Aesthetics and Art Criticism

Art History: Information about the artist who created a work of art and when, where, how and why it was made.

 

Part One:

 

Aesthetics: Ideas about what makes art beautiful or satisfying. The philosophical study of beauty and taste.

 

Aesthetic Experience - Experience of inherent features of things or events traditionally recognized as worthy of attention and reflection, such as literal, visual, and expressive qualities, which are studied during the art criticism process.

How is an aesthetic experience different from a practical experience?

 

What to do:
With a partner, you will try this experiment. Using a jar of water, drop food coloring into the water and describe what happens. Use descriptive, expressive and emotional language to describe your aesthetic response to the experiment.

 

Next, describe an aesthetic response to a simple practical experience from your everyday life. Think of a very ordinary event happened that resulted in an aesthetic experience.  Write this on your own, without the help of your partner.

 

 

Part Two:

Art criticism is the process of examining, understanding, and judging a work of art. It involves the following four steps:

·       Description

·       Analysis

·       Interpretation

·       Judgment

 

With your partner, get two works of art from the stack provided. For each work write at least a paragraph including the following information:

 

·       Identify the artist, title, date and medium, if applicable.

·       Identify everything that you see in the work.

·       Determine how everything is organized or composed

·       Explain what the piece of art means.

·       Make personal decisions about the artwork’s degree of success.

 

 

 

 

Adapted from Creating and Understanding Drawings, Gene A. Mittler and James Howze, 1995.

Definitions from Artlex: www.artlex.com