The Identification Description and Interpretation of Subject Matter in Art Is Known as

Types of Content

Content in art takes the form of portraits, landscapes, withal-lifes, genre art, and narrative art.

Learning Objectives

Describe different categories of figurative or abstruse fine art.

Fundamental Takeaways

Key Points

• Content in a work of fine art refers to what is being depicted and might be helpful in deriving a bones meaning. It appears in the visual arts in several forms , all of which may be figurative (realistic) or abstruse (distorted). Among them are portraits, landscapes, still-lifes, genre art, and narrative fine art.
• Portraits represents the likeness of a person and tin include a study of the sitter's mood or personality.
• Landscapes  describe natural scenery such every bit mountains, valleys, trees, rivers, and forests, especially where the main discipline is a wide view.
• A nonetheless-life is a work of art depicting generally inanimate discipline matter, typically commonplace objects that may exist either natural or man-made.
• Genre art involves the pictorial representation in whatever of various media of scenes or events from everyday life, whereas narrative art tells a story that may be real or imagined.

Content in a piece of work of art refers to what is being depicted and might exist helpful in deriving a basic meaning. Sometimes content is straightforward; in other cases, withal, it is less obvious and requires boosted data. Content appears in the visual arts in several forms, all of which may be figurative (realistic) or abstract (distorted). Among them are portraits, landscapes, still-lifes, genre art, and narrative fine art.

Portraits

A portrait is a painting, photograph, sculpture, or other artistic representation of a person, in which the face up and its expression are predominant. The intent is to display the likeness, personality, and even the mood of the person. For this reason, in photography a portrait is generally non a snapshot, but a equanimous image of a person in a still position. A portrait often shows a person looking directly at the painter or photographer in order to near successfully appoint the subject with the viewer .

Philip Burne–Jones Belongings a True cat : George Grantham Bain Collection, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

Landscapes

Landscape painting, likewise known as landscape art, is the delineation in art of landscapes—natural scenery such as mountains, valleys, trees, rivers, and forests, specially where the chief subject is a wide view—with its elements arranged into a coherent limerick . In other works, landscape backgrounds for figures tin nevertheless form an of import part of the work. Sky is nigh always included in the view, and weather is frequently an element of the composition. Detailed landscapes as a singled-out subject are not found in all artistic traditions and develop when there is already a sophisticated tradition of representing other subjects.

Henri Matisse. Landscape at Collioure (1905): Oil on canvas. 38.8 x 46.6cm. Museum of Mod Fine art, New York. Matisse was a fellow member of the Fauves (French for "wild beasts"), who used assuming colors to convey emotions.

All the same Lifes

A all the same life (plural notwithstanding lifes) is a piece of work of art depicting mostly inanimate subject affair, typically commonplace objects that may be either natural (nutrient, flowers, dead animals, plants, rocks, or shells) or man-made (drinking spectacles, books, vases, jewelry, coins, pipes, and so on). Early on still-life paintings, especially earlier 1700, oftentimes independent religious and allegorical symbolism relating to the objects depicted. Some mod still lifes break the ii-dimensional barrier and employ three-dimensional mixed media, and use plant objects, photography, computer graphics, too every bit video and sound.

Maria van Oosterwijk. Vanitas Even so-Life (1668): Oil on sheet. 73 ten 88.5cm. Kunsthistorisches Musuem, Vienna.

Genre Art

Genre fine art is the pictorial representation in any of various media of scenes or events from everyday life, such as markets, domestic settings, interiors, parties, inn scenes, and street scenes. Such representations (also chosen genre works, genre scenes , or genre views) may be realistic, imagined, or romanticized by the artist.

Nicolaes Maes. The Idle Servant (1655): Oil on sheet. National Gallery, London. Dutch Bizarre genre scenes often have of import moral lessons as their subtexts.

Narrative Art

Narrative art is art that tells a story, either equally a moment in an ongoing story or as a sequence of events unfolding over time. Some of the earliest prove of man art suggests that people told stories with pictures. Notwithstanding, without some cognition of the story beingness told, it is very difficult to read ancient pictures considering they are not organized in a systematic way like words on a page, simply rather can unfold in many dissimilar directions at once.

