Art Survey

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Answer the following questions over by Anne D'Alleva. Type your responses in a Word™ document or similar format.

  1. According to the author, there is a difference between art “in” social context and art “as” social context. Do you agree with here assertion? Why? [p. 52]
  2. What are the three types of contextual question you can use to analyze a work of art? [pp. 53–54]
  3. How does the author’s assertion that a museum has its own agenda change the way you think about viewing art? [p. 57]
  4. How can location change the way we look at art? [pp. 59–60]
  5. Why would it be important to understand your assumptions about art? [p. 61]
  6. According to the author, why is it inadvisable to “apply what you know from your own culture unthinkingly to the interpretation of works from other cultures.” [?][pp. 61–64]
  7. How does the author answer the question whether a work of art shouldn’t or can’t be interpreted? Do you agree with her answer? Why? [p. 68]

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Chapter 3 contextual analysis Always design a thing by considering it in its next larger context— a chair in a room, a room in a house, a house in an environment, an environment in a city plan. Eliel Saarinen (18 7 3 -19 5 0 ) When you undertake a contextual analysis, you’re trying to understand the work o f art in a particular cultural moment. As the quote by the architect Eliel Saarinen above suggests, a focus on context gradually enlarges our view and expands what our scholarship (or, in his case, design) should encompass. This can mean focusing on the work o f art as it exists today, or on the work o f art in its own time or at another point in history. It can also mean looking at the social, political, spiritual, and/or economic significance o f the work. Art and context People often talk about art “ in context,” but that isn’t a very sat­ isfactory approach in some ways. It suggests that context (cul­ ture) is already all set without the work o f art, as i f the work o f art has no effect on individuals or society. O f course, if it were true that visual images don’t have any effect on people, then there wouldn’t be any advertising on TV or in magazines! To think o f a work o f art “as” social context rather than “ in ” social context means recognizing it as something that has an effect on people, on how they think and feel and act, and on larger social processes— how groups o f people think and feel and act. Works o f art and social context are often thought o f as mutually constituting, that is, having an effect on each other. Works o f art are shaped by historical processes, which are in turn shaped by works o f art in a continual interaction. Contextual questions The following are some basic questions to ask in developing a contextual analysis. Not every question is applicable to every artwork. For example, if you don’t know the artist’s identity, for whatever reason, then there are a number o f questions that you can’t ask about the creation o f the work. One range o f questions focuses on the people involved in the creation, use, and viewing o f the artwork— the patron, art­ ist, and viewers: • Who were the patron, artist, viewers? • What sorts o f records did the artist leave about the creation o f this work? Did the artist say anything about his or her intentions in creating the work? Were other artists or workshop assistants involved? • What were the patron’s motives in sponsoring this work? To what extent did the patron participate in its creation? What does the contract for the work or correspondence about it reveal? Was the patron acting individually, or on behalf o f an institution? • Who was able to see the work? Under what circumstances? What was the response o f contemporary viewers to this work? Other questions for building a contextual analysis address the physical work o f art, its location, and use: • When was this work made? • Where was it originally located? • In what rituals was this work used or seen? • Does the work make use o f rare and/or costly materials? Does it include materials that have either a ritual or symbolic value? Are they new or innovative in some way? • Are the artist’s techniques new or innovative in some way? Was there any particular significance in the choice o f techniques? Still other contextually oriented questions address the larger social issues presented by the work o f art: What was the political, religious, or social context in which this work was created? What is the subject? Why would the artist, patron, or viewer be interested in a depiction o f this subject? Was this a new or innovative subject, or a new treatment o f a familiar subject? If so, what prompted the change? If not, what was the motivation for conservatism? What political, religious, and/or social messages are being conveyed through the subject matter or artistic style o f this work? Was this a new or innovative artistic style? I f so, what prompted the change? Let’s see how some o f these questions might be used to begin interpreting a work o f art, taking as an example the Selimiye