in the work of art, like previous Modernist theorists, they suggested that correct judgements concerning the progressiveness of a work of art in terms of its formal properties are disinterested and pure.
Thought that appreciation of formal quality could be detached from the corruption of modernity/capitalism |
|
|
Lacoon (classical sculpture) |
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing- argued that the artist understood and worked with the inherent limitations of the medium (stone)
Influential on Greenberg and Fried
Lessing defined painting and sculpture as spatial arts, and poetry as a medium of temporal succession.
|
|
|
Minimalist Art |
Carl André (b. 1935), Dan Flavin (1933–96), Don Judd (1928– 94), Robert Morris (b. 1931) and Sol Le Witt (b. 1928)
Confounded Greenberg and Fried's ideas of sculpture as spatial art |
|
|
Aesthetics, Contemporary Experience and Postmodernism
|
Postmodernism denotes a new economic order
Also, (in continental philosophy) impact of Nietszche's ideas on aesthetics |
|
|
Fredric Jameson
|
Popularized term 'postmodernism' in America
Shaped by Marxist intellectual tradition
'The individual and collective consciousness is the battleground of oppression and class conflict, plus potential for freedom'
“postmodern culture is the internal and superstructural expression of a whole new wave of American military and economic domination throughout the world”.
John Portman’s Bonaventura Hotel (1976) as a paradigm
Compares Van Gogh's shoes to Warhols- Warhols are detached from context. Convey tragedy, but no opposition to ideology |
|
|
Parody |
Tool of modernism
Weapon of satire opposed to bourgeois norms |
|
|
Pastiche |
Tool of post-modernism
a form of “blank irony” lacking a critical edge.
No aim other than a sense of style |
|
|
Schizophrenic Culture
|
Fredric Jameson's description of postmodern culture
endless slippage of meaning resulting in a constant forestalling of signification. |
|
|
Antonio Negri and T.J. Clark |
Postmodernism's link to the internet
Visual age- primacy of the visual over the verbal
Clark refutes this as a disguised cover for capitalism's expansion |
|
|
Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929). |
Continental analog to Fredric Jameson’s position (more ironic and nihilisic)
Consumer's desire as the motor of capital
Link to Saussure's notions related to language. The value of commodities is evolving and relational like language
“The medium is the message”. Capitalism, for Baudrillard, is an arena of mutually reinforcing, self-referential images and signs. |
|
|
Aesthetics of Simulation |
Baudrillard’s idea that the world is made up of copies of other copies:
Exemplified by Pop art in the 1960s.
Critical of the notion that there's anything radical or 'real' in abstract expressionism |
|
|
Ironies of Postmodern Capitalism |
Baudrillard
Experience is envisaged as an emotional excess escaping the Subject’s grasp.
Experience no longer exists in a pure state, autonomous from language, as Kant posited. |
|
|
Roland Barthes (1915-80) |
Continental Postmodern Philosopher
Applied Saussure’s linguistic theories to a variety of cultural forms and artefacts.
experience of film and photography which exceeds language and semiological connotation
Saw the photographic negative as an authentic trace of reality
|
|
|
The Punctum |
Roland Barthes
Camera Lucida- impact of photographic imagery (resonance of departed people)
Contridictions of time |
|
|
Julia Kristeva |
Influenced by both Barthes and Lacan
Experience as a form of loss- level to the unconscious which exceeds patriarchy’s conception of identity.
Certain forms of literature and art relate to early infant experiences both in the womb and after, prior to the child’s acquisition of language.
|
|
|
Chora and the Semiotic |
Julia Kristeva
Semiotic is a space of dissolution and fragmentation existing prior to language, but it is also a source of emotive experience and instinctual drives derived from the infant’s relationship to the Mother. |
|
|
Kristeva and Jouissance
|
Term adopted from Lacan
Linked to the notion of the semiotic. Can be joyful (as in Giotto's frescos) or linked to the melancholy |