Hagesandros, Athenedoros, and Polydoros. Laocoön and His Sons (Offset century BCE): Marble. Vatican Museum, Rome. This marble sculpture depicts a scene from Virgil's epic The Aeneid, in which the Trojan seer Laocoön foresees the Trojan Horse and the destruction of Troy past the Greeks. Before he tin can warn his fellow townspeople, the body of water god Neptune (an ally of the Greeks) sends his serpents to kill Laocoön and his sons.

Figurative and Abstract Art

Fine art exists along a continuum from realistic representational work to fully non-representational work.

Learning Objectives

Distinguish between figurative and abstract art

Key Takeaways

Key Points

• Representational art, or figurative art, references objects or events in the real world.
• Romanticism , Impressionism , and Expressionism contributed to the emergence of abstract art in the nineteenth century.
• Fifty-fifty representational work is bathetic to some degree; entirely realistic art is elusive.

Central Terms

• verisimilitude:The property of seeming true, of resembling reality; resemblance to reality, realism.

Painting and sculpture can be divided into the categories of figurative (or representational) and abstract (or non-representational). Figurative art describes artwork – specially paintings and sculptures – which are clearly derived from real object sources, and therefore are, past definition, representational. Since the arrival of abstruse art in the early twentieth century, the term "figurative" has been used to refer to any course of modern art that retains stiff references to the real world.

Johann Anton Eismann, Ein Meerhafen, 1600s: This figurative work from the 17th century depicts easily recognizable objects—ships, people, and buildings.

Artistic independence was advanced during the nineteenth century, resulting in the emergence of abstruse art. Three movements which contributed heavily to the evolution of these styles were Romanticism, Impressionism, and Expressionism.

Brainchild indicates a departure from reality in its depiction of imagery . Abstraction exists along a continuum; it can formally refer to compositions that are derived (or abstracted) from figurative or other natural sources, or it can refer to non-representational art and not-objective art that has no derivation from figures or objects.

Even art that aims for verisimilitude of the highest degree can be said to be abstruse, at least theoretically, since perfect representation is likely to be exceedingly elusive. Artwork which takes liberties, altering, for case, color and grade in means that are conspicuous, can be said to be partially abstruse.

Robert Delaunay, Le Premier Disque, 1912–1913: Delaunay's work is an example of early on abstruse art.

Non-representational fine art refers to full brainchild, bearing no trace of whatsoever reference to anything recognizable. In geometric brainchild, for instance, ane is unlikely to find references to naturalistic entities. Figurative art and total abstraction are nearly mutually exclusive, but figurative or representational art frequently contains at least one element of abstraction.

Meaning in Nonrepresentational Art

Significant in nonrepresentational art is highly subjective and can be difficult to define.

Learning Objectives

Relate the pregnant of nonrepresentational fine art, its goals, and its specific expressions

Key Takeaways

Key Points

• Nonrepresentational artwork refers to art that does not attempt to stand for or reference reality.
• In the tardily 19th century, artists began to motion toward increasing abstraction as a means of communicating subjective experience more personally and creatively.
• Artists such equally Kandinsky and Mondrian viewed art as an expression of spirituality.

Key Terms

• expressionism:A movement in the arts in which the artist does not draw objective reality, just rather the subjective expression of inner experience.
• nonrepresentational:Not intended to stand for a physical object in reality.

Nonrepresentational art refers to compositions which practice non rely on representation or mimesis to whatsoever extent. Abstract art , nonfigurative art, nonobjective art, and nonrepresentational art are related terms that indicate a departure from reality in the depiction of imagery in art. Meaning in nonrepresentational art is highly subjective and tin be hard to define. Nosotros can focus on the elements of the artwork (form, shape, line , colour, space , and texture) in terms of the aesthetic value of the work, but the meaning will always be personal to the viewer unless the artist has made a argument about his or her intentions.

