COMM/RELS 257 FINAL EXAM WITH
CORRECT ANSWERS
Dewey - ANSWER-- Art is created each time someone has an experience
- Aesthetic experience - perceiving, enjoying art/beauty; a set of principles underlying
and guiding the work of an artist or art movement; sensation or perception
- Art as communication/language; window to another culture
Firth's Method - ANSWER-1. Surface: describe what you see
2. Intended Meaning: author explicit intent/what are they selling? How do they sell it?;
lifestyle/consumer oriented; product oriented
3. Cultural/Ideological Meaning: relies on cultural background; can be unintentional
Plato - ANSWER-- Theory of forms: abstract/perfect; transcendent of this world
- Art is a copy of an imperfect copy
- Mimesis - imitation
- Ban artists from the state
- Tragedy confuses audiences because of values; virtues are not always reward
Aristotle - ANSWER-- Tragedies are good: catharsis - emotional cleansing of spectator
- Prefers tragedies where good people mistakenly do bad things
Danto - ANSWER-- Andy Warhol's Brillo Boxes: no way art has to look; no right way to
make art; difference between art and non-art is not visual, but conceptual; meaning is a
matter for philosophers to discover - no way that art should look
- Open Theory - anything can be art
- Art embodies meaning; can communicate thoughts and feelings through a physical
meaning
- Art and philosophy are linked together; not independent spheres; when philosophy
was dealing with pluralism, art is as well
- Modern art - artists choosing a medium and stuck with it; "this form is the best form of
art and it's going to lead to a greater thing"; picked a particular style and argued that this
style is the best way one should depict art
Cubism - ANSWER-- No fixed perspective
- Seeing an object from multiple angles all at once
David Hume - ANSWER-- Education leads to good taste
- Experts -> tells us what good art is
- Moral connotation
Kant - ANSWER-- Aesthetic experience; disinterested enjoyment
- "purposeness without purpose"; no function, ex: rose, strawberry
, - Beauty is essential to the object
- Internal harmony that we recognize as beautiful
Expression Theory - ANSWER-- Communicates emotions/feelings of the artists
- Tolstoy argues that artists' main job is to communicate their emotions to the audience
- Triptych - helpful to explain different works of art
- In order to interpret art, you need some knowledge
- Good interpretation -> enriches people's experience
- Freud argues that art expresses unconscious feelings: theory of sublimation - art
becomes an outlet for the unconscious desire; act of making art satisfies desire
Cognitive Theory - ANSWER-- Communicates ideas/knowledge
- Meaning is created in the audience
- Foucalt: death to the author; don't need author's intent
- Episteme: unconscious knowledge; audience determines the meaning of the work, not
the author; art itself is the source of knowledge
Berger, Ways of Seeing - ANSWER-- Mystification: uses what we don't know to
fabricate meaning/value; taking what is plainly obvious and obfuscating; who has
access to art?
- Art (oil painting specifically) - spectator is owner; shows what we already possess
- Nudes -> women can be consumed; the way a woman is presented is who she is
- Reproduction of Art: fragment meaning/distort; changes context (can be seen in
anything); gives $ value to the original
- Photography -> moment frozen in time
- Advertising -> envy -> we desire to be envied by others; glamour
- Depiction of poor as happy/depraved -> deserving of one's station
Theory of Multiple Intelligences - ANSWER-- Linguistic, logical-mathematical, musical,
bodily-kinesthetic, spatial, interpersonal (between people; social intelligence;
networking), intra-personal (self-awareness)
- Visual literacy -> ability to decode image; read/write; less susceptible to
persuasion/manipulation
- Images -> emotional impact
- Surrounded by images: ads -> work to both reflect/shape cultural values
Nietzche - ANSWER-- Critiqued Wagner's "Parsifal: too Christian
- Likes tragedies because they reflect the world as it is
Perspective -> socially constructed - ANSWER-- Primitive Art: no rectangular
orientation, no fixed point; images floating in space; not naturalistic; showed identifiable
attributes/key features
- Egyptian Art: frozen in time, link between humans and eternal space; linear, shows
both frontal and side view; symbolic nature; want to look as distinguished as possible;
scale shows social importance rather than size; showing relationship between humans
and inner space (divine/eternal); sense of the eternal
CORRECT ANSWERS
Dewey - ANSWER-- Art is created each time someone has an experience
- Aesthetic experience - perceiving, enjoying art/beauty; a set of principles underlying
and guiding the work of an artist or art movement; sensation or perception
- Art as communication/language; window to another culture
Firth's Method - ANSWER-1. Surface: describe what you see
2. Intended Meaning: author explicit intent/what are they selling? How do they sell it?;
lifestyle/consumer oriented; product oriented
3. Cultural/Ideological Meaning: relies on cultural background; can be unintentional
Plato - ANSWER-- Theory of forms: abstract/perfect; transcendent of this world
- Art is a copy of an imperfect copy
- Mimesis - imitation
- Ban artists from the state
- Tragedy confuses audiences because of values; virtues are not always reward
Aristotle - ANSWER-- Tragedies are good: catharsis - emotional cleansing of spectator
- Prefers tragedies where good people mistakenly do bad things
Danto - ANSWER-- Andy Warhol's Brillo Boxes: no way art has to look; no right way to
make art; difference between art and non-art is not visual, but conceptual; meaning is a
matter for philosophers to discover - no way that art should look
- Open Theory - anything can be art
- Art embodies meaning; can communicate thoughts and feelings through a physical
meaning
- Art and philosophy are linked together; not independent spheres; when philosophy
was dealing with pluralism, art is as well
- Modern art - artists choosing a medium and stuck with it; "this form is the best form of
art and it's going to lead to a greater thing"; picked a particular style and argued that this
style is the best way one should depict art
Cubism - ANSWER-- No fixed perspective
- Seeing an object from multiple angles all at once
David Hume - ANSWER-- Education leads to good taste
- Experts -> tells us what good art is
- Moral connotation
Kant - ANSWER-- Aesthetic experience; disinterested enjoyment
- "purposeness without purpose"; no function, ex: rose, strawberry
, - Beauty is essential to the object
- Internal harmony that we recognize as beautiful
Expression Theory - ANSWER-- Communicates emotions/feelings of the artists
- Tolstoy argues that artists' main job is to communicate their emotions to the audience
- Triptych - helpful to explain different works of art
- In order to interpret art, you need some knowledge
- Good interpretation -> enriches people's experience
- Freud argues that art expresses unconscious feelings: theory of sublimation - art
becomes an outlet for the unconscious desire; act of making art satisfies desire
Cognitive Theory - ANSWER-- Communicates ideas/knowledge
- Meaning is created in the audience
- Foucalt: death to the author; don't need author's intent
- Episteme: unconscious knowledge; audience determines the meaning of the work, not
the author; art itself is the source of knowledge
Berger, Ways of Seeing - ANSWER-- Mystification: uses what we don't know to
fabricate meaning/value; taking what is plainly obvious and obfuscating; who has
access to art?
- Art (oil painting specifically) - spectator is owner; shows what we already possess
- Nudes -> women can be consumed; the way a woman is presented is who she is
- Reproduction of Art: fragment meaning/distort; changes context (can be seen in
anything); gives $ value to the original
- Photography -> moment frozen in time
- Advertising -> envy -> we desire to be envied by others; glamour
- Depiction of poor as happy/depraved -> deserving of one's station
Theory of Multiple Intelligences - ANSWER-- Linguistic, logical-mathematical, musical,
bodily-kinesthetic, spatial, interpersonal (between people; social intelligence;
networking), intra-personal (self-awareness)
- Visual literacy -> ability to decode image; read/write; less susceptible to
persuasion/manipulation
- Images -> emotional impact
- Surrounded by images: ads -> work to both reflect/shape cultural values
Nietzche - ANSWER-- Critiqued Wagner's "Parsifal: too Christian
- Likes tragedies because they reflect the world as it is
Perspective -> socially constructed - ANSWER-- Primitive Art: no rectangular
orientation, no fixed point; images floating in space; not naturalistic; showed identifiable
attributes/key features
- Egyptian Art: frozen in time, link between humans and eternal space; linear, shows
both frontal and side view; symbolic nature; want to look as distinguished as possible;
scale shows social importance rather than size; showing relationship between humans
and inner space (divine/eternal); sense of the eternal
