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Introduction The Visual World

When we look at an artwork, we often

assume that it was created entirely from the
artist’s own ideas and inspirations. But art is
part of a wider context of things we
experience, including the visual culture in
which we live, which includes all of the
images that we encounter in our lives. Think
about how many images you saw on your way
to class today. They may have included
traffic signs, roadside billboards, and the
logos of businesses. On campus, you may
have seen posters informing you of an
upcoming event, the logo of the coffee shop,
informational signs about college policies, or
maps directing you to where your class takes
place. Online you are inundated with emojis,
selfies, and ads for the latest games. Public
art and street art provide even more
examples of the fact that artworks can be
found wherever we go, such as Etnias
( 0.0.1 ), the largest public mural in the world
at 30,000 sq. ft. It was created by the
Brazilian mural artist Eduardo Kobra (b. 1975)
for the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de
Janeiro. The mural features colorful portraits
of Indigenous people from five different
continents, emphasizing the connection
between humans around the world. Glossary
Context circumstances surrounding the
creation of a work of art, including historical
events, social conditions, biographical facts
about the artists and their intentions Mural a
painting applied directly to a wall, usually
large and in a public space What Is Art? The
Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai (1760–
1849) is said to have created a painting titled
Maple Leaves on a River by dipping the feet of
a chicken in red paint and letting the bird run
freely on a sheet of paper he had just covered
in blue paint. Although we know that Hokusai
was an unconventional character, this
painting has not yet been found today, and
we cannot be certain that the story is true. If
we think about this curious anecdote for a
while, however, we can begin to understand
the most basic question addressed in this
book: What is art? This is not an easy
question to answer, because people define
art in many ways. In Hokusai’s case, Maple
Leaves on a River would have captured the
peaceful sensations of a fall day by a river,
without showing what an actual river and real
leaves look like. In this instance, art primarily
communicates a sensation. Marcia
Smilack’s (b. 1949) striking image of water
( 0.0.2 ) is similar to Hokusai’s lost painting in
that it captures the essence of the movement
of water. But Smilack used more than her
sense of sight to create this work. She
experiences life through synesthesia, the
physical process whereby stimulation of one
sense causes experiences in a different
sense—such as visualizing color when
hearing music. Smilack describes her
experience: 0.0.2 Marcia Smilack , Cello
Music , 1992. Photograph, 12¾ × 24″.
Collection of the artist The way I taught
myself photography is to shoot when I hear a
chord of color…I hear with my eyes and see
with my ears. Of the photograph Cello
Music , Smilack says: I walked by the water
and heard cello…I couldn’t resist the sound
so I gave in and aimed my camera at what
had elicited it. As soon as I let go of my
thoughts, the texture of the water washed
over me in synch with the sound and turned
to satin on my skin. When I felt myself climb
into the shadows between the folds, I
snapped the shutter. I hear cello every time I
look at it today, though I discovered that if I
turn it upside down, it becomes violin.
Thomas Cole’s (1801–1848) View from Mount
Holyoke, Massachusetts, after a
Thunderstorm—The Oxbow views the
twisting Connecticut River from afar as it
carves through the landscape ( 0.0.3 ). Cole
was the founder of the Hudson River School,
a group of Romantic American painters who
painted landscapes to represent pride in the
expansion of the developing American
nation. These landscapes embody the idea of
the Sublime, where the awe-inspiring power
of nature overwhelms the smallness of
humans. In this painting a tree in the
foreground has been battered by weather,
while the river is far below in the valley.
Above are fierce thunderclouds, but in the
distance we can see the sky after the storm
has passed. The only trace of people in this
scene is the artist, wearing a hat. We can just
glimpse him, engulfed by the grandeur of the
landscape, in the lower center of the canvas.
0.0.3 Thomas Cole , View from Mount
Holyoke, Massachusetts, after a
Thunderstorm—The Oxbow , 1836. Oil on
canvas, 4′3½″ × 6′4″. Metropolitan Museum
of Art, New York Rather than depicting a
perception of water, like Smilack and
Hokusai, or showing the dominance of water
in the landscape, like Cole, Hans Haacke (b.
1936) analyzed the physical properties of
water in his Condensation Cube ( 0.0.4 ).
Both a work of art and a scientific
experiment, Haacke’s cube is a sealed
plexiglass box filled with one centimeter of
water. The way the artwork looks is
dependent upon its surroundings, such as
the temperature and moisture levels of the
room. As these environmental aspects
change, so does the degree of condensation
on the cube. The box is a metaphor for the
building in which it resides and the water
within the box represents the art housed in
the museum. In this sense, the artist is
acknowledging the delicate engineering
needed for museums to protect works of art
from damp or from drying out. 0.0.4 Hans
Haacke , Condensation Cube , 1963–65.
