Theories, Categories, and Types of ArtMyriam VijilGabriel RiveraSheila SierraMariana DelgadoBruno ToméRicardo Hedman

Origins of the Western Tradition

Two Remarkable ancient Greek thinkers:

• Plato: He believed that knowledge was innate in human beings. Was a rationalist, he distrusted sense experience. According to Plato, the human soul exists in an unchanging world that is similar to the external world.

• Aristotle: Was an empiricist, he believed that the human mind is a tabula rasa- a blank slate- at birth. According to Aristotle sensory experiences are transformed into knowledgeby the human ability to reason.

Traditional Theories of Art

Three Broad Categories:• Mimesis: Also known as imitationalism.

Derived from the Greek word that means mimic. This kind of art represents mirrors and creates illusions. Judges art in how well it represents the natural world.

• Formalism: Judges how well the work conforms to its form. Maintains that the form of art and the aesthetic experiences prompted by art are universal.

• Expressionism: Artists communicate their feelings through art and the perceiver experiences what the artist felt while creating the work. Includes Benedetto Croce, Leo Tolstoy and R.G. Collingwood.

Benedetto Croce

Leo Tolstoy R.G. Collingwood

Philosophical Perspectives on Aesthetics

Five Main Perspectives:•Idealism: It places judgments about beauty

in the mind of the beholder. It lays the groundwork for various theories that maintain that judgments about art are subjective.

•Phenomenology: Evolved into a form o idealism. Founded by German Philosopher Edmund Husserl. His approach assigned equal importance to the role of the reason and sense experience. Phenomenologists believe that it is impossible to separate the act of observing from the thing being observed.

• Existentialism: Soren Kierkegaard laid the groundwork of existentialism. But became popular after World War II. Believe that it is impossible to really know anything in the World. In the 20th Century other philosophers built on Kierkegaard’s ideas, but rejected his religious focus. German philosopher Martin Heidegger, and french philosopher Jean-Paul Satre. They believed that people may never be certain they have made the right choices.

• Feminism: Feminist ideas about new definitions of art gathered force in the 1970s, spurred by the work of artists such as Joyce Wieland and Judy Chicago. Joanna Frueh has identified three phases in the history of feminist art theory. First focused on finding and reviving the interest. Second argued about the existence of female imagination. Third is more theoretical, focusing and analyzing art created by both men and women.

•Modernism and Post Modernism: The modernist movement, which began in the late 19th century, and reached its final phase after World War II, exalts the ability of artworks to stand on their own as pure form. By the early 1970s, modernism was beginning to give way to post-modernism, as people looked for new ways of making sense of the world. They also emphasize the way art is interpreted.

Categories and Types of Art

•Visual Arts: Present Visual Interpretations of an artist’s ideas, experiences, or feelings. Drawings, paintings, sculptures, and prints are traditionally considered visual arts. Contemporary art forms such as videos, photography, films and collages also fall into this category. Representational visual art portrays the world as it is. Expressionistic representations are often identified as abstract. When visual art is so abstract that it bears no resemblance to reality it is often described as non-representational.

Guess which type of visual art is portrayed below

•Architecture: is the art and science of creating buildings. As an art, architecture is similar to sculpture in its use of three-dimensional space. When designing a building, architects must address three key areas:

1. Function: the building’s use2. Structure: the building’s stability3. Form: the building’s appearance

•Within the categories and types of art there are five other categories, Dance, Musical Arts, Literary arts, Fashion and Theatrical Arts.