Practice, The Conceptual Framework & The Frames

YR 11INTRO TO STUDYING STAGE 6

VISUAL ARTS

PRACTICE

When we look at an artist’s practice we discover:• The artist’s working methods

• The development of his/her style

• What the artist is influenced by

• What the artist’s intention is in their artmaking

• The frames within which the artist works

Ideas

Actions

PRACTICE

Practice relates to students’ artmaking and critical and historical studies of art.

Practice describes artistic activity demonstrating the ability to make suitable choices from a repertoireof knowledge and skills.

Practice respects the different views that circulate and are exchanged in and about the visual arts.

CONCEPTUAL FRAMWORKThe conceptual framework is made up of four interrelated agencies by which students can systematically think about, talk about and write about Artworks.

• Artist• Artwork• World

• Audience

The conceptual framework is a system that allows you to understand an artwork as well as the artist who made the work, the time and place in which

the work was created and audience responses towards the work.

The four agencies can be used to categorise information you gather about artists and artworks so that they can be analysed and evaluated.

Conceptual Framework

AUDIENCE WORLD

ARTIST

ARTWORK

In the conceptual framework we see the key agencies (or components) of the artworld and how they relate and are linked to one another

ARTWORK• Artworks are intentionally made by artists.

• We consider what is an artwork, and how an artwork can take many forms. An artwork used to be in the form of a drawing, painting sculpture or architecture. This was later broadened to include photography, then came the ready-made. Now we have installations, and technology based artworks such as video, hologram and computer generated works.

• Artworks have a material and physical form. E.g. Film, video and digital artworks use the material of celluloid, tape and chip, although the viewer is likely to experience the form of the artwork as a screen image.

• Some artworks exist only for a short period of time, so the documentation of them by video or photograph becomes the artwork (e.g. in Performance and earth art)

• Artworks function in different ways in each of the frames. E.g. The artwork functions in the structural frame as a text to be read like language.

ARTIST• What is the definition of an artist? Historically it was someone skilled in art

media and its techniques. We thought of an artist as a creative person whose perceptions of the world were heightened or more sensitive than the norm.

• The traditional function of the artist is to make artworks, (images or objects).

• Although artists, architects & designers can enlist others to produce their work, the individual who conceives that work is typically identified as fulfilling the artist function.

• Artists created original works. Now it’s acceptable to appropriate (copy) past artworks if the meaning or context is altered.

• The artists can be examined from each of the frames:

Structural frame: the artist produces artworks & objects using sign systems that are a language that can be read

Subjective frame: artist as Romantic hero/heroine, the genius who originates the new, the prophet and the bearer of deep universal truths.

Cultural frame: the artist as skilled artisan or tradesperson working for powerful social institutions or the propagandist or apologist for an ideology or an individual, or a respected elder, the custodian of specialized knowledge.

Postmodern frame: Artist as celebrity, the entrepreneur & the market and media savvy personality.

• The audience function is ongoing yet changeable as artworks inhabit different viewing contexts, are bought and sold, publicly exhibited, privately viewed, destroyed, damaged, lost or consigned to storage.

• Artworks typically engage audiences through museum and gallery exhibitions. Increasingly audiences are found or produced through the public display of artworks. This includes audiences accessing artworks by electronic and print media. Sculpture is often located outdoors. Designed images and objects may be shown in museum collections or displays. As many designed objects are manufactured as multiples they can be purchased and appear in everyday use. Architecture is also experienced by being used.

• Contemporary audiences will differ from historical audiences as different worlds, alongWith diverse subjectivities of gender, race and class, produce the audience function.

• Some recent changes to the audience function is in interactive art where the viewer actually determines what happens with an artwork.

AUDIENCE

WORLD• The agency of the world refers to all the vast and possible things artists and

audiences get interested in, and artworks can be about.

• The agency of the world designates the systematic ideas of the time, existing theoretical commitments, what is considered plausible and credible in the field of visual arts – and in turn implausible and incredible.

• Closely mediated by the frames, the world is NOT to be confused with the cultural frame (which refers to issues of power and identity arising from the economic, the social and the political).

• How does the world affect the viewpoint or emotional reaction of the artist? What social political and technological changes have made an impact on the artist or artwork?

THE FRAMES

The Frames are the way to give meaning to, and generate different understanding of the Conceptual Framework.

The Frames provide different philosophical / theoretical and interpretive structures for understanding the layering of meaning, significance , value and beliefs related to the visual arts.

They are used to assist in adopting points of view when approaching students own Practice in Artmaking, Art History and Art Criticism.

They provide alternative ways for interpreting and explaining meaning and why artists and audiences take on different points of view.

STRUCTURAL SUBJECTIVE

CULTURAL Po$tMoDeRN

STRUCTURAL

• Artists often create their own visual language using codes, symbols or signs to convey their meaning.

• We can interpret these works by analysing the elements of design (line, direction, shape, size, tone, texture and colour).

• An understanding of which element is most important to an artist can help us to discover the artist’s technique.

• The structural frame is where we discuss how an artwork is made.

• The composition (arrangement or sense of unity) is generally very important to structural artists.

Words: symbols, visual qualities, visual codes, formal elements, composition, materials, techniques, technologies.

Marcus Harvey, Myra, 1995, acrylic on canvas, painted using casts of children’s hands, 396 x 320cm.

Hravey is known for his tabloid-provoking painting of Myra Hindley created from the handprints of children that was shown in the Sensation exhibit at the Royal Academy of Art in 1997. Following a string of attacks by vandals, the painting had to be removed.

Looking at an image from a personal point of view• The subjective frame is to do with an Artist’s

emotions and imagination.

