Art Has Power

Activist Art throughout History

How do you determine an artist’s meaning?

• Remember how you felt when you saw Art like this on our field trip?

Sometimes, it is hard. Context.

• Artists always having meaning and intention in their work. Always, and this applies to the blank white piece puzzling you all at the Menil.

Robert Hyman 1976

The artist uses only white paint, but different kinds on different materials, using different painting techniques. Paying attention to slight changes.

Lets talk aesthetic theory

• aesthetics |esˈTHetiks|(also esthetics )pluralnoun [ usu. treated as sing. ]a set of principles concerned with the nature and appreciation of beauty, esp. in art.• the branch of philosophy that deals with the principles of beauty and artistic taste.

We study art history to learn symbolism to decode a painting.

• Mythology• Literature• Historical Events• Religion• Time period • Materials• Influences• An other ideas?

basics

• Representation- art copies life• Formalism- art follows design principles. • Expressionism- art is expresses emotions and

ideas.

How were you judging this work?

• How should you have? Which Aesthetic theory.

• It is hard when you view it out of context.

JACQUES LOUIS DAVID• The Death Of Marat • 1793• French• The piece is "a moving testimony to what can be

achieved when an artist's political convictions are directly manifested in his work." Marat became an instant political martyr while the painting became a symbol of sacrifice in the name of the republic.

• Revolution• Voted for the execution of Louis XVI and Marie

Antoinette.• Supporter of Napoleon. • After Napoleon was overthrown, David was

exiled to Belgium and later his body buried there. He was not allowed to be buried in France for his rule in overthrowing Louis XVI. However his heart is buried in Paris.

Franscisco Goya

• The Third of May 1808 (Execution of the Defenders of Madrid)

1814SpanishCommemorates the Spanish resistance to Napolean.

MartrydomChiaroscuro (dramatic lighting from lantern)StigmataColors of the Papacy- yellow and white Crucifixion pose

Pablo Picasso

• Guernica• 1937 bombing of Basque region of Northern

Spain during the Spanish civil war.

Massacre in Korea

• Criticism of American intervention In Korean War. 1951 (look familiar?)

John Heartfield

• 1891- 1968• German• He is best known for

political montages which he had created during the 1930s to expose German Nazism.

Ben Shahn

American, Lithuanian Jewish HeritageSocial realism1898 – 1969

“the lucky Dragon series” This painting is one in a series about "The Lucky Dragon," a Japanese fishing boat hit by the fallout of hydrogen bomb testing in the Bikini Atoll; 22 of the men on board became seriously ill and one, Aikichi Kuboyama, died. This painting depicts the conclusion of Kuboyama's funeral when 20 pigeons were released. At the funeral Kuboyama's eldest daughter carried a wooden tablet with the words, "The soul of the deceased Aikichi Kuboyama." His other daughter held a large photograph of her father. In relief is the hydrogen beast, a recurring symbol for nuclear destruction in Shahn's paintings.

This is at the Blanton at UT

Ai Wei Wei

Contemporary 1957- Chinese Dissident Artist