Clear acrylic, distilled water, and climate in
area of display, 12 × 12 × 12″ If we go back to
our original question, what is art?, can our
consideration of these four very different
works help us to find a quick and simple
definition that will tell us whether we are
looking at something called art? Although
they have the same subject matter—water—
these four works certainly do not have much
in common in terms of their appearance,
style, or even their materials. (The definition
of art needs to include a range of materials:
in fact, art can be made from almost
anything.) Nor do these works share a
common purpose. Cole’s painting portrays a
dramatic landscape but also carries a
powerful message of nationalism. Smilack’s
work is a photograph that captures her
sensations of water, whereas Hokusai
captured more universal sensations of a
riverside scene. In Haacke’s sculpture, water
becomes one of the materials used to make
the work; his work is conceptual in nature.
What these works do have in common is the
fact that they all communicate an idea by
visual means that can help us see the world
in new and exciting ways and strengthen our
understanding. In other words, art is a form
of language. Glossary Synesthesia when one
of the five senses perceives something that
was stimulated by a trigger from one of the
other senses Romantic, Romanticism a
movement in nineteenth-century European
culture, concerned with the power of the
imagination and greatly valuing intense
feeling Sublime a feeling of awe or terror,
provoked by the experience of limitless
nature and the awareness of the smallness
of an individual Subject (subject matter) the
person, object, or space depicted in a work
of art Style a characteristic way in which an
artist or group of artists uses visual language
to give a work an identifiable form of visual
expression conceptual artist a work in which
the communication of an idea or group of
ideas is most important to the artwork Fine
Art, Craft, and the Commercial Arts There is
no simple definition that allows us to tell who
is an artist and who is not. If we take a global
view, we certainly cannot define artists by
what they made. The terms we choose to
label things, such as fine or high art, often tell
us more about our own attitudes and
stereotypes than about the object under
consideration. But while such labels can be
misused, they can nonetheless reflect
cultural judgments and sometimes lead to
ways of identifying, categorizing, and
understanding art. The term craft typically
includes furniture, textile-making, ceramics,
and other objects that require great manual
skill to make. Fine art usually refers to a work
of art (traditionally a painting, drawing,
carved sculpture, and sometimes a print)
that is pleasing or beautiful to look at and
was believed, incorrectly, to be made
through more intellectual effort than the
manual labor of craftspeople. Therefore,
those things became status symbols of the
rich and powerful. The value placed on art
objects has also shifted over time, and
differs around the world. In Europe during
certain eras of history, particularly the
Renaissance, painting and sculpture were
considered to be the most important
categories of art (high art), while others, such
as ceramics and furniture, were once
considered less important. This distinction
arose partly because artworks were often
valued based on the cost of the materials
used (such as precious stones or metals),
and according to the amount of skilled labor
needed to make them. In other cultures, the
relative importance of various forms of art
was quite different. The people of ancient
Peru, for example, placed special value on
wool, and the artists who made fine woolen
textiles were likely considered as skillful as a
painter would have been in the Renaissance.
In China the art of calligraphy (elegantly
painted lettering, and painting with ink using
similar brushstrokes) was considered one of
the highest forms of art. Some famous
calligraphy painters found in this book
include Ma Yuan and Wang Meng. The art of
quilting, going back to at least the Middle
Ages, has been practiced throughout Europe,
Asia, and the Americas. While quilts were
treasured for their complexity and the skill
used to make them, traditionally quiltmaking
has been considered a craft because of the
textiles used, the fact that they are made by
hand, and the fact that quilts were most
often made by women—an example of how,
in the past, women were offered limited
opportunities to make a living through their
artistic talents. By mid-nineteenth-century
America, most quilts were made in a block
style. The Bible Quilt ( 0.0.5 ) was made by
Harriet Powers (1837 1910), an enslaved
person born in Georgia. She lived to see the
abolition of enslavement in the US in 1865,
and sold her quilts to help support her nine
(or more) children. The eleven panels of the
quilt illustrate biblical stories and figures
such as Adam and Eve with the serpent
(upper left), Satan and seven stars (upper
right), and the crucifixion (lower left). 0.0.5
Harriet Powers , Bible Quilt , 1885–86.
Cotton, 75 × 89″. National Museum of
American History, Smithsonian Institution,
Washington, D.C. A typical example of the
nineteenth-century European category of fine
art is Flaming June ( 0.0.6 ) by Sir Frederic
Lord Leighton (1830–1896). Leighton studied
and traveled throughout Europe and became
a member of the Royal Art Academy in
London. The luscious beauty of the painting
highlights his skill with oil paint and the
woman’s pose alludes to Greek Classical
sculpture and the work of the Renaissance
master Michelangelo, both of whom were
greatly admired by those who were wealthy
enough to purchase fine art, and who
mistakenly believed that only the wealthy
were capable of appreciating it. While today
the painting is one of the most famous pieces
of Victorian art in the world, when it was first
rediscovered in a shop in the 1960s, it was
not initially regarded as valuable until it was
acquired by a museum in Puerto Rico.