• It requires us to react to an artwork in a personal way, responding to our feelings.

• It shows us that we look at artworks in different ways according to our own life experiences and imagination.

SUBJECTIVE

“I think therefore I am”.

- René Descartes, philosopher

Words: emotion, intuition, imagination, memory, fantasy, spontenaity, the subconscious, dreams, personal experience.

Frida Kahlo, The broken column, 1944, 40 x 30.7 cm

CULTURAL

Looking at an Image from a historical, social and political viewpoint• Within the cultural frame, we look at influences of society or cultural background of an artwork.

• An artwork may reflect or comment on such aspects of culture as religion, politics, social status, race relations, gender concerns, influences of economics and technology.

• Within this frame we ask ourselves why an artwork was made and what is its purpose.

“No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main”.- John Donne, poet

Words: time and place, styles, culture (social, religious, political, economical, technological, scientific, philosophical), identity (personal, national, gender, racial)

The Guerrilla Girls are a group of radical feminist artists established in New York City in 1985, known for using guerrilla art to promote women and people of colour in the arts. One of their most famous posters was plastered across New York City buses in 1989. Its headline read, "Do women have to be naked to get into the Met. Museum?" The Guerrilla Girls conducted a "weenie count" at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, counting naked males and naked females in the artworks as well as numbers of female artists in the collection. Their design was rejected by The Public Art Fund as a billboard so the Guerrilla girls ran it as an ad in the public buses in New York City. This poster has been reproduced in many, many textbooks on all subjects from geography to art history to women’s studies. The GGs went back in 2005 to do a recount and found that there are now fewer women artists shown at the Met, but more naked males in the artworks.

• Mass media and the popular culture of our time often uses images and words from the past for new purposes, or they are given a new meaning.

• This idea of appropriating (copying and adapting) has influenced many contemporary artists.

• The idea of originality is questioned. Artist’s working in this frame challenge past ideas about what is art.

• They break the established conventions in a variety of ways; by the use of new media, questioning traditions, using new and often shocking subject matter, taking art to the public in non-art spaces and appropriating.

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Words: difference, fragmentation, questioning the conventions, scepticism, appropriation, quoatation, paradox, ambiguity, parody, ambuigity, parody, irony, use of non-traditional technologies, materials and/or techniques.

Read as a visual language- but in reference to its borrowing of existing texts / forms. Requires the audience to have knowledge of these things being referenced.

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ArtworkArtist

AudienceWorld

STRUCTURAL

CULTURAL

POST-MODERN

SUBJECTIVE

The subjective artist is motivated by feelings, intuition, imagination and personal experiences. The artist has expressive and sometimes spontaneous responses to the world. Thought of as an emotionally compelled individual who devises personal solutions.

Artworks that are a product of the Subjective frame communicate the artists personal experiences. They are records of emotional outpourings, highly evocative reminders of personal memories and experiences.

The subjective art world is a place of imaginings, intuition, passion, spirituality, personal memories & associations as a source for representation and form. The world of fantasy dreams and the absurd look inwards, tapping into the personal experience of the artist.

Subjective viewers interpret the meaning and value of art in relation to personal associations that can be made and emotional connections with the work.

Structural artists use logical, coherent and systematic structures. These include elements of design & composition. May use symbols to suggest meaning in their work. The artist has expert knowledge in materials, techniques and technologies and uses this knowledge in artistic practice.

Structural artworks are symbolic objects that operate within the conventions of a visual language that acts as a reference to the world.

The structural world is logical coherent and systematic. It is the source for ideas, symbols & visual qualities. Codes, symbols and conventions form a commonly understood visual language that acts as a referent of the world.

Structural audiences are visually literate who read art as symbols and signs & are knowledgeable about the signs symbols and visual codes & technologies. The audience knows about conventions and the formal structures that give artworks their meaning. E.g. a critic that write about art for a newspaper.

Social agents who reflect the ideas and beliefs of society. The cultural artists may be social commentators and contribute to the culture.

Cultural artworks are the product of the culture, expressions of ideas & beliefs. They represent the interests of society. Works are forms of cultural capital & reflect some aspect of culture. Can be exchanged, commissioned, purchased, collected, preserved etc.

Cultural world of art is composed of institutions, commercial, educational, political; they can be public and private. Galleries, the media & critics are all agencies of the cultural world and form part of the cultural dynamic of competing cultural issues.

Cultural audiences are Consumers, curators, patrons, sponsors, collectors, critics, historians, and the public. Cultural works are assessed by the cultural, economic & political value in the marketplace as well as its social meaning.

The role of PM artists is to challenge ideas about mainstream art and to ask questions about the conventions. The artist uses appropriation, parody and irony and non-traditional materials and technologies to subvert traditional ideas about art.

PM works are unconventional. They borrow ideas and forms from other sources to produce new works. PM artworks challenge mainstream concepts of art. They make use of unconventional materials and methods of construction & often reject concepts of ‘good’ taste to invent artworks with a kitsch or popular aesthetic.

The PM world is one of fragmentation, difference, paradox and ambiguity. There is a clash of viewpoints and values competing for eminence and validity. The world is one in which ideas are not fixed but are endlessly changing so that logical ideas about reality are challenged.

PM audiences accept multiple value systems and viewpoints and reject traditional art values and wisdom. The PM audience is sophisticated, sceptical and knowledgeable about art.

GuernicaPablo Picasso, 1937Oil on canvas349 × 776 cm, 137.4 × 305.5 inMuseo Reina Sofia, Madrid

Ron English, Grade School Guernica 27' x 11' Oil and acrylic on canvas (2006)