Mosque built in Edirne, Turkey, in 1567-74 (Figure 3.1). The architect was a man named Koca Mimar Sinan (1489-1588), and in a contextual analysis you will want to find out as much background information about him as possible. Sinan was, in fact, an amazingly productive architect who designed more than 80 large Friday mosques. He actually began his career as a soldier and engineer, and was not appointed architect to Sultan Suleyman the Magnificent (ruled 1520-66) until 1538. His patron for the Selimiye Mosque, the person who com­ missioned and paid for its construction, was Suleyman’s son, Selim II (ruled 1566-74). In this case, you would want to ex­ amine Selim’s reign, his patronage o f mosques generally, and o f Sinan’s work in particular. In terms o f viewers, you would want to think about not only the Muslim residents o f the city and those who worshipped at the mosque, but also foreign visitors and what their impressions might have been. The second set o f questions listed above raises some other interesting issues. The Selimiye Mosque is located in Edirne, which was the first Ottoman capital in Europe. You would want to consider the role o f this provincial capital city in the Ottoman empire at this time. Since this is a mosque built for Friday worship, you might want to look at the floor plan o f the mosque and see how it is constructed to accommodate the large numbers o f people who would assemble there on Fridays. As far as the third set o f contextual questions is con­ cerned, there are numerous political and religious messages conveyed by the building. In designing this building, Sinan wanted to build a dome to surpass that o f Istanbul’s congre­ gational mosque, which was originally built as the Christian church o f Hagia Sophia (Holy Wisdom). You might think about the message conveyed by such an act, in surpassing a dome constructed in the sixth century by Chrisdans, and its construction in an Ottoman capital city so close to the main centers o f western Europe. In this regard, you might want to think about Selim's motives as patron and Sinan’s motives as architect. You would consider the range o f activities that went on at this site, and the complex o f buildings that form part o f the mosque, including a madrasa set aside for study, a hospi­ tal and charity kitchens, a covered market, and public baths. The minarets provide an opportunity to see how the for­ mal questions can lead to contextual insights and vice versa. In a formal analysis, you would discuss the remarkable soar­ ing presence o f the minarets. They spring up from the mass o f lower buildings o f the mosque complex and frame the dome itself, accentuating its own lightness and upward thrust. You would note that, since the mosque is located on a founda­ tion at the city’s edge, the minarets dominate the skyline and provide a landmark visible from many parts o f the city. You would discuss the remarkable engineering required to build these soaring minarets, each o f which is more than 295 feet (89.9 meters) high but only 12 feet (3.81 meters) in diameter at the base. This might lead you into a contextual discussion o f Sinan’s engineering accomplishments and the practice o f engineering generally in Ottoman culture. From a contextual standpoint, you would also focus on the fact that only royal mosques were permitted to have more than one minaret and usually no more than two, so that the presence o f four in this building is extraordinary. You might think about why Sinan and his patron Selim would want to construct a mosque with four minarets in this particular city at this particular time— the complex o f artistic and political factors that might have prompted such a decision. Art out of context? Museums and art history Museums are a fact o f Western cultural life today. Most people in Western societies have made at least one visit to a museum, and these institutions can seem as natural a part o f the cultur­ al landscape as churches or town halls. But museums haven’t Sarah symmons analyzes a print by Goya As an example of how contextual analysis works in practice, here is British art historian Sarah Symmons analyzing a print by Goya (see Figure 2.4). After a brief description of the work, drawing the reader’s attention to its key features, she broadens the discussion to include contextual references to the artist’s preliminary sketches and to the more general use of dream imagery in the art of Goya’s time. Finally, Goya’s depiction of a solitary fig­ ure beset by nightmarish creatures is contrasted to the biographical fact that, when he made this image, he was one of Spain’s most successful artists. In 1799, the year this print was published as part of a set of 80 titled Los Caprichos (“The Caprices”), he was appointed Court Painter. a A figure of an artist is shown collapsed over a w also a dreamer. The dream was a traditional device used by artists and writers in Spain as ing. Four species of creature inhabit the dark well as in other European countries to intro­ void surrounding him— a lynx, a cat, a host duce subjects of a fantastic, philosophical, of bats, and seven owls, one of which is