This document discusses various themes and contexts related to art. It describes common themes in art such as religious/sacred, political/social, nature, identity, dreams/fantasy, and humor. It also discusses context, including the historical circumstances around a work, its physical placement or site-specific nature. Finally, it discusses the effect and affect of art, where effect is the visual result and affect is the emotional feeling created in the viewer.

1. What is Art? part 2
Themes and content, context, effect/affect

2. Last class
• subjectivity in art
• art as a carrier of meaning
• meaning in art usually ambiguous, implicit
• different contributors to meaning
• Form, formalism, how form works with content to make meaning
• genres of art
• representational vs figurative vs abstract vs non-representational
• Styles in art, classical vs romantic
• media or mediums and process

3. Themes and content
• Iconography- symbols that are traditional, usually
religious, that most people understand the meaning
of
Michelangelo’s Pieta Pieta by Sam Taylor Wood

4. Iconoclasm
• greek for “image-breaking”
• literally- destroying religious icons or symbols or outlawing
their use
• figuratively- someone who goes against the grain, breaks
convention
ancient Buddhist statue
destroyed by Taliban

5. Religious or sacred
Tibetan Buddhist design
The Incredulity of St. Thomas
by Caravaggio

6. Religious or sacred
Virgin Mary by Chris Offili
Piss Christ
by Andres Serrano

7. Political/social
Ai Weiwei

8. Political/social
Picasso’s Guernica
Banksy

9. Political/social
Political posters/ propaganda

10. Political/social

11. stories and history
Oath of the Horatii, by Jacque-Louis David

12. stories and history
Washington Crossing the Delaware by Emanuel Leutze

13. stories and history
Trajan’s
column

14. stories and history
Battle of Orgreave by Jeremy Deller

15. Nature
Monet’s Water Lilies
and Japanese Bridge

16. Nature
Andy Goldsworthy

17. Nature
Jennifer Steinkamp

18. Identity
Rembrandt’s
Self-portraits

19. Identity
Frida Kahlo

20. Identity
Cindy Sherman

21. Dreams and fantasy
Salvador Dali

22. Dreams and fantasy
Pop Surrealism
Mark Ryden

23. Dreams and fantasy
Pop Surrealism
Andrea Castro

24. Dreams and fantasy
Pop Surrealism
Lisa Falzon

25. Dreams and fantasy
Matthew Barney

26. Dreams and fantasy
Theo Mercier

27. Humor
Marcel Duchamp
and the Dada art movement

28. Humor
Erwin Wurm

29. Humor
Olaf Breuning

30. Humor
Guerrilla Girls

31. Art as a theme
“Art about Art”

32. Art as a theme
“Art about Art”

33. Context
• the historical or biographical circumstance
that surround the work
• the setting or placement of the art (a wall, a
gallery, outdoors, on pedestal, etc)
• Site-Specific= typically made for a certain
space, perhaps made onsite rather than in
studio. Could be installation art, land art,
ephemeral art, public art or monuments.

34. Context
Duchamp’s
Fountain
Michelangelo’s David

35. Site-specific art
Robert Smithson’s
Spiral Jetty (Land art)
Christo’s & Jeanne Claude’s
The Gates (public art)

36. Site-specific art
Monica Gryzmala
(installation art)Katharina Grosse
(installation art)

37. Moi

38. Effect / Affect
• effect = visual or other sensory result of a way of
working with the media (ex. drybrush technique)
• affect= the bodily or emotional feeling of the
experiencer
• artists use effects to try to create affects

39. Affect
Raft of the Medusa by Theodore Gericault

40. Affect
Olafur Eliasson,
the Weather
Project at Tate
Modern museum

41. Affect
Marina Abramovic