Understanding Art 2: Pathways Into Specialism

Co ur s es a mpl e

Understanding Art 2: Pathways into Specialism

Written by: Jacqueline Jeynes

Level HE5 - 60 CATS © Open College of the Arts

Open College of the Arts Michael Young Arts Centre Redbrook Business Park Wilthorpe Road Barnsley S75 1JN

Telephone: 0800 731 2116 E-mail: [email protected] www.oca-uk.com Registered charity number: 327446 OCA is a company limited by guarantee and registered in England under number 2125674

Copyright OCA 2008 Document control number: pathways revised.doc No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means - electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording or otherwise - without prior permission of the publisher (Open College of the Arts)

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About the author

Dr Jacqueline Jeynes has been a tutor with the Open College of Arts for 20 years, providing postal tuition for students on the Understanding Art courses and Textile Design I and II. She was a member of the original Steering Group in the early days of Understanding Western Art (now Understanding Art 1: Western Art) was introduced.

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Contents Introduction Course overview Course outcomes Study skills Starting the course Student profile Keeping a Learning log Collecting and visiting Reading Keeping sketchbooks Annotations On completing the course Going further Project and assignment plan

1:

Looking Introduction Authenticity, recognition and comparisons Project 1: The Woman from Willendorf Project 2: Description of a sculpture Assignment 1: Annotations/ Project 1 or 2/ Outline study plan

2:

Reading Introduction Artistic intentions and critical accounts Narratives, symbols and stories of art Project 3: Critical reading of a text Project 4: Narrative painting Assignment 2: Annotations/ Project 3/ Study Part 1- work in progress

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3:

Understanding materials Introduction The vernacular, hierarchies and transformations Flat surfaces and craftsmanship Project 5: Make a copy or a detailed analysis

4:

Understanding methods Introduction Copies, variants and traditional methods Planning, execution and analysis Project 6: The sculptural process Project 7: A creative variation of an Eastern work Assignment 3: Annotations/ Project 5(copy or analysis)/ Project 6 or 7/ Study Part 2 – work in progress

5:

Responding and Interpreting Introduction Personal and critical responses; Personal interpretations Project 8: Describe your responses to different works Project 9: Analyse the response of others Assignment 4: Projects 8 and 9/ Study Part 3 – work in progress

6:

Conclusions and critical review Conclusions The critical review; structure of final Report Project 10: Carry out Critical Review of learning process Assignment 5: Project 10/ Final Study Report (3500 words)

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Introduction

Course overview Aims: •

to develop broader observation and analytic skills for works from cultures other than the West

•

to focus on a specific theme/ artist/ type of art form through carrying out detailed analysis and evaluation

•

to carry out research on specialist subject, identifying features for closer analysis and presenting as an illustrated report

•

to carry out a critical review of the learning process.

While the OCA Understanding Art 1: Western Art course gives a broad and general introduction to the study of the history of western art aimed at those who have some practical artistic skills, it only provides an introduction to Western art. Understanding Art 2:Pathways into Specialism allows a deeper study of art from a broader cultural base, leading you to consider areas of specialism you wish to pursue further. As with all OCA higher-level courses, the responsibility for devising a work programme gradually moves from the course manual to you, so there are less specific instructions about what you should do and more open-ended invitations to you to pursue your own interests. This is inevitable when one person's ultimate interest might be in pursuing impressionism, whilst another's might be in African art. The course is built around Honour and Fleming's 'A World History of Art'. This course manual is in part a guide to intelligent and sustained reading and re-reading of Honour and Fleming's book, and in part advice on how to build on your reading of the book through careful and informed analysis of art from around the world. Essay writing is only a small element of this course, but the annotation procedure is an important learning tool. © Open College of the Arts

Course outcomes Upon completion of Understanding Art 2:Pathways into Specialism you will be able to: •

move from the general to the particular by developing sound study skills

•

achieve an open-minded attitude to art of many periods and cultures

•

carry out a self-directed analysis and evaluation in a specialist subject.

Starting the course What to do first Begin by reading the introduction and then look through the whole course. Make a note of any questions you might have and consider a rough timetable you can work from to complete the course.

Student profile You will find amongst your assessment materials a single sheet called Student Profile. Use this to tell your tutor a little about any past experience you have and how confident you feel about learning some of the skills. This is an important document. It is your first link with your tutor and gives you the chance to introduce yourself. Give your tutor as much information as you can about your previous experience, your reasons for exploring this subject and what you expect to achieve from taking the course. OCA tuition is on a oneto-one basis and so it is possible for our tutors to angle their advice to meet individual needs, but only if these are defined in the Student Profile. On receipt of your Student Profile, your tutor will write to you, introducing him/herself and suggesting a date for the submission of your first assignment in line with your timetable. Please note that this date is given as an indication and that there is a degree of flexibility. If you feel you can complete the section earlier, then by all means do. If you feel you need a little longer, that's fine. If, however, there is going to be a considerable delay we would appreciate your contacting the tutor and giving an anticipated date for the © Open College of the Arts

submission of your assignment. The most important thing is that you gain the maximum pleasure and satisfaction from taking the course. When you submit an assignment your tutor will comment and advise on your work and answer any questions relating to the course. Once you have looked through the course and sent off your student profile, you can begin to start your first project.

Advanced study outline plan You are required to write a study outline on a particular aspect of this subject that wish to study (approx 750 words). The approved study outline will form the basis of your critical review (approx 3,500 words) that you will also need to complete later in the course. An outline of yourself and your interests would help to further inform your tutor about the topic of study that is most relevant to you - remember at this level development is a joint negotiated plan that will attempt to develop your professional role as well as you subject interest.

Topics you can consider: Sample Issues etc Landscape as an impression Empirical figure studies Order in Chaos - Systematic mark-making The world after cubism The influence of Picasso on 20th century art From figurative to abstraction - reference Mondrian Please submit your Study Plan to your tutor (which must in English).

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The study plan will be approved and or modified by your tutor to ensure that it satisfies study requirements at this level. An academic member of staff at OCA will also view the modified outline. You are required to make reference to any research or source materials that you will use, including museums, galleries, notes, books, research from the web etc. and include any web links where necessary. There should be at least five references to other authors in the theoretical section (section one) of your case study, which back up your learning. You may choose any texts to refer to, and may also refer to an online quote providing you cite your source. The following structure should be used in your outline for your Study Plan that will also form the basis of your critical review. The indicated word requirement for each section referred to below applies to your critical review only.

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Project and assignment plan Time Taken (hours) 1: Looking Project 1: The Woman from Willendorf

10

Project 2: Description of a sculpture

10

Assignment 1: Annotations/ Project 1 or 2/ Outline Study Plan

20

2: Reading Project 3: Critical reading of a text

20

Project 4: Narrative painting

10

Assignment 1: Annotations/ Project 3/ Study Part 1 – work in progress

70

3: Understanding materials Project 5: Make a copy or a detailed analysis

30

4: Understanding methods Project 6: The sculptural process

20

Project 7: A creative variation of an Eastern work

20

Assignment 3: Annotations/ Project 5 (copy or analysis)/ Project 6 or 7/ Study Part 2 – work in progress

70

5: Responding and interpreting Project 8: Describe your responses to different works

20

Project 9: Analyse the response of others

20

Assignment 4: Projects 8 and 9/ Study Part 3 – work in progress

70

6: Conclusions and critical review Project 10: Carry out critical review of the learning process

30

Assignment 5: Project 10/ Final Study Report (3500 words)

80

Reading time

100

TOTAL TIME

600

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1: Looking Introduction To read (in WHA): Introduction 1. Before History

Additional reading: see the bibliography in WHA, especially under Pictorial Representation.

What do you see? What do you see when you look at a work of art? People have been looking at Stonehenge (pp 18-19: 48-9) [see earlier notes for an explanation of page references to WHA] now for around four thousand years. What you see today is a noble ruin, with only some of the features it possessed when its construction was finished. Your perception of Stonehenge may be restricted to simple facts: huge stones on an open landscape site, some supporting lintels, some fallen, some apparently missing from what you may deduce was originally a circle. You cannot directly see its history, although you can inform yourself about it; you may then look with renewed interest at the site, which your text states is the largest prehistoric stone circle in the UK. The site has been memorably recorded. John Constable, for example made a fine watercolour, now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, and Henry Moore made a series of prints that recorded something of the stones and their surfaces. In more banal ways, Stonehenge has been drawn, painted and photographed, every record being part of an encounter between an individual and the objects seen. If you wrote a letter to a friend after a visit to Stonehenge, your description would certainly be fuller than a comment on your mere perception. For example, you would certainly add to an account of what you saw some

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comment on how you felt about the experience. This may all seem quite obvious, and having reached the stage of taking this course, you are likely to be an experienced observer of western art. But, when you begin to look at the art of less familiar cultures, you find it makes new demands, and it is these that this course aims to help you to meet.

A new path to follow Your text book, 'A World History of Art' explains the sequence of western art, and considers in more detail the themes of still life, the figure, the portrait, interiors, and landscape. It may throw new light on some topics, adding to others, while providing a more consistent approach to art and its history. In addition, the text book explores art from other cultures and parts of the world, challenging to some of the things which are taken for granted in the west. The most striking difference is that while western painting and sculpture was for centuries preoccupied with representing the world in the way that your text calls 'perceptually' (p xx: 19), this was not a universal concern. In other cultures western conventions of the proportions of the human figure, the modelling of forms in painting, or distance represented by perspective are not always found, nor indeed are they throughout all periods of western civilisation. In African sculpture it is rare to find the common western proportion of one to seven for the head as to the body. The development of what is considered in the west as scientific perspective does not appear in, say, Chinese landscapes. The interior of a Japanese temple is not planned in order to inspire the worshipper through a sense of space like a European cathedral. And so on. The familiar categories of western art are not universal, nor is the same order of precedence placed on different categories of art as in the west. The assumption of the authors of WHA is that they can help you to overcome your western prejudices by employing formal analysis, a close and purposeful looking at different works of art. Further, their enlightening accounts of western art will enable you to make comparisons. © Open College of the Arts

You may wonder how relevant your existing skills are for considering art from other cultures and for reaching a more thorough understanding and appreciation of the most diverse cultures, even though their detailed particularities require deeper study. You may argue that you should acquire a thorough understanding of another culture before evaluating its art, but here we are making a start. Just as your first encounter with a stranger may develop into a friendship, your wary uncertainties in front of perhaps Japanese or Mexican art will pass. There are different points to notice, but then there were always different points to consider about a western still life or a western landscape.

A note on records . . . Tourists are sometimes ridiculed for spending their time taking photographs rather than looking at the scenes and places that they visit. The criticism is justified if a tourist is unable to enjoy the atmosphere of a place, or sees works of art only through a viewfinder. On the other hand, it is often pleasant to have personal record of a visit, and OCA students have made good use of cameras to record details, unusual views, or simply works of which no photos are available. A photograph is a single view, and carries only a limited amount of data. This record is not what you see, but a fraction of your experience (there is no need to detail the limitations of lenses, films, and so on). A drawing, analysis of some sort, or a copy is a different fraction, with the advantage of the thought you have put into it, and the more accurate observation it has needed. Your thoughts can also find expression in words. An annotation is a jotting down of notes, related directly to what you see in the reproduction in front of you. Besides this, there are questions, notes and ideas which occur to you and which are placed below the line on your sheet, going beyond what you can see. The first observations can be extended further, and in themselves may form a substantial part of a catalogue entry, as it were, for the work observed. You will find that the pages 'In Context' in WHA are worth studying. For example, the portrait of An Qi painted by three artists in 1715 (p 646: 695) tells you one thing you deduce from a careful look, that the portrait is by one © Open College of the Arts

artist, the landscape by another. But you also need to learn the symbolism of the crane, the bamboos, the flowers and the trees with golden fruit. In these first two units your annotations are about very different sculptures, the first is only as tall as the side of a postcard, the other is nearly eight feet tall. About the first there are many unknowns, about the second the informed viewer can draw on a rich social, historical, cultural and religious background of knowledge. You are starting with what you can see, and you can then turn to the relevant chapter of the text to find out rather more.

To collect: six images of works before 1000 BC (images can be postcards, photographs, photocopies of book or catalogue entries, or down-loaded images from the internet)

To annotate: The Woman from Willendorf (p 5: 35)

Project 1: The Woman from Willendorf Imagine you are the archaeologist who has discovered the Woman from Willendorf. No photographs are yet available, so you are writing to a friend to describe and explain the find. The annotation you have already made can be the basis for a formal description of the figure, but you are also trying to explain the excitement you feel about this very early relic of human figure making. Does it make sense to you to call it art? You will find helpful discussion in 'Before History.' Your letter should be about 500 words long.

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Authenticity, recognition and comparisons To read: 6. Buddhism etc Additional reading: I suggest you use the bibliography in WHA for some topic that interests you, without feeling the need to study any subject in depth. This course is about principles of study, and achieving an openminded attitude to art of many periods and cultures - specialism follows on from this course.

The real thing Is what you see the real thing? This is a different sort of question about what you see; it is about the authenticity of objects. European viewers often expect to be able to identify works of art as having been made by individual artists, and for these artists to be named. But this does not always apply. You have already annotated a figure identified by the place where it was excavated – Willendorf. We do not know the names of artists in ancient Egypt, medieval European objects are frequently identified by the name of the donor, not the maker, African carvings are identifiable by ethnic group but rarely by the name of a carver. Do you know who the artist was? If so, you can make comparisons with other works by the same person. European connoisseurs are adept at attributing or denying works to the canon of distinguished artists. This connoisseurship is based on careful examination of the works themselves, a master class in annotation, one might say. Such connoisseurship also enables forgeries to be identified, though as forgers are often as clever as they are unscrupulous, it is a relief to art experts that methods of dating can now be borrowed from scientific procedures in measurement. Essentially, though, connoisseurs are expert scrutineers of works of art, bringing together powers of observation with historical and cultural knowledge.

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Among the things a connoisseur may be able to deduce is what degree of authenticity can be established for a given work - whether, for example, a painting has been overpainted or restored, if the colours have deteriorated over time, or if it has been altered in some other way since it left the artist's studio. This may be beyond an ordinary observer. Of course, the extensive documentation of European art and the assiduous study of European art over the last hundred years cannot be matched for other cultures, and raises unfulfillable expectations where documentation is thin or does not exist. Again, in WHA you will see how incomplete our knowledge remains.

The unknown artist Art that is by an unknown artist can be put into a sequence or a historical context, very often through the same sort of examination of form which is applied to better documented art. Here comparisons can be used, and from the evidence a picture can be built up of a period and a climate of art. This is how archaeologists work, and their investigations lead not only to more knowledge about art but extend to understanding of history and cultures too. You will already have noticed the speculations of archaeology at work in 'Before History'. Archaeology is heavily handicapped by the fragmentary character of its evidence, most objects being incomplete and many only known through the copies of later times. Here again, different cultures set different problems for the student. In the Chinese civilisation, exact reproduction of earlier art was respected and admired. In some instances, we are unsure of the date of paintings or ceramics, since there is a possibility that either they are original, or that they are the perfectly executed copies of a later period. The most learned scholars cannot agree. For example, the scroll entitled The Admonition of the Instructress to the Court Ladies (p 236: 268) is either a copy of the 10th century or an authentic work by Gu Kaizhi from the 4th century. In African carvings of wood, few of which are older than the 19th century, the prevalence of copies is a serious hazard for collectors. In Japanese architecture, the exact replication of an older structure was an accepted

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practice, for example the shrine at Ise (p 253: 287) was regularly rebuilt. You will be able to multiply instances as you read and refer to your text.

Comparisons The plot thickens. The transmission of art from one generation, from one century to another may depend on fragments, or on translations of work from one medium into another. In Europe this is well-known, since prints were frequently the means whereby compositions and themes in art became more widely diffused. In the world as a whole today, photography performs this role of communicating information about art, and other technologies are speeding the process still further. There are limits, however, to the effectiveness of this transmission. Think of Europe in the 17th century when composition could be effectively transmitted through engravings, but colour could not.

To collect: six images of oriental art To annotate: Guanyin, Song dynasty sculpture (p 243: 275)

Project 2: Description of a sculpture Choose a piece of sculpture, and decide how to make this work of interest and use to an artist friend living abroad. For a three-dimensional object, a camera to take views from different angles is a useful choice. Or perhaps you might like to consider something more adventurous than a drawing or a photograph and try a collage or a model? When you have your image or model, write a description to your friend to complement it, making up for its limitations. This need not be very long, possibly 250 or up to 500 words, but it should help your friend to get a good idea of the sculpture and its qualities.

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