Week 4
Theme:
Beyond Representation
Examine the visual image above:
(a) What do you see?
(b) Can you see it any other way?
What do you see now?
(c) Can you see the image both ways,
first one way and then the other?
(d) Can you see the figure both ways at the same time?
(e) Can you see the figure neither one way nor the other?
If you said "Yes" to questions (e), Welcome to
Nonrepresentational Art!
Question A: How do Clive
Bell's notions of significant form and aesthetic
emotion transform the concept of art as representation in
relation to both text and image?
Assignment
A:
Read in the Alperson text Clive Bell: The
Aesthetic Hypothesis: Significant Form and Aesthetic
Emotions (pp.119-126)
Read also 8in the Cooper text the entries under
"form" (pp.158-162), " abstraction"
(pp.1-3), "Bell, Clive" (pp.51-53).
What does Bell mean when he says that significant form is
the only quality that all works of art share? If art
(text and image) does not imitate or represent something
external to it, then what does art as text or as image
become? Does representation play any role in in Bell's
concept of a work of art? Are there any similarities and
differences between Bell's concept of significant form
and Pounds idea of image/vortex? Explain. Can we still
use Bell's notion of aesthetic emotion to identify and
evaluate electronic art?
Question
B: How does Kandinsky's notion of art differ from Bell's?
Before you do Assignment B below, go through the
following exercise in abstraction.
It will help you to understand how Kandinsky uses the
word 'abstract' as in
'abstract art' or what he called "concrete
art":
(a) Read the following sentence:
"This community is cool -- I mean
icy -- to all new arrivals."
Describe to yourself how the dashes function in this
sentence. When
you see the marks, do you see dashes or lines? Or both?
(b) Read the following sentence:
"This community is cool -------- I mean
icy -------- to all new arrivals."
Describe what has changed in your perception of the
dashes.
(c) What if we have the following:
"------------------------ I mean icy
----------------------"
Describe your perception of the dashes/lines now.
(d) Or, finally, what if we had the following:
"------------------------
----------------------"
What has happened? What's the difference between (c) and
(d)? Have
the marks lost their function as signs (dashes) in a
sentence? Do these
marks signify anything apart from themselves? Kandinsky
would say
that in (d) the lines have been abstracted from their
practical-purposeful
context. If I now used these lines to delineate an object
on a canvas, I
would again be using the lines as signs which signify a
recognizable
object. Kandinsky's point is that the line itself (the
abstracted line, the
line liberated from its practical context) is the
real line. The line in a
painting should be used as the object itself and not as a
sign for
something else.
Look up the term "abstraction" at ArtLex.
Assignment
B:
Read in the Alperson text Kandinsky: "Concerning the
Spiritual in Art" (pp. 129-142). Read also
"abstraction" in
the Cooper text (pp. 1-3).
Clive Bell thinks that the aesthetic emotion is an
emotion about form
(significant form). Is form as important to Kandinsky as
it is for Bell? Explain
why or why not. Crispin Sartwell, the author of
"abstraction" in the Cooper
text, thinks there is difference between Bell and
Kandinsky (see pp. 2-3). Is
form the most important aspect of art for Kandinsky or is
it the principle of
internal necessity? Explain. Is there a difference
between Bell and Kandinsky
in relation to the spiritual in art? Explain.
Please post your responses to the FTP site by
Wednesday.
Links to Kandinsky:
Web Museum
(Paris)
Brief
Biography
Kandinsky:
Compositions
A
Review by Mark Harden