also or obscure nature, and Goya initially consid­ partly a cat, who jabs the sleeper in the arm with a sharp stylus. Two sketches reveal that ered calling these prints Suenos (“Dreams”) Goya originally intended to make this striking world of the state artist is here undercut by design into the title page of the whole work the monstrous uncertainties of the “imagi­ [Los Caprichos]. One bears a longer caption nation unfettered by Reason," as Goya wrote on the sketch. that eventually became part of an article pro­ moting the Caprichos in the Madrid Doily. Here Goya speaks of himself as an author, but he is instead of Caprichos. The glittering material yy (Sarah Symmons, 1998, pp.175-76) Goya, London: Phaidon, always been around (neither have churches and town halls, for that matter). Museums are, in fact, cultural institutions with a specific history that are dedicated to specific ideals and goals. It’s important to be aware o f this, because the museum is the place where you will most often study art, even though a lot o f art wasn’t actually made to be exhibited there. The mu­ seum itself may shape the viewer’s understanding o f a work o f art, by displaying it in a different context than it may have had in its original cultural setting. At the same time, muse­ ums have their own cultural agendas, histories, and politics that must be taken into account in any experience o f art you have in a museum. A brief history of museums For the ancient Greeks, a mouseion was a place not for the dis­ play o f art but for contemplation, a philosophical institution dedicated to the Muses. The Romans followed the Greeks in making “ museums” places o f philosophical discussion. Even if museums then weren’t quite what they are today, traditions o f collecting and display were part o f many ancient Mediter­ ranean cultures. Egyptian pharaohs collected natural his­ tory specimens and works o f art. In both Greece and Rome wealthy citizens often maintained private art collections, and temple treasuries were open to visitors. Later, the treasuries o f the great medieval cathedrals presented splendid displays o f gold and silver artworks that attracted pilgrims and other visitors. During the Renaissance, many nobles and wealthy merchants formed collections o f rare and wondrous objects, both natural and made by hu­ mans, and displayed them in “ cabinets o f curiosities.” Collect­ ing art— painting, sculpture, prints, drawings— became an accepted activity o f the elite. It was at this time that the word “ museum” came into use again, but now it described a collection o f natural objects or works o f art that promoted comprehensive and encyclopedic knowledge, rather than philosophical contemplation. In the eighteenth century, some individuals opened their collections to the public, and the modern museum was born. Many great museums today, such as the Louvre and the British Museum, trace their origins to this time. Through the nine­ teenth century, museums rapidly filled with the spoils o f war, or artworks gathered by colonialists and missionaries. For better or worse, modern museums are wrapped up in the his­ tory o f the nations that fostered their growth. Are there counterparts to the museum in non-Westem cul­ tures? Although museums as we know them today have their roots in the European Enlightenment, traditions o f collecting and display are widespread. The emperors o f China collected works o f art and displayed them in imperial academies and palaces. Islamic leaders also collected works o f art that they displayed in palaces for the pleasure o f the elite. Buddhist temples in Japan have amassed collections o f calligraphy and other artworks for display on special occasions. Today, museums are found around the world. There are many dif­ ferent kinds o f museums, dedicated to anthropology, history, natural history, science, technology, and popular culture, among other things. What we might define as “art” can be found in any o f these institutions. Museums and the experience of art The ways that museums can shape our understanding o f works o f art was something I realized most fully during a visit to Florence as a student. I had just spent most o f the day in the Uffizi Gallery, one o f the world’s great painting collections, where I wanted to study Italian altarpieces from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Many o f them were displayed together in attractive galleries with bright lights and white walls (Fig­ ure 3.2). When I left the museum, I stepped into a church not far away to see another altarpiece (Figure 3.3). As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I glimpsed the painting, lit by the soft glow o f candles and the diffused light entering through the stained-glass windows. The air was faindy scented with incense, and murmured prayers rose around me. An elderly woman knelt before the altarpiece and prayed intensely. What a different experience! It wasn’t a question o f better or worse, but o f each place yielding very different insights. At the Uffizi, I was able to see a lot o f altarpieces all together, so that I could compare different artistic styles and iconogra­ phies and observe the changes that took place in this art form across time and space. At the church, I was able to experience a single altarpiece in a way that, despite the passage o f time, was close to the conditions for which it had been created. The altarpiece was surrounded by a church’s distinctive smells, sights and sounds, with the low light muting yet enriching the colors o f the painting. I was lucky enough in Florence to experience similar works o f art in the church and museum in close proximity, but that’s not necessarily typical. As you visit museums to study works o f art, you’ll have to keep in mind the ways that the museum environment shapes your perception o f the work. For exam­ ple, think about the lighting level, your position in relation to the work, the number o f people around you, the kinds o f noises you hear, the way works o f art are grouped. Compare 3.2 Photograph of gallery, Uffizi, Florence. 3.3 Photograph of church interior, Santa Croce, Florence. this to the original context(s) in which the w ork would have been seen. At the same time, it’ s important to keep in mind that much European and American art from the late eight­ eenth century on has been made with public m useum s or gal­ lery spaces in mind as places where the artworks may appear. Much contemporary installation art or perform ance art, for example, needs the kind o f large, public spaces that m useum s and galleries provide. The process of interpretation: confronting your assumptions When interpreting works o f art, it’s important to be aware o f the assumptions you make. You must question those assump­ tions— ask where they come from, why you maintain them, and how they shape your interpretation. Some o f these may be simple factual assumptions: you believe the Renaissance in Italy extended from the fifteenth to the sixteenth century. Others may be more interpretive biases or concepts: you be­ lieve Italian Renaissance painting is a naturalistic tradition o f representation, or you believe that Italian Renaissance art rep­ resents humanity’s highest achievement. Both o f these kinds o f assumptions, factual and inter­ pretive, should be questioned when you’re undertaking arthistorical analysis. Instead o f assuming that you know or un­ derstand a work o f art you’re studying, consciously take the position that you don’t know anything for sure— everything you think you know must be tested and rethought. It’s not that your assumptions are necessarily wrong, just that you need to be aware o f what they are. The challenges of cross-cultural interpretation Everything I need to know about Africa is in those objects. Pablo Picasso ( 1 8 8 1 - 1 9 73) Like many modern artists, Picasso was interested in and in­ spired by the art o f other cultures. He kept masks and figural sculptures from Africa and the Pacific in his studio and made many visits to ethnography museums. Unlike art historians today, Picasso was primarily interested in the formal qualities o f these works, rather than their cultural context. His state­ ment above suggests that he didn’t need to study cultural context to understand a work: for him, understanding arose from a visual engagement with the piece. Let’s put Picasso’s assertion to the test with the sculpture pictured in Figure 3.4. Think about how you might interpret this work, without re­ searching any contextual information about it. What does the artist seem to emphasize? What ideas or emotions does the work provoke in you, the viewer? Can you tell how the work w < 9 \4 r 3.4 Power figure (nkisi nkonde), 19th century. Wood and other materials, height 46 in (116.8 cm). Kongo people, Democratic Republic of Congo. The Field Museum, Chicago. i > r 1 i. & r 1 was used originally? Why are nails and metal blades inserted in the surface? Here’s a brief interpretation o f sculpture o f this kind, one that draws on both formal analysis and contextual analysis for its insights. As you read it, think about how much o f this insight is available to the viewer simply through looking: In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Kongo peo­ ples, who live along the Adantic coast o f central Africa, used such sculptures in rituals that dealt with social and personal problems, including public strife, theft, disease, seduction and the accumulation o f wealth. The figure contains relics o f the dead person, whose spirit was a powerful force to be harnessed toward the desired end. A ritual specialist, nganga, owned the figure and used it as a medium to access the spirits on behalf o f his or her client. The insertion o f nails and blades into the surface o f the sculpture was not the work o f the artist, but o f subsequent users o f the piece. Hammering a nail or blade into the figure attracted the attention o f the spirit associated with it and roused that spirit to action. The figure itself is impressive, it conveys a sense o f strength and power in its large, staring eyes and muscular arms held at the ready. However, to the people who made and used it, the wooden sculpture itself was not the most important part o f the piece— the medicines and