Japanese director Akira Kurosawa made a number of films in the 1950s and 1960s that broke the conventions of mainstream filmmaking.

An art film (also known as art movie, specialty film, art house film, or in the collective sense as art cinema) is the result of filmmaking which is typically a serious, independent film aimed at a niche market rather than a mass market audience.^[1] Film critics and film studies scholars typically define an "art film" using a "...canon of films and those formal qualities that mark them as different from mainstream Hollywood films",^[2] which includes, among other elements: a social realism style; an emphasis on the authorial expressivity of the director; and a focus on the thoughts and dreams of characters, rather than presenting a clear, goal-driven story. Film scholar David Bordwell claims that "art cinema itself is a film genre, with its own distinct conventions."^[3]

Art film producers usually present their films at specialty theatres (repertory cinemas, or in the U.S. "arthouse cinemas") and film festivals. The term art film is much more widely used in the United States and the UK than in Europe, where the term is more associated with "auteur" films and "national cinema" (e.g., German national cinema). Art films are aimed at small niche market audiences, which means they can rarely get the financial backing which will permit large production budgets, expensive special effects, costly celebrity actors, or huge advertising campaigns, as are used in widely-released mainstream blockbuster films. Art film directors make up for these constraints by creating a different type of film, which typically uses lesser-known film actors (or even amateur actors) and modest sets to make films which focus much more on developing ideas or exploring new narrative techniques or filmmaking conventions.

Furthermore, a certain degree of experience and intellect are required to understand or appreciate such films; one mid-1990s art film was called "largely a cerebral experience" which you enjoy "because of what you know about film".^[4] This contrasts sharply with mainstream "blockbuster" films, which are geared more towards escapism and pure entertainment. For promotion, art films rely on the publicity generated from film critics' reviews, discussion of their film by arts columnists, commentators and bloggers, and "word-of-mouth" promotion by audience members. Since art films have small initial investment costs, they only need to appeal to a small portion of the mainstream viewing audiences to become financially viable.

History[link]

Antecedents: 1910–1920s[link]

The antecedents of art films included D. W. Griffith's film Intolerance (1916) and the works of Sergei Eisenstein.^[5] Eisenstein's film Battleship Potemkin (1925) was a revolutionary propaganda film which he used to test his theories of using "montage" (editing) in a manner which would produce the greatest emotional response in the audience. The international critical renown that Eisenstein garnered from this film enabled the Russian filmmaker to direct October (aka Ten Days That Shook The World) as part of a grand tenth anniversary celebration of the October Revolution of 1917, and then The General Line (aka Old and New). The critics of the outside world praised these films. However, in Russia, Eisenstein's focus on structural issues such as camera angles, crowd movements, and montage brought him and like-minded others, such as Vsevolod Pudovkin and Alexander Dovzhenko, under fire from the Soviet film community.

Art films were also influenced by films by Spanish avant-garde creators such as Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí (e.g., L'Age d'Or from 1930) and by the French playwright and filmmaker Jean Cocteau (e.g., The Blood of a Poet, also from 1930). In the 1920s, film societies began advocating the notion that films could be divided into an "...entertainment cinema directed towards a mass audience and a serious art cinema aimed at an intellectual audience". In England, Alfred Hitchcock and Ivor Montagu formed a Film Society and imported films that they thought were "artistic achievements", such as "Soviet films of dialectical montage, and the expressionist films of the Universum Film A. G. (UFA) studios in Germany."^[5]

Cinéma Pur, a 1920s and 1930s French avant-garde film movement also influenced the development of the idea of "art film." The cinema pur film movement included Dada artists, such as Man Ray (Emak-Bakia, Return to Reason), René Clair (Entr'acte), and Marcel Duchamp (Anemic Cinema). The Dadaists used film to transcend narrative (storytelling) conventions, bourgeois traditions, and conventional Aristotelian notions of time and space by creating a flexible montage of time and space.

Pure Cinema was influenced by such German "absolute" filmmakers as Hans Richter, Walter Ruttmann, and Viking Eggeling. Richter claimed that his 1921 film, Rhythmus 21, was the first abstract film ever created. This claim is not true: he was preceded by the Italian Futurists Bruno Corra and Arnaldo Ginna between 1911 and 1912 ^[6] (as they report in the Futurist Manifesto of Cinema ^[7]), as well as by fellow German artist Walter Ruttmann who produced Lichtspiel Opus 1 in 1920. Nevertheless, Richter's film Rhythmus 21 is considered an important early abstract film.

U.S. photographer and filmmaker Man Ray (pictured here in 1934) was part of the Dadaist "cinema pur" film movement, which influenced the development of art film.

1930s–1950s[link]

In the 1930s and 1940s, Hollywood films could be divided into the artistic aspirations of literary adaptations like John Ford's The Informer (1935) and Eugene O'Neill's The Long Voyage Home (1940), and the money-making "popular genre films" such as gangster thrillers. William Siska argues that Italian neorealist films from the mid- to late-1940s, such as Open City (1945), Paisa (1946), and The Bicycle Thief can be deemed as another "conscious art film movement".^[5]

In the late 1940s, the U.S. public's perception that Italian neorealist films and other serious European fare were different from mainstream Hollywood films was reinforced by the development of "arthouse cinemas" in major U.S. cities and college towns. After the Second World War, "...a growing segment of the American filmgoing public was wearying of mainstream Hollywood films", and they went to the newly-created art film theaters to see "...alternatives to the films playing in main-street movie palaces".^[2] Films shown in these art cinemas included "... British, foreign-language, and independent American films, as well as documentaries and revivals of Hollywood classics." Films such as Rossellini's Open City and Mackendrick's Tight Little Island (Whisky Galore!), The Bicycle Thief and The Red Shoes were shown to substantial U.S. audiences.^[2]

In the late 1950s, French filmmakers of the late 1950s began to produce films that were influenced by Italian Neorealism^[8] and classical Hollywood cinema,^[8] a style that critics called the French New Wave. Although never a formally organized movement, the New Wave filmmakers were linked by their self-conscious rejection of classical cinematic form and their spirit of youthful iconoclasm and is an example of European art cinema.^[9] Many also engaged in their work with the social and political upheavals of the era, making their radical experiments with editing, visual style and narrative part of a general break with the conservative paradigm. Some of the most prominent pioneers among the group, including François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Éric Rohmer, Claude Chabrol, and Jacques Rivette, began as critics for the famous film magazine Cahiers du cinéma. Auteur theory holds that the director is the "author" of his films, with a personal signature visible from film to film.

1960s–1970s[link]

Actress Lena Nyman from the Swedish film 'I Am Curious (Yellow).

The French New Wave movement continued into the 1960s. During the 1960s, the term "art film" began to be much more widely used in the United States than in Europe. In the U.S., the term is often defined very broadly, to include foreign-language (non-English) "auteur" films, independent films, experimental films, documentaries and short films. In the 1960s "art film" became a euphemism in the U.S. for racy Italian and French B-movies. By the 1970s, the term was used to describe sexually explicit European films with artistic structure such as the Swedish film I Am Curious (Yellow). In the U.S., the term "art film" is sometimes used very loosely to refer to the broad range of films shown in repertory theaters or "arthouse cinemas." With this approach, a broad range of films, such as a 1960s Hitchcock film, a 1970s experimental underground film, a European auteur film, a U.S. "Independent" film, and even a mainstream foreign-language film (with subtitles) might all fall under the rubric of "art house films."

1980s–2000s[link]

By the 1980s and 1990s, the term became conflated with "independent film" in the U.S., which shares many of the same stylistic traits with "art film." Companies such as Miramax Films distributed independent films which were deemed commercially unviable at the major studios. When major motion picture studios noted the niche appeal of independent films, they created special divisions dedicated to non-mainstream fare, such as the Fox Searchlight division of Twentieth Century Fox, the Focus Features division of Universal, and the Sony Pictures Classics division of Sony Pictures Entertainment. Film critics have debated whether the films from these special divisions can truly be considered to be "independent films", given that they have financial backing from major studios.

In 2007, Professor Camille Paglia argued in her article "Art movies: R.I.P." that "[a]side from Francis Ford Coppola's Godfather series, with its deft flashbacks and gritty social realism, ...[there is not]...a single film produced over the past 35 years that is arguably of equal philosophical weight or virtuosity of execution to Bergman's The Seventh Seal or Persona ". Paglia states that young people from the 2000s do not "...have patience for the long, slow take that deep-think European directors once specialized in", an approach which gave "...luxurious scrutiny of the tiniest facial expressions or the chilly sweep of a sterile room or bleak landscape".^[10]

Deviations from mainstream film norms[link]

Film scholar David Bordwell outlined the academic definition of "art film" in a 1979 article entitled The Art Cinema as a Mode of Film Practice, which contrasts art films against the mainstream films of classical Hollywood cinema. Mainstream Hollywood-style films use a clear narrative form to organize the film into a series of "...causally related events taking place in space and time", with every scene driving towards a goal. The plot for mainstream films is driven by a well-defined protagonist, fleshed out with clear characters, and strengthened with "...question-and-answer logic, problem-solving routines, (and) deadline plot structures." The film is then tied together with fast pacing, musical soundtracks to cue the appropriate audience emotions, and tight, seamless editing.^[11] Mainstream films tend to use a small palette of familiar, generic images, plots, verbal expressions, and archetypal "stock" characters.

In contrast, Bordwell states that "...the art cinema motivates its narrative by two principles: realism and authorial expressivity." Art films deviate from the mainstream, "classical" norms of filmmaking in that they typically deal with more episodic narrative structures with a "...loosening of the chain of cause and effect".^[11] As well, art films often deal with an inner drama that takes place in a character's psyche, such as psychological issues dealing with individual identity, transgressive sexual or social issues, moral dilemmas, or personal crises.

Mainstream films also deal with moral dilemmas or identity crises, but these issues are usually resolved by the end of the film. In art films, the dilemmas are probed and investigated in a pensive fashion, but usually without a clear resolution at the end of the film.^[12] The protagonists in art films are often facing doubt, anomie or alienation, and the art film often depicts their internal dialogue of thoughts, dream sequences, and fantasies. In some art films, the director uses a depiction of absurd or seemingly meaningless actions to express a philosophical viewpoint such as existentialism.

The story in an art film often has a secondary role to character development and an exploration of ideas through lengthy sequences of dialogue. If an art film has a story, it is usually a drifting sequence of vaguely defined or ambiguous episodes. There may be unexplained gaps in the film, deliberately unclear sequences, or extraneous sequences that are not related to previous scenes, which force the viewer to subjectively make their own interpretation of the film's message. Art films often "...bear the marks of a distinctive visual style" and authorial approach of the director.^[13] An art cinema film often refuses to provide a "...readily answered conclusion", instead putting to the cinema viewer the task of thinking about "...how is the story being told? Why tell the story in this way?"^[14]

Bordwell claims that "art cinema itself is a [film] genre, with its own distinct conventions."^[3] Film theorist Robert Stam also argues that "art film" is a film genre. He claims that a film is considered to be an art film based on artistic status, in the same way that film genres can be based on aspects of films such as their budgets (blockbuster films or B-movies) or their star performers (Adam Sandler films).^[15]

Timeline of notable films[link]

The following list is a small, partial sample of films with "art film" qualities, compiled to give a general sense of what directors and films are considered to have "art film" characteristics. The films in this list demonstrate one or more of the characteristics of art films: a serious, noncommercial, or independently made film that is not aimed at a mass audience. Some of the films on this list are also considered to be "auteur" films, independent films, or experimental films. In some cases, critics disagree over whether a film is mainstream or not. For example, while some critics called Gus Van Sant's My Own Private Idaho (1991) an "exercise in film experimentation" of "high artistic quality",^[16] the Washington Post called it an ambitious mainstream film.^[17]

Some films in this list have most of these characteristics; other films are commercially-made films produced by mainstream studios that nevertheless bear the hallmarks of a director's "auteur" style, or which have an experimental character. The films in this list are notable either because they won major awards or critical praise from influential film critics or because they introduced an innovative narrative or filmmaking technique.

An image of a moