Week 8 assignment: essay – interrelationships reflection apa format | Applied Sciences homework help
- Whether detail or structural relationships dominate—or are equal—often var- ies widely from work to work. Compare Pollock’s The Flame, Picasso’s Guernica (Figure 1-4), and Leonardo’s Mona Lisa (Figure 1-5). In which painting or paintings, if any, do detail relationships dominate? Structural relationships?
jac16871_ch03_042-057.indd 48 12/8/17 8:11 PM 49
BEING A CRITIC OF THE ARTS
Form-Content The interpretive critic’s job is to find out as much about an artistic form as possible in order to explain its meaning. This is a particularly useful task for the critic—which is to say, for us as critics—since the forms of numerous works of art seem important but are not immediately understandable. When we look at the examples of the bank and the church, we ought to realize that the significance of these buildings is expressed by means of the form-content. It is true that without knowing the functions of these buildings we could appreciate them as structures without special functions, but knowing about their functions deepens our apprecia- tion. Thus, the lofty arc of Le Corbusier’s roof soars heavenward more mightily when we recognize the building as a church. The form moves our eyes upward. For a Chris- tian church, such a reference is perfect. The bank, however, looks like a pile of square coins or banknotes and moves our eyes downward. Certainly the form “amasses” FIGURE 3-4 Le Corbusier, Notre Dame-du-Haut, Ronchamps, France. 1950–1955. The chapel is built on a hill where a pilgrimage chapel was destroyed during the Second World War. Le Corbusier used soaring lines to lift the viewer’s eyes to the heavens and the surrounding horizon, visible on all four sides. ©F.L.C./ADAGP, Paris/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York 2017. Photo: ©AWBT/Shutterstock RF FIGURE 3-5 Louis Henry Sullivan, Guaranty (Prudential) Building, Buffalo, New York. 1894. Sullivan’s building, among the first high-rise structures, was made possible by the use of mass-produced steel girders supporting the weight of each floor. ©Buffalo History Museum PERCEPTION KEY Le Corbusier and Sullivan 1. If you had not been told, would you know that Le Corbusier’s building is a church? Now, having been told, which structural details help identify it as a church? 2. Which of these buildings better uses its basic structure to suggest solidity? Which better uses formal patterns to suggest flight and motion? 3. In which of these buildings does detail better complement the overall structure? 4. Comment on how the formal values of these buildings contribute to their content as serving their established functions as bank and church. 5. One of these buildings is symmetrical and one is not. Symmetry is often praised in nature as a constituent of beauty. How important is symmetry in evaluating these buildings? jac16871_ch03_042-057.indd 49 12/8/17 8:11 PM 50
CHAPTER 3
something, an appropriate suggestion for a bank. We will not belabor these exam- ples, since it should be fun for you to do this kind of critical job yourself. Observe how much more you get out of these examples of architecture when you consider each form in relation to its meaning—that is, the form as form-content. Furthermore, such analyses should convince you that interpretive criticism operates in a vacuum unless it is based on descriptive criticism. Unless we perceive the form with sensitivity—and this means that we have the basis for good descriptive criticism—we simply cannot understand the content. In turn, any interpretive criticism will be useless.
Participate with a poem by William Butler Yeats:
THE LAKE ISLE OF INNISFREE
I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made; Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee, And live alone in the bee-loud glade. And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow, Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings; There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow, And evening full of the linnet’s wings. I will arise and go now, for always night and day I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore; While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray, I hear it in the deep heart’s core. Source: William Butler Yeats, “The Lake Isle of Innisfree,” The Collected Works in the Verse and Prose of William Butler Yeats, Volume 8 (of 8). Project Gutenberg. “The Lake Isle of Innisfree” is a lyric written from the first person, “I.” Its three stanzas of four lines each rhyme in simple fashion with full vowel sounds, and as a result, the poem lends itself to being sung, as indeed it has often been set to music. The poet portrays himself as a simple person preferring the simple life. The descrip- tive critic will notice the basic formal qualities of the poem: simple rhyme, steady meter, the familiar quatrain stanza structure. But the critic will also move further to talk about the imagery in the poem: the image of the simply built cabin, the small garden with bean rows, the bee hive, the sounds of the linnet’s wings and the lake water lapping the shore, the look of noon’s purple glow. The interpretive critic will address the entire project of the poet, who is standing “on the roadway, or on the pavements gray,” longing to return to the distant country and the simple life. The poet “hears” the lake waters “in the deep heart’s core,” which is to say that the PERCEPTION KEY Yeats’s Poem 1. Offer a brief description of the poem, concentrating on the nature of the rhyme- words, the contrasting imagery, the rhythms of the lines. 2. What does the poet say he intends to do? Do you think he will actually do it? jac16871_ch03_042-057.indd 50 12/8/17 8:11 PM 51
BEING A CRITIC OF THE ARTS
simple life is absolutely basic to the poet. The last three words actually repeat the same idea. The heart is always at the core of a person, and it is always deep in that core. Such emphasis helps produce in the reader a sense of completion and signif- icance. In a sense the triangular shape of the heart is replicated in the three words applied to it, as if the idea of the number 3 were a stabilizing “shape” similar to the visually stabilizing shape of the triangles in the paintings we have been describing. Yeats later commented on this poem and said it was the first poem of his career to have a real sense of music. He also said that the imagery came to him when he was stepping off a curb near the British Museum in the heart of London and heard the sound of splashing water. The sounds immediately brought to mind the imagery of the island, which is in the west of Ireland. It is important that we grasp the relative nature of explanations about the con- tent of works of art. Even descriptive critics, who try to tell us about what is really there, will perceive things in a way that is relative to their own perspective. An amusing story in Cervantes’s Don Quixote illustrates the point. Sancho Panza had two cousins who were expert wine tasters. However, on occasion, they disagreed. One found the wine excellent except for an iron taste; the other found the wine ex- cellent except for a leather taste. When the barrel of wine was emptied, an iron key with a leather thong was found. As N. J. Berrill points out in Man’s Emerging Mind, The statement you often hear that seeing is believing is one of the most misleading ones a man has ever made, for you are more likely to see what you believe than believe what you see. To see anything as it really exists is about as hard an exercise of mind and eyes as it is possible to perform.1 Two descriptive critics can often “see” quite different things in an artistic form. This is not only to be expected but also desirable; it is one of the reasons great works of art keep us intrigued for centuries. But even though they may see quite different aspects when they look independently at a work of art, when they talk it over, the critics will usually come to some kind of agreement about the aspects each of them sees. The work being described, after all, has verifiable, objective qualities each of us can perceive and talk about. But it has subjective qualities as well, in the sense that the qualities are observed only by “subjects.” In the case of interpretive criticism, the subjectivity and, in turn, the relativity of explanations are more obvious than in the case of descriptive criticism. The content is “there” in the form, and yet, unlike the form, it is not there in a directly perceiv- able way. It must be interpreted. Interpretive critics, more than descriptive critics, must be familiar with the sub- ject matter. Interpretive critics often make the subject matter more explicit for us at the first stage of their criticism, bringing us closer to the work. Perhaps the best way initially to get at Picasso’s Guernica (Figure 1-4) is to discover its subject mat- ter. Is it about a fire in a building or something else? If we are not clear about this, perception of the painting is obscured. But after the subject matter has been eluci- dated, good interpretive critics go much further: exploring and discovering mean- ings about the subject matter as revealed by the form. Now they are concerned with helping us grasp the content directly, in all of its complexities and subtleties. This final stage of interpretive criticism is the most demanding of all criticism. 1N. J. Berrill, Man’s Emerging Mind (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1955), p. 147. jac16871_ch03_042-057.indd 51 12/8/17 8:11 PM 52
CHAPTER 3
Evaluative Criticism To evaluate a work of art is to judge its merits. At first this seems to suggest that evaluative criticism is prescriptive criticism, which prescribes what is good as if it were a medicine and tells us that this work is superior to that work. However, our approach is somewhat different. Evaluative criticism functions to establish the quality and excellence of the work. To some extent, our discussion will include comparisons that inevitably urge us to make quality decisions. Those decisions are best made after descriptive and interpretive criticism have taken part in examining the work of art. It may be that this kind of evaluative criticism makes you uncomfortable. If so, we think your reaction is based on good instincts. First, each work of art is unique, so a relative merit ranking of several of them seems arbitrary. This is especially the case when the works are in different media and have different subject matters, as in the second question of the Perception Key. Second, it is not clear how such judging helps us in our basic critical purpose—to learn from our reflections about works of art how to participate with these works more intensely and enjoyably. Nevertheless, evaluative criticism of some kind is generally necessary. As au- thors, we have been making such judgments continually in this book—in the selec- tions for illustrations, for example. You make such judgments when, as you enter a museum, you decide to spend your time with this painting rather than that. Ob- viously directors of museums must also make evaluative criticisms, because usu- ally they cannot display every work owned by the museum. If a van Gogh is on sale—and one of his paintings, Vase with Fifteen Sunflowers, was bought in 1997 for $90 million—someone has to decide its worth. Evaluative criticism, then, is always functioning, at least implicitly. The problem, then, is how to use evaluative criticism as constructively as pos- sible. How can we use such criticism to help our participation with works of art? Whether Giorgione’s painting (Figure 2-9) or Pearlstein’s (Figure 2-18) deserves first prize seems trivial. But if almost all critics agree that Shakespeare’s poetry is far superior to Edward Guest’s, and if we have been thinking Guest’s poetry is better, we should do some reevaluating. Or if we hear a music critic whom we respect state that the music of Duke Ellington is worth listening to—and up to this time we have dismissed it—then we should make an effort to listen. Perhaps the basic importance of evaluative criticism lies in its commendation of works that we might otherwise dismiss. This may lead us to delightful experiences. Such criticism may also make us more skeptical about our own judgments. PERCEPTION KEY Evaluative Criticism 1. Suppose you are a judge of an exhibition of painting, and in Chapter 2 (Figures 2-9 through 2-18) have been placed into competition. You are to award first, second, and third prizes. What would your decisions be? Why?