Generally, nosotros can look at nonrepresentational art as the personal expression of an creative person's subjective experience. Certain movements have described their intentions as an aim to evoke moods or emotions in the viewer. A good example are the expressionists of the early 20th century, who aimed to present the world solely from a subjective perspective , distorting it radically for emotional result.

Nonrepresentational art has often been explored by artists as a means to spiritual expression. Wassily Kandinsky, a Russian painter, printmaker, and art theorist, is ane of the most famous 20th century artists and is generally considered the first important painter of modern abstract art. As an early modernist in search of new modes of visual expression and spiritual expression, he theorized (every bit did contemporary occultists and theosophists) that pure visual abstraction had corollary vibrations with sound and music. He posited that pure abstraction could limited pure spirituality.

Wassily Kandinsky, Limerick Vii, 1913: Kandinsky is recognized every bit the male parent of modern abstract art in the 20th century.

Piet Mondrian'due south art was as well related to his spiritual and philosophical studies. In 1908 he became interested in the theosophical movement launched by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, who believed that it was possible to attain a knowledge of nature more profound than that provided by empirical means, and much of Mondrian's piece of work for the residual of his life was inspired by his search for that spiritual cognition.

Iconography

Iconography is the scholarly study of the content of images, including identification, description, and estimation.

Learning Objectives

Ascertain iconography and interpret or perform an iconographical assay of an prototype

Fundamental Takeaways

Key Points

• Bookish studies of iconography in painting emerged in the 19th century in France and Germany.
• Iconographical scholarship became particularly prominent in art history afterwards 1940.
• In the 20th century, studies of iconography have become of interest to a broad public beyond the scholarly customs.

Cardinal Terms

• iconography:The co-operative of art history which studies the identification, description, and estimation of the content of images.

Iconography is the branch of art history which studies the identification, clarification, and interpretation of the content of images such as the subjects that are depicted, particulars of composition , and other elements that are distinct from creative style .

Iconography every bit an academic fine art historical subject developed in the nineteenth century in the works of scholars such equally Adolphe Napoleon Didron (1806–1867), Anton Heinrich Springer (1825–1891), and Émile Mâle (1862–1954). Christian religious art was the main focus of study throughout this menstruum, and French scholars were especially prominent. They looked dorsum to earlier attempts to classify and organize subjects encyclopedically, every bit guides to understanding works of fine art, both religious and profane, in a more scientific mode than the popular aesthetic approach of the time. These early on contributions paved the way for encyclopedias, manuals, and other publications useful in identifying the content of art.

In early twentieth-century Germany, Aby Warburg (1866–1929) and his followers Fritz Saxl (1890–1948) and Erwin Panofsky (1892–1968) elaborated the exercise of identification and classification of motifs in images to using iconography as a ways of agreement meaning. Panofsky codified an influential arroyo to iconography in his 1939 Studies in Iconology, where he defined it as "the branch of the history of art which concerns itself with the subject matter or meaning of works of art, as opposed to course". The distinction he and other scholars drew between particular definitions of "iconography" (put simply, the identification of visual content) and "iconology" (the analysis of the meaning of that content) has not been generally accepted, though it is still used by some writers.

While most iconographical scholarship remains highly dense and specialized, some analyses began to attract a much wider audience; for example, Panofsky's theory (now more often than not out of favor with specialists) is that the writing on the rear wall in The Arnolfini Portrait past Jan van Eyck turned the painting into the record of a marriage contract. Holbein'south The Ambassadors has been the subject of books for a general market place with new theories equally to its iconography; as well equally being a double portrait, the painting contains a still life of several meticulously rendered objects, the meaning of which is the cause of much contend. The virtually notable and famous of Holbein's symbols in the work is the distorted skull which is placed in the bottom heart of the composition. The skull, rendered in anamorphic perspective , another invention of the Early on Renaissance , is speculated to have been a reminder of decease and mortality.

Jan van Eyck, The Arnolfini Portrait, 1434: The iconography in this work has historically been the subject of argue due to its many signifiers. Some scholars have theorized that the painting was actually a spousal relationship contract due to the writing on the wall in the groundwork.

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Source: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/boundless-arthistory/chapter/content/