UNIT 6

LET’S READ AND TALK ABOUT PAINTING

 

It is widely acknowledged that one of the purposes of art is to give us experiences and understanding that we cannot always find in our ordinary lives. We can learn how people looked and behaved in the past, about what they thought most important. We can understand better how people make sense of all the variety of shapes and colours that they see. Nobody can expect to understand everything about a picture and no one needs to like all works of art. Artists are people who constantly look for what has not been seen, felt or understood before and for ways of presenting what they find in paintings, drawings or sculpture. It may take some people time to catch up with what they have done. But still, we think that art is important and up-to-date when it deals with ideas that are in close touch with life. The lofty calling of an artist is to awaken in people their noble feelings, to infuse fresh creative energy into them.

 

Pre-reading task: If you can answer these questions without reading the text, then proceed to the development tasks. If not, please, refer to the following texts for information about a sometimes-confusing attitude, whether Art reflects society or it is the society that reflects Art, about the link between art and society, and also about one's understanding of abstract painting and its importance in art history.

 

What do you know about Modern Art?

1.     Is realism the only trend in modern art?

2.     What other trends have you heard of?

3.     Which of them do you think are important and up-to-date?

4.     What are the roots of abstract painting?

5.     Have you ever seen an abstract painting or sculpture? What impression did it produce on you?

Note:

Modern Art: Art from the Impressionists (say, around 1880) up until the 1960's or 70's.

Contemporary Art: Art from the 1960's or 70's up until this very minute. Regardless of chosen starting date, the crucial factor is that Modern Art means: “The point at which artists (1) felt free to trust their inner visions, (2) express those visions in their work, (3) use Real Life (social issues and images from modern life) as a source of subject matter and (4) experiment and innovate as often as possible.”

 

By the end of the 1970s, when cultural critics began speaking of “The End of Painting” (the title of a provocative essay written in 1981 by Douglas Crimp), new media art had become a category in itself, with a growing number of artists experimenting with technological means such as video art. Painting assumed renewed importance in the 1980s and 1990s, as evidenced by the rise of neo-expressionism and the revival of figurative painting.