relics were. In fact, nganga specialists often simply kept the medicines and relics in simple clay pots, and they were considered just as effective in that form. Now, although Picasso asserted that he was not interested in context, in some ways he— like us— couldn’t help but inter­ pret works by applying his own cultural criteria to what he was seeing. His looking process wasn’t neutral. Even if he wasn’t explicitly interested in context, in some sense he was creating a context or meaning for the work because o f the ideas and assumptions he couldn’t help but bring to bear. For example, Picasso would probably have found wooden figures o f this kind more interesting and more important for the qualities o f their carving than for the small bits o f bone and herbs con­ tained in them— a perception exactly opposite to that o f the Kongo people themselves. Even more revealing, Picasso, like many other people at the time, called works like this “ fetishes.” For him this might have seemed to be simply a descriptive term, but we can see it today as loaded with cultural assumptions. In Picasso’s time, the word “ fetish” indicated a material object worshipped by people who endowed it with divine powers and the ability to act like a person to fulfill their wishes. At the same time, the term fetish was also being used in psychoanalysis to indicate an irrational sexual fixation on an object (as in a “ foot fetish” ). The two meanings o f fetish imply that the religious practices connected to these figures were at the very least misguided, if not “ sick.” Rather than taking these practices at face val­ ue within their own cultural context, the term fetish assigns these figures a negative value based on European cultural values and practices. So even Picasso, who had explicitly denied any interest in context or the interpretation o f context, was looking and interpreting with culturally informed eyes. Picasso wasn’t “wrong” to do this, because it’s really unavoidable. We all come to art history, to the process o f interpretation, equipped with prior knowledge and our own cultural experiences. We’re not blank pages, and this is not a bad thing. Some o f your assumptions and prior knowledge will increase your under­ standing and your ability to interpret the work and to engage with it on a variety o f levels. The point is that you should try not to apply what you know from your own culture unthink­ ingly to the interpretation o f works from other cultures. It can be misleading to assume that there are universal values expressed through art or universal forms o f representation. Often these kinds o f “ universal truths” turn out to be just your own specific cultural beliefs or values in disguise. Now think again about your initial interpretation o f the Kongo figure. How does it reflect your own cultural assump­ tions? The challenges of historical interpretation The past is aforeign country: they do things differently there. L. P. Hartley ( 1 8 9 5 -1 9 7 2 ) What do these words, a famous line from the English novel The Go-Bettueen (1953), have to do with art history? They remind us that we cannot assume that we understand the past, or that there is an immediate connection or understanding between us and the past, even within our own culture. In this sense, studying a work o f art from the past is like visiting a foreign country. As an art historian, you must learn to “ speak” the lan­ guage o f that past culture and learn to “ practice” its customs. Once again, the challenge lies in not making easy assump­ tions about what you know, or think you know, or can ever know, about the meaning o f a work o f art. An easy linguistic example o f this principle o f interpreta­ tion is the word “artificial.” Today it usually means “ fake” or “ not natural,” as in “artificial flavoring and coloring” listed on food labels. The word often carries a negative connotation. But in the eighteenth century, artificial meant simply “ made by human hands.” For example, on his voyages o f exploration Is African art anonymous? If you look at the captions for African art in their skill. But because in most African cul­ your textbook, you will often see, instead of tures history was an oral tradition, the name the artist's name, a statement like “artist of the artist was passed on verbally and not unknown” or “anonymous.” This reflects the written down. history of collecting African art and Western attitudes toward Africa, more than African cultural practices. But it’s easy to overlook this history and simply assume that the indi­ vidual artist is not important in many African cultures. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth cen­ turies, the outsiders who collected in Africa— explorers, colonists, soldiers, missionaries, and anthropologists— often didn’t record the names of the people who made or owned art­ works. These collectors frequently assembled Historically, artists in many African cultures objects to illustrate a timeless picture of a — sculptors, weavers, metalworkers, potters culture, not to document individuals and their —were often celebrated individuals, widely work. They usually didn’t value these objects known in their communities and beyond for as “art," so it wouldn’t have occurred to ask for the name of the “artist.” Moreover, objects were often collected in such large numbers that it was difficult to record a lot of informa­ tion. For several decades, art historians and anthropologists have worked to rediscover the names and histories of African artists. The stool illustrated here is one of about 20 ob­ jects that were thought to have been made by wood carvers living around the village of Buli in south-eastern Democratic Republic of Con­ go (Figure 3.5). These works were attributed to a “Buli School,” following the accepted way of naming anonymous Western artists. Some scholars now believe that this stool was made by Ngongo ya Chintu, an artist who worked in the village of Kateba near Buli, and who may have carved all the objects attributed to the “Buli School.” 3.5 Attributed to Ngongo ya Chintu, stool, late 19th century. Wood, height 20 /> in (52 cm). British Museum, London. This stool and a similor example in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Neu/ York, are thought to haue been carued by an artist named Ngongo ya Chintu. He u/orked on the borders of Luba and Humba territory in what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaire), and his style incorporates aspects of the art of both these peoples. in the Pacific ocean, Captain James Cook (1728-79) collected both “artificial curiosities” (baskets, sculptures, textiles) and “ natural curiosities” (shells and plants). To complicate mat­ ters further, we can also note that earlier, in the sixteenth century, “artificial” actually had a positive connotation, as in “ made with art,” or “ full o f deep skill and artistry.” So even a common word like “artificial” requires sensitivity in when, where, how and why it is used— in other words, you have to be sensitive to the particular context in which you find it Similarly, visual images have the same kind o f changing meanings through time. There are original meanings— creat­ ed by the artist, patron, and viewers— and then there are the meanings that subsequent generations create and find in the work. You, as an art historian, must be aware o f this process, and aware o f how differendy you might look at a work com­ pared with its creator, patron, initial audience, or people o f other times and places. You may regard a painting like Olym­ pia by Edouard Manet (1832-83) as completely unobjection­ able, but remember that many nineteenth-century viewers were shocked by Manet’s depiction o f a naked young woman staring out direcdy at the viewer. Historical interpretation in practice The Arnoljim Portrait (previously known as the Arnoljini Wed­ ding) by Jan van Eyck (c. 1390-1441) dates to 1434 (Figure 3.6) and provides a good example o f the challenges o f historical interpretation— in fact, the work has become famous for its resistance to easy interpretation. Once again, think about how you might interpret this work without looking up any contex­ tual information about fifteenth-century Europe, van Eyck, or the Arnolfini family. There’s some doubt as to whether this painting depicts a wedding ceremony, as its traditional title suggested. It may actually commemorate another legal arrangement between the couple, such as the husband granting power o f attorney to the wife. I f the painting does indeed represent a wedding, you may be wondering when the bride and groom are going to go o ff and get changed for the ceremony. In fact, the white wedding dress and the morning coat are nineteenth-century inventions, and there was no standard wedding costume at 3.6 Jan van Eyck, Arnolfim Portrait, 1434. Oil on panel, 32 '/ x 23 /, in (82.2 x 60 cm). National Gallery, London. this time. I f this im age does depict a w edding, did these two get married in their bedroom ? What about the church or the court house? Again, at the time, it w o u ld n ’ t have been at all su rp risin g for the cerem ony to take place in a private hom e. W eddings were primarily contractual agreem ents, and a reli­ gious cerem ony w as not considered essential. You probably also suspect that the artist is making a state­ ment about the wealth and status o f these people. The cou­ ple's fur-trimmed clothing is something that, both then and now, indicates wealth. But take the oranges on the chest at left, behind the man. You probably didn't think twice about them— grocery stores practically give them away in season. But to a northern European at the time, oranges were “ the fruit o f kings,” a rare and costly import from Spain. Fifteenthcentury viewers would have interpreted the inclusion o f these oranges— so carelessly and luxuriously scattered over chest and windowsill— as a sign o f great wealth, in the same way that you might react to bottles o f the finest champagnes in a portrait today. But this painting isn’t just a straightforward “ snapshot” recording an event; it’s also a highly complex and subtle state­ ment about the couple. Many aspects o f this painting are still poorly understood, and the precise nature o f the overall mean­ ing isn’t entirely clear. Scholars have described this work as a large puzzle, for each element seems to contribute to this larger meaning. The painting seems to address marriage and family, domestic life and the responsibilities and duties it brings to each member o f the couple. The little dog, for ex­ ample, is on one level a sign o f wealth, for it is a rare breed. Yet the dog also symbolized fidelity, especially marital fidelity, at this time. Notice that the woman stands in the part o f the room dominated by the bed, perhaps a symbol o f domesticity, while the man stands next to a window, which opens onto the outer world. The woman pulls up her gown over her stom­ ach, creating a rounded silhouette that evokes pregnancy, and therefore the perpetuation o f the family lineage. The continuing mystery o f this famous painting reminds us o f the limits o f interpretation and historical understand­ ing. The kinds o f documents that might answer our question directly (a description o f the painting by the artist or patron, a contract for it, the impressions o f early viewers) don’t sur­ vive. Does this mean we shouldn’t or can’t interpret the work? I think it means that interpretation is more necessary than ever if we are going to engage with the work on levels beyond simply admiring van Eyck’s technical skill as a painter. To achieve understanding, viewers today must work both from the painting itself, for it provides its own primary evidence for interpretation, and also from general knowledge o f northern Renaissance culture and society. Let’s go back to the quotation that begins this section. It makes a simple but profound point: be aware that historical works, even if from your own culture or the recent past, are in some sense foreign and not necessarily easily comprehen­ sible. At the same time, you don’t need to feel entirely cut o ff from the past, for the past is only knowable in the present and is, in that sense, part o f the present. Art and its controversies When thinking about art in context, it’s important to re­ member that art is not always produced in an atmosphere o f complete and happy agreement among patrons, artists, and viewers. Often there is a range o f different and sometimes conflicting intentions, responses, and interpretations at play. As noted above, responses to art change with time, too: what was once shocking may become acceptable and vice versa. Many different cultures and time periods have seen conflict over art—what it depicts, how it depicts it, where and how it is displayed, how people respond. Over the past 20 years, for example, with the ascendancy o f conservative politicians in the United States, controversies involving public funding and questions o f “decency” have attracted widespread public attention. Perhaps the most fa­ mous o f these concerned the 1990 retrospective exhibition o f photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe (1946-89). The exhibi­ tion, which included homoerotic and sadomasochistic im­ ages, came under attack for its content, especially since it had received funding from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). In response, Congress cut funding to the NEA and re­ quired the organization to keep in mind “general standards o f decency and respect for the diverse beliefs and values o f the American public.” More recently, in 1996, artist Renee Cox (b. 1957) of­ fended some viewers with her nude self-portrait as Christ in Yo M a m a ’s Last Supper (Figure 3.7), an image modeled on Leonardo da Vinci’s (1452-1519) Last Supper. Cox, born in Jamaica and raised as a Roman Catholic, intended the image as an exploration o f the idea that all humans are created in God s image— even someone as marginalized in American culture as a Black woman. Among Cox’s most vocal critics was the mayor o f New York Rudolph Giuliani, who called the work anti-Catholic and obscene, and threatened to form a “decency commission" to monitor the Brooklyn Museum, where the work was displayed. O f course, such controversies are not new. Like Cox, Michelangelo was severely criticized for depicting a nude Christ in his Sistine Chapel Last Judge­ ment (1536-41). Although his patron, Pope Paul III (reigned 1534-49), was gready moved by the work, later popes, from as early as 1546 and into the eighteenth century, ordered loin­ cloths to be painted over the nude figures whose genitals were most prominent. Contextual interpretations should take into account the varied positions o f the artwork’s different constituencies. The artist’s and patron’s intentions may be quite far apart, as may be the response o f different viewers to the work. A good exam­ ple is the controversy over the destruction o f the monumental stone Buddhas at Bamiyan, Afghanistan (Figure 3.8), early in 2001 on the orders o f the ruling Taliban faction. Carved into the living rock, the Buddhas had presided over the trade route known as the Silk Route since the third century c e . It is pos­ sible that their destruction was not simply an inevitable out­ growth o f a generic “Muslim” aversion to figurative imagery'. After all, local Muslim populations had coexisted with the Buddhas for