Historically, the graphic arts (those made by

a method that enables reproduction of many
copies of the same image) were also
considered less important, and perhaps less
accomplished, than the fine arts. While
Leighton’s painting is unique, made with an
exclusive group of powerful, upper-class
viewers in mind, works of graphic art are
made to be available to many people and are
in that sense potentially much more
democratic, which is considered an
advantage by many artists and viewers.
Graphic art includes a wide range of media:
books, magazines, posters, advertising,
signage, television, computer screens, and
social media. 0.0.7 Federal Express logo
Graphic design is a commercial art, the
essence of which is communication. For
example, consider the apparent simplicity of
a logo created in 1994 to identify the global
brand of the logistics company FedEx
( 0.0.7 ). The designer of the logo, Lindon
Leader, discovered that the company’s name
at the time, Federal Express, gave customers
the impression that it operated only in the
United States, rather than internationally. In
addition, everybody simply called the
company FedEx. Leader’s task was to design
a logo that could be used on package labels,
advertisements, trucks, and planes to
identify FedEx as a dynamic, global
organization. The solution was a design that
retained the colors (slightly modified) of the
existing logo, but shortened the company
name to FedEx. The type was arranged so
that the white space between the E and x
formed a white arrow that suggested speed
and precision. The design seems very simple,
but we should be careful not to assume that
it required less skill and effort than a
painting. Leader and his colleagues held
focus groups to research the public’s
impressions of the company and developed
about 200 concepts before they settled on
their chosen design. Then they made
protoypes of planes, vans, and trucks to test
it. Leader’s logo has won more than forty
design awards. Glossary Ceramics fire-
hardened clay, often painted, and normally
sealed with shiny protective coating
Renaissance a period of cultural and artistic
change in Europe from the fourteenth to the
seventeenth century Calligraphy the art of
emotive or carefully descriptive hand
lettering or handwriting Middle Ages the time
period roughly between the fall of the Roman
empire and the start of the Renaissance Oil
paint paint made of pigment suspended in oil
Classical art that conforms to Greek and
Roman models, or is based on rational
construction and emotional equilibrium
Medium ( plural media) the material on or
from which an artist chooses to make a work
of art Graphic design the use of images,
typography, and technology to communicate
ideas for a client or to a particular audience
Logo a unique graphic image used to identify
an idea or entity Where Is Art? You almost
certainly have some art in your home:
perhaps a painting in the living room, a poster
in your bedroom, or a beautifully made flower
vase; and there are sculptures and
memorials in parks or other public spaces in
most cities. You have probably also figured
out that art can be found in many places: in
the form of a tapestry, as a corporate logo, in
a book, and, of course, in an art museum.
Our word “museum” comes from the ancient
Greek mouseion , meaning a temple
dedicated to the arts and sciences. The
mouseion of Alexandria in Egypt, founded
about 2,400 years ago, collected and
preserved important objects—still a key
function of museums today. Many great art
museums began as private collections. For
example, the famous Louvre Museum in
Paris, France, was originally a fortress and
then a royal palace where the king kept his
personal art collection. After the French
Revolution (1789 99), the king’s collection
was opened to the public in the Louvre (see
0.0.8 ). 0.0.8 Louvre Museum , Paris, France.
Glass pyramid designed by Ieoh Ming Pei,
1998 About one-third of the Parthenon’s
marble sculptures were taken by Lord Elgin
between 1801 and 1805 and are now in the
British Museum, London: ➔ see 3.1.25 , p.
364 Some of the collections in museums
were purchased or looted during times of
war. For example, some works in the Louvre
were acquired during the Napoleonic Wars of
the early nineteenth century. Today,
museums are frequently asked to
repatriate—or return—works of art that were
taken during times of societal upheaval or
war. The Greeks have asked for the marble
sculptures that were once atop the
Parthenon to be returned. These marbles are
in museums around the world, but the
majority are in the British Museum and the
Louvre. The Benin bronzes (a collection of
more than 1,000 plaques and sculptures that
once adorned the palace of the Kingdom of
Benin) are gradually being returned by
museums in Germany, France, and England,
and a new museum is being built in Benin
City, Nigeria to house the sculptures (see p.
609). Museums are also being held
responsible for artworks taken from Jews
during the Second World War, even if the
museum was not aware of that history when
it originally acquired the work (see 0.0.14 ).
Since the twentieth century, the architecture
of museums continues to be as much a
reason to visit as the collections held within.
In Paris, a 71-foot-tall glass-and-metal
pyramid (designed by the Chinese-American
architect Ieoh Ming Pei), was constructed in
1988 in the main courtyard of the Louvre
Palace, and now serves as the museum’s
main entrance ( 0.0.8 ). The pyramid and its
underground lobby were designed to handle
the increasing number of museum visitors.
However, its modern architecture attracted
some criticism in France, due to its sharp
contrast with the Louvre Palace’s French
Renaissance style. In China, the Ordos
Museum, designed by Ma Yansong, is made
in the shape of abstract, the Gobi desert.
organic forms inspired by the sand dunes of
Most art museums hold permanent
collections of artworks that are regularly
displayed, although some can show only a
portion of the works in their large collections.
Museums also organize exhibitions of works
on loan from other institutions. They often
have conservation departments to care for
and restore the artworks. In recent years, and
propelled even more by the global COVID-19
pandemic, museums have found ways to
reach the public through websites, online
tours and activities, and socially interactive
projects. Although nothing can replace
seeing a work of art in person, museums
understand that one of their primary
responsibilities is to teach the public about
art, even if in some circumstances that can
occur only remotely. Many artworks were
made to be used, rather than displayed
where they cannot be touched. For example,
quilts (such as Harriet Powers’s, in 0.0.5 )
have often been used as a cover for a bed,
and Medieval Europe, tapestries were hung
on walls to keep a room warmer. Beautifully
and thoughtfully crafted tea bowls were to be
used as part of a Japanese tea ceremony,
involving other fine objects, good
conversation, and, of course, excellent tea.
The tea bowl was valued because it formed
part of a ritual that had social and spiritual
significance, and was designed to be
appreciated slowly as the user sipped tea.
This bowl, made during the Edo period by
Hon’ami Koetsu ( 0.0.9 ), would have been
prized for its subtle variations of color, the
pleasant tactile sensations of its slightly
irregular surface, and its shape. Japanese
artists followed with supreme skill the
established methods of working and making.
0.0.9 Hon’ami Koetsu , Tea bowl (called
Mount Fuji) , Edo period, early 17th century.
Raku ware, height 3⅜″. Sakai Collection,
Tokyo, Japan Similarly, African artists made
masks that originally formed part of
costumes that were used in a ceremonial
performance involving other costumed
figures, music, and dancing. In other words,
masks often had spiritual significance for
their creators and performers, but they would
have regarded them as holding this value
only when used as intended, not when
displayed in isolation in a museum. If we
consider only works that are displayed in
museums and galleries, we ignore many
works that are placed in communal or
religious spaces. Street art, such as Kobra’s
Etnias ( 0.0.1 ), is an example of communal
art that is in a public space where people can
interact with it on a daily basis. One of the
most enduring examples of a religious work
is the painting of the Virgin of Guadalupe
( 0.0.10 ). According to Catholic tradition, in
December 1531 the Virgin Mary appeared
several times to a local Indigenous man, Juan
Diego, with the first appearance occurring on
Tepeyac Hill (in present-day Mexico City). The
Virgin was believed miraculously to have
imprinted her own image on his cloak made
of cactus fiber. (Historical evidence,
however, suggests that the Virgin was
painted in tempera on linen.) The Virgin
became the symbol of the Mexican nation,
not just for Mexicans of Indigenous descent
but also for all citizens of the country—and
not only for devout Catholics. Today, the
original painting of the Virgin is housed in the
National Basilica of St. Mary of Guadalupe at
the base of Tepeyac Hill, which receives
hundreds of thousands of pilgrims annually.
0.0.10 The Virgin of Guadalupe , 1531.
Tempera on linen. Basilica of St. Mary of
Guadalupe, Mexico City, Mexico Glossary
Tapestry hand-woven fabric—usually silk or
wool—with a non repeating, usually
figurative, design woven into it Abstract art
imagery that departs from recognizable
images of the natural world Exhibition the
display of art objects, often only for a limited
time Conservation scientific efforts to
preserve artworks Medieval the time period
roughly between the fall of the Roman empire
and the start of the Renaissance Tempera
fast-drying painting medium made from
pigment mixed with water-soluble binder,
such as egg yolk Organic having irregular
forms and shapes, as though derived from
living organisms Art and Creativity Consider
the role of creativity in our own lives: making
images is an ever-present activity in our
world. We make our own photos and videos,
and share them through social-networking
services or using our cell phones. These
activities, so common now, show how
people naturally respond to images and seek
to express themselves visually. In other
words, most of us instinctively relate to
human creativity. An essential reason we
value art is because it has the power to tell
us something important about ourselves.

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