How art speaks/ART 103/Tasks
This Meaning, Style and Perspectives learning challenge is made up of three parts: Interpreting Meaning, Style and Meaning, and Critical Perspectives.
Interpreting Meaning
View and describe Winslow Homer’s painting The Fog Warning (1885). Try to interpret the meaning inherent in the work from the visual and contextual clues you see. Then view the same Homer painting at another website. Here you can compare your interpretation of the work to the curator’s text about it. Record your views and ideas about the meaning of each work of art in your learning journal.
Style and Meaning
Style really matters because each style in art is linked to different philosophical ideas about the world, humanity, the artist, and the meaning of imagery. To see a wide range of art from many cultures, look at the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, which includes works of art, timelines, and thematic essays. and/or any links or resources of your choice.
Find works that seem to exhibit the following ideas:
- A work of art that is a representation of a human but not a specific or recognizable person.
- A work of art that is about a specific time or place.
- A work of art that is an image of a god, ruler or king or queen.
- A work of art that is about an artist and his/her view of the world.
- A work of art that is not a picture of things in the world. For each of the ideas, include the link to the image that you have chosen and state why you think that work shows the specific idea.
For each of the ideas, include the link to each image that you have chosen in the course topic discussion forum. For any two of your images, state why you think that work shows the specific idea.
Critical Perspectives
Using the Art Resources and/or links and resources of your choice, select three different works of art. From the following list of critical perspectives, select one for each of the three works you have chosen and interpret the work's meaning in the context of that perspective:
- Structural
- Feminist
- Ideological
- Deconstructive
- Formalist
- Psychoanalytic
- Feminist
- Formalist
- Structural
Use a different critical perspective for each work of art. Review the major ideas behind your chosen perspectives and, in the course topic discussion forum, explain how you think two of the images you have chosen fits the critical test. (Remember to give URLs of the links to the images.) Try to uncover the meanings of the images you choose, and explain how your chosen critical perspectives support your interpretations.