centuries. Moreover, a delegation from the fiftyfive-nation Organization o f Islamic Conference petitioned the Taliban not to destroy the images, and local Taliban members would not do it. 3.8 Rock-carved Buddha, Bamiyan, Afghanistan. Height 175 ft (53 m). Left: the Buddha, c.1997, before it was demolished. Below: the Buddha after it was demolished by explosive charges in 2001. The destruction o f the statues can be seen in the context o f contemporary politics, at a time when the repressive Taliban regime was rejecting the international power structure that was pressuring it in various ways. The Taliban’s horrific ac­ tion can be interpreted as rejecting the international cultural values that also encourage the preservation o f historical arti­ facts like the Buddha images. These kinds o f complexities are at the heart o f nuanced contextual analysis. Style and meaning The concept o f artistic style is an important one in art history. You could say that style is where art’s formal and contextual aspects meet. Art historians have spent a lot o f time trying to define artistic style and explain how and why it changes over time and varies between individuals and groups. Ernst Gombrich (1909-2001) defined style with deceptive simplic­ ity as “ any distinctive . . . way in which an act is performed.” In a famous essay, Meyer Schapiro (1904-96) defined artistic style as “ constant form— and sometimes the constant ele­ ments, qualities and expressions— in the art o f an individual or a group.” Style is sometimes identified in terms o f a time period or culture (Italian Renaissance; Edo period, Japan); in terms o f a group o f artists (Rembrandtesque or School o f Rembrandt); or in terms o f an individual artist’s style. Style is important to art historians because, i f works o f art both reflect and shape the world around them, then style is one way that they do that. That is, style communicates reli­ gious, social, political, and moral values through the formal properties o f the work o f art. The idea that style both express­ es and shapes values or ideas may seem difficult to grasp, but let’s look at it another way. Take the concept o f lifestyle, for example. The word “ lifestyle” indicates certain types o f social behavior, consumer products, and ways o f living chosen by an individual, usually to express a sense o f connection to a certain group or idea. Lifestyle choices are affected by gender, race, class, ethnicity, age, sexual orientation, personal taste— and they affect the way we experience these characteristics. An individual’s choice o f a car, for example, often has as much to do with image as it does with functionality. The popularity o f SUVs (sports utility vehicles) in prosperous Western coun­ tries at the turn o f the twenty-first century is a good exam­ ple— people who drove nowhere more exciting than the local grocery store wanted these rugged, off-road vehicles in order to appear outdoorsy and adventurous. The complex interplay o f an artwork’s features is im­ portant in defining a style, not any one feature in particular. Subject matter is a good example o f this. Images o f the Bud­ dha have been made in widely varying cultures and time peri­ ods, and in many different formal styles. Considered alone, the subject matter o f the Buddha does not tell you where and when a particular image was made. To find this out, you would have to look at other evidence, including the style in which the figure o f the Buddha is depicted. Similarly, par­ ticular formal features are not necessarily diagnostic o f a cul­ tural style. Doric columns, for example, originated in ancient Greek architecture, but this type o f column was later used in different styles o f Roman, Italian Renaissance, and nineteenth-century Western architecture. Conclusion For me, the process o f interpreting a work o f art from another culture or from the past is like speaking a foreign language. I may not speak a language well, and may not fully understand what native speakers are saying, but a great deal o f successful communication is still possible, despite my imperfect grammar and vocabulary. So, too, with a work o f art. You may not grasp all o f its meaning— if that’s even possible, given the variable understandings and interpretations o f the very people who made and used the work— but there is much that you can know and understand. Your tools are contextual and formal analysis.
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Contextual Analysis
Q1. I do agree with the author’s assertions: a difference exists between art as a social
context and art in social context. As the author states, claiming that art is in social context
cheapens the effects that art has on people and groups of people. Looking through history, great
artistic awakenings have influenced people’s lives, how they dress, talk, and even live. Art is
therefore social context as it describes society as it is.
Q2. The following are the three types of contextual questions that can be applied in
analyzing the art’s work.


A variety of questions that emphases on the peo...


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