Artwork Criticisms - Essay Example

? Artwork Criticisms s Submitted by s: Criticism, once called meta-criticism is a branch of the philosophy of art or aesthetics that takes as its object of inquiry the criticism of arts, (Carroll, 2009Top of Form, pg. 1). During the period 1950s into the 1960s, some art philosophers believed that meta-criticism was the central topic of philosophical aesthetics e.g. Monroe Beardsley’s landmark treatise Aesthetics as subtitled problems in philosophy of criticism.Art forms may take the form of literature, drama, dance, music, graphic arts that includes photography, sculpture, architecture and the moving image arts that has to do with film, video and computer generated visuals. These are modern system of art forms that began emerging in the eighteenth century, also called the fine arts. Back in the middle ages, art was merely the correct way of making or doing whatever one happened to be making or doing. Then, art was much more concentrated on cobbling, navigation, medicine as well as the martial arts as these were simply skills or knowledge based crafts or practises whose participants were those who had mastered the techniques of achieving the point of the practice at hand. Criticism is associated with something negative in the ordinary language, nevertheless it should be recognised that criticism is more than fault finding as it may also commend and even recommend. However, one of the primary functions of criticism is not to eviscerate artwork but to rather look into assisting in discovering to be heard from the works under review as well as offer guidance concerning what is worthy in art work while at the same time playing an important role in contemporary culture. Literateconsumers of the art depend upon criticism to help them negotiate the avalanche of artworks on offer across an array of different media as more art is already available now than in any time of history. Critics are looked at to recommend and guide the selection of what needs to be attended to and assist in comprehending and appreciating the vast amount of work that had been put into art as well as play an important role in introducing new ideas and presumably a debate with critical pronouncements. Consumers of the work of art need a philosophy of criticism, a sense of what it is and a conception of its nature and function as well as test the hypothesis on the work of art but on the other hand the same criticisms need to meet a certain criteria for it to be effective in its role. Criticism assists readers in discovering what is of value in the art work under examination in connection with what the artist has achieved in the work. One of the leading components of criticisms is the operation of evaluation in terms of description, contextualisation, classification, elucidation, interpretation and analysis. Although appraisal of artwork in virtue of its membership in a kind of class may not be the most common form of appraisal, sometimes the consumers of art work do issue cross categorical evaluation of art works. This evaluation should be grounded in reason and evidence otherwise art criticism is not rally distinguishable from comparable forms of discourse about art. According to (Eagleton, 1984, p. 9) modern European criticism was born of a struggle against the absolutist state, within a repressive regime in the seventeenth and eighteen centuries and during this time, criticism opens itself to debate as it attempts to convince as well as invite contradiction. Adrian Searle being a trained painter as well as a teacher of art plays a critical role in being a critic of the Guardian as elsewhere in the west; people have been saying extravagant things about the arts for two and a half centuries. Some claimed art is sacred in that they unite us with the supreme being and they are the visible appearance of God’s kingdom on earth, they breath spiritual dispositions into us, they inspire love in the highest part of thesoul, they have a higher reality and more veritable existence thanordinary life, they express the eternal as well as infinite and reveal the innermost nature of the world, (Carey, 2006, p. 1). These random clutches of tribute reflect the views of authorities ranging chronologically from the Germanidealist philosopher Georg Wilhelm Hegel to the contemporary American critic Geoffrey Hartman, and they could be multiplied ad infinitum. Adrian Searle, (2009, pp. 1) Altermodern review: The richest and most generous Tate Triennial yet focuses on the sticky moments as the young woman who rode to her own death on the dildo see-saw at the Sugar-Tits Doom Club. Adrian talks of the film having a lot of naked women as they lounge on some cushions like a pasha while various orgiastic happenings unfold on a wall of monitors describing the heated although somewhat confusing action. The video installation with animatronic sculpture is described as alarming if not actually insanitary and entails a lot of bad acting and declaiming, a succession of dreadful puns, gags about a time-travelling Doctor Poo and Father Shit-mass, and some mock golden showers as several screens display the events of Sodom redone as Panto and the audience get to see bits of the same paly enacted in costumes. The whole event looks like the decapitated Ian Holm in the first Alien movie and in fact, they seem to be modelled on the artist, who also plays a character called the Truth Curator in this blasphemous mash-up without the a appalling relish and literary skills that comes with prowess in the film production industry. Knowledgeable and reputable electronic media criticism is essential due a couple of reasons that can be attributed to the development of this form of media. The pervasiveness and popularity of electronic programming over the world and the absence of media literacy from school curriculum has brought the electronic media under serious forms of scrutiny from other quarters. The electronic media as public resource and the technological success so far which makes them appear all powerful in the way they pass the information on day to day occurrences and the influence they have on the masses are some of the reasons. Hence it is essential to promote criticism that is solely defensive or the development of contents codes as a New York Times critic Jack Gould once identified as an alert, critical articulate audience. He criticised electronic arts by arguing that what does improve in arts is the comprehension of them, and the refining of society which result from it. He further articulates that it is the consumer, not the producer who benefits fully by the contents he views in the media, the consumer who becomes humanised and liberally educated, (Orlik, 2000, p. 9). This technological culture has also shifted from the use of laptops and computers to the use of tablets in the recent technological shifts, (See Appendix 1, Graphical trend shift) Comprehension building in the audience also can be advantageous to the media professional and this was recognised even in the early days of this enterprise. In 1930, Leslie Allen of the Christian Science Monitor told his readers that the intelligent criticism can eventually leaven the whole radio broadcasting lump. CBS founder and board chairman William Paley a couple of years later stated the matter less antagonistically as far as genuine criticism was concerned, as he further tells his belief that all broadcasters should welcome it being desirable that radio should receive the same sort of intelligent review the same way other forms of art receive such as books, play, movies, concerts and others receive. Formal published criticism of individual radio programs promotes better artistic standards all around. The question of electronic media criticism is still under consideration especially as a negative veneer which is inevitable and unavoidable and it is concerned with the need for literate, reasonable analysis by both the enlightened consumers outside the electronic media industry and astute professional inside, they will enable the carping and special interest preachment always be with the industry for the benefit of its positive advancement. However, because it exclusively publicises problem rather than offering solutions, such censure can only result in media retrenchment rather than refinement that can be improved by the knowledgeable comprehension, ascertainment and judgement of value to serve the needs of public and programmer alike. As art historian Arnold Hauser affirms that the problem is not to confine art to the present day horizon of the broad masses, but to extend the horizons of the masses as much as possible where the way to the genuine appreciation of art is through education and much of the educative task as far as the electronic media are concerned seems likely to continue to fall to media artists themselves, (Orlik, 2000, p. 10). Helen Sumpter integrates artwork with the everyday happenings in life and from a western perspective,criticises cultural art atthe Museum of Contemporary African Art where there is an integration of objects that involve artwork incorporating games, joining puzzles of various country flags to form the combination of the African countries. Her critics is not of the equal cultural value of Western and non-Western art practices that should be given, but how these different practices presented can still be problematic. Hellen Sumpter is critical of the shared sensibility the animated short-film installations of the Japanese artist Tabaimo and other forms of Japanese carton or animated art as she seeks to get a glimpse of there being a relationship existence. Such characters as manga comics are a combination of the daily characters, objects and activities that encounter or morph into something fantastically or magically surreal. There are five films she talks about each installs within its own specific environment as the ‘Japanese Kitchen’ is described where the chopping and boiling of vegetables become intertwined with salary man failure, suicide and murder, (Sumpter, 2010, pp.1) On the other hand, ‘Yudangami’ there is a wafting fridge of dark hair behaving like a living curtain in and through which odd events unfold to a discordant, jazz sound track as the ‘Public convenience is set within a ladies’ loo and perhaps the most interesting where turtle sits stubbornly in a toilet bowl despite repeated flushes as a young woman emerges from a cubicle and does her hair in front of the mirror. Unconcerned that she is dressed only in socks and knickers, even when moths flutter about her with eyes that click like camera shutters; another woman is bent over as if in pain shuts herself inside a stall and pulls a baby out of her nostril. The anxiety is decidedly female; giving birth/miscarrying in a toilet, being undressed and vulnerable in a public place and it is also in this work that different possible cultural interpretations come to the fore of the Japanese culture. A turtle may hold all sorts of symbolic meaning in japan in relation to folk tales or longevity, but Helen couldn’t help also thinking of the stubborn stool that, accompanied by a growing panic, couldn’t go away. However, according to Perry(1999, p. 34), in Europeduring the sixteenth century, it is believed that women were less educated relative to men, so the academies emphasis on scholarly attributes made it more difficult for them to aspire to the highest standards of art, whether as knowledgeable patrons or as well informed artists.Women had always been second-class citizens in terms of guild leadership. Women’s artists rights belonged to the guilds that were just as restricted in the new institutions, although Artemsia Gentileschi was able to belong to the Florentine Academy and was the first woman artist to do so, later Giovanna Garzoni was allowed only to be a member of the religious association attached to the academy at Rome – the Confraternity of Saint Luke – but could not benefit from academic construction as the roman academy in 1607 laid down that women members could not attend lectures. Politically, beliefs about the relative value of women in society were institutionalised in European systems of government which disallowed women election to public office or electoral powers except with a convent community. Inlegal terms, daughters were almost invariable under the control of their fathers with some exceptions such as the English and Netherlands trade women who were treated as independent from their husbands in their business capacity – the possessions and earnings of wives were administered by their husbands. Only as widows might they control their finances, and have the autonomy to buy, sell and litigate as insome areas in Italy, women were further restrained by being subject to their fathers until his death or until he decide to emancipate her. In some places such as Florence, no woman even the emancipated widow was able to act in legal terms without amale guardian called mundualdus as well as in Netherlands where women were emancipated automatically when they were 25 but still needed a mundualus for legal transactions. A woman who was an artist therefore might well not control her earnings. Where women were legal witnesses, the weight of a woman’s testimony was often not given the same value as that of a man, and two or more women would be required to testify where the word of a man would have been accepted. Such legal rules embodied wider beliefs that women’s inferior capacities in acting, knowing, learning and speaking which must frame our understanding of what it took and what it meant for a woman to become an artist, (Perry, 1999, p. 36). According to Boyd (2011, p. 977) the arts serve a number of extremely important functions, all of which are related to the survival of humankind, through subtle immediate beauty and also through rich historical roots, they can, and do sustain our desire to go on desiring to go on. There is no point in merely being able to survive if you do not desire to do so. Beautiful landscapes andVincent van Gogh’s Sunflowers, help people make loss bearable and hope seemplausible where large part of motivation – including sexual motivation, depends onepigenetic brain activity (McDonagh, 2010, p. 15; Rizzolatti and Singigaglia, 2010, p. 269).Thesculptor and stage designer Jonathan Meese engages in deadly serious comedic artplayfully shocking to educate thatArt is stronger than governments, politics and religion and it is stronger than the past andpresent as his opinion is that all our aggression should be placed into art. Wars of the future should be played outon theatre stages (Picard, 2011, p. 77). The arts embody, exhibit and sustain our addiction to and competitive propagationof our collective cultural identities and they sustain our sacred trans-VI duality, our loves, ourbelonging to families and tribes, our gods, our classes and nations – Bagpipes, Buddha’s. On the other hand, criticisms of the arts in their commercially exploited formsare central to the shaping of our contemporary globalized market society (Ewan, 1988 p. 13). Postman (2006, p. 16) is of the view that they can fairly be understood rather tragically, as seducing millions of people to killtime “amusing ourselves to death”. However, perhaps now things arelooking up somewhat since the rise of the affluent society has left people withlots of time and talent to spare,thanks to the internet they can readily channelinto moreproductive pursuits but unfortunately, the fine arts are not at all generally understood as socio-economicsteering systems and serious art criticism even more than mass media criticism, issorely lacking in scientific global life web viability impact understanding. Gillian Mclver being a Canadian based artist and writer whose history study gave her a background for critics of fine art from a historical perspective as the contemporary “fine art” observes that practitioners who are single minded have intent onreputation building and marketing, seem all too frequently to take the childishly easypath of getting attention by nasty desecration of what wonderful work has gone before.In the review of visual arts exhibitions and events with a platform for critical thinking, Gilliam McIver analyses the project Earth Now Being by artists Valentun Manz & film maker Christine Cynn as an immersive three-screen moving-image installation, alongside an installation created in a series of box-frames, made up of the detritus of the onsite project. the description of events and scenarios in the film; the flakes of ceramic and burned clay create patterns as delicate as lace; the fragments of weather-beaten oil-painted canvas create insects and strange creatures, casting magical shadows on the walls of the City Farm space is said to be a site-responsive art that is bold and evocative. The film is depicted in multiple scenarios and stages, the site of reception, in this case Hackney City Farm, is redolent of nature and agriculture as the farm smell, the scent of the earth and the aroma of the nearby animals, wafts pleasantly around the room, reminding us that what see in this art work is deeply connected to the earth and our primal selves as the creativity in scenarios comes out in a spectacular manner, (Mciver,2011. pp. 1). The moving stage installation is described as an impressive piece of work that goes a long way in achieving everything it is set out to achieve in terms of documenting the project itself in a creative, effective, well-judged and communicative way. The production is moving emotionally as this type of work has not been experienced in any other form of setting in a manner this intense. Christine Cynn’s work is described as truly immersive as the camera moves between the minutiae of the textures of the earth and the clays Valentin uses, and the cosmic rush of weather and human activity, we move along with it, on an emotional journey to achieve the experience deserved by a three dimension production. The activities in the film are simple yet they intrigue an emotional meaning and import gestures that are exciting to the eye as the use of three other screens also allows the images to repeat and follow one another, in a way that is not repetitive but hypnotic. In this production, Gillian describes the production as superb cinematography as the camera is made to portray an extension of the eye to see into absolute subject. It is a documentary as lived experience but on the other hand the senses of colour and shape, line and texture, are painterly, yet never constructed; artistic yet never manipulated as the composition never compromises yet finds beauty and meaning simultaneously. Gillian is grateful to have watched the film as it feels energised and inspired as the beauty portrayed in the film is still a valid, viable and crucial element of art. The popular arts propagated in various advertisements sexily seduce multitudes intoaddictive consumptive behaviour which all too often has unfortunate longer term debtand health and pollution consequences as the mass media criticism of the arts is very rarely asincere attempt to improve their lasting transcendental quality let alone the ecologicalviability value of the works (Ewan, 1988, p.22). The extensive semantic differential studies of Osgoode (1963, p. 28) that has been around for decades of cross-cultural research; for example, have demonstrated that there are universal humanevolved in world-wide perception commonalities with respect to the potency, activityand value of perceptual inputs. More recently, universal moral values (Rescher, 1993, p. 51)and apprehensions of the sacred (e.g. the sacredness of just dead human bodies) havebeen empirically established. Rifkin (2009, p. 9) in his magnum opus argues very plausibly for the historical primacy of empathic collaborationover competition in the cultural evolution of humankind and the discovery of “mirror neurons” and their operation has shown that we havesome evolved in empathic values as the “naturalist fallacy” is a serious misconceptionbased on the enlightenment notion that “individual” humans are prior to, rather thanarising from group process. According to Crutchfield & Epstein,(2000, p. 102) the university of Michigan’s interdisciplinary conference on disability and the arts, which was coordinated with Joane Leonard in the spring of 1995, represented only the second time a conference was held. Thisconference specifically was dedicated to themes of disabilities and the humanities and the first time they the national disability activists, scholars and artists assembled to discuss disability in the academy and in its relationship to the arts. Views from the interior became symbolic of the dangers of nondisabled and institutional participation in the disability movement within the academy as on the other hand numerous reports were received of the creative projects and scholarly partnerships that the conference helped forge across subcultures both disciplinary and related to disability. Criticism came about the recognition among the participants that were practising a relatively new discipline and experiencing a complex political struggle over the identity of the people attached to its development; however the real trouble lay in blending academic and aesthetic concerns with the powerful notion of culture. Bibliography Adrian, S. (2009). Altermodern review: 'The richest and most generous Tate Triennial yet' Accessed on Dec 11, 2013http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2009/feb/02/altermodern-tate-triennial Boyd, G., (2011). Why the arts need cybernetics for our long-term viability. Department of Education, Concordia University. Montreal, Canada: Concordia University Carroll, N. (2009). On criticism. New York: Routledge Carey, J. (2006). What good are the arts?Oxford: Oxford University Press.  Eagleton, T. (1984). The function of criticism: From the Spectator to post-structuralism. London: Verso. Mciver, G. (2011). Interface: Visual art exhibitions and events with a platform for critical thinking. Accessed on Dec 11, 2013 http://www.a-n.co.uk/interface/reviews/single/1601455 Perry, G. (1999). Gender and art. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Crutchfield, S., & Epstein, M. (2000). Points of contact: Disability, art, and culture. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. McDonagh, P. (2010), “Sex on the brain”, Concordia University Magazine, Vol. 33 No. 4, pp. 15-17 Rizzolatti, G. and Singigaglia, C. (2010), “The functional role of the parieto-frontal mirror circuit: interpretations and misinterpretations”, Nature Reviews Neuroscience, Vol.1, pp. 264-74. Picard, G. (2011), “Interview with Jonathan Meese – ‘I am the Samauri of Art’”, The Art Newspaper, Vol. 20 No. 219, p. 77. Ewan, S. (1988), All Consuming Images: The Politics of Style in Contemporary Culture. New York, NY: Basic Books. Postman, N. (2006), Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show. Business, New York, NY: Penguin Group. Orlik, P. B. (2000). Electronic media criticism: Applied perspectives. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Osgoode, C.E. (1963), “An exploration into semantic space”, The Science of Human Communication, Chapter 3.New York, NY: Basic Books,. Rescher, N. (1993), A System of Pragmatic Idealism, Volume II: The Validity of Values. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ. Rifkin, J. (2009), The Empathic Civilization. New York, NY: Tarcher/Penguin Sumpter, H. (2010).Time Out Review:Tabaimo. Accessed on Dec 11, 2013 http://www.parasol-unit.org/tab Appendix 1: Graphical trend showing shift from computer se to the use of tablets inelectronic media, retrieved on 10/11/2013 from https://encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSb77wbybkXugXPocAnECNgZEA6DAfc5lY5T0kUYF21svJqasnH Read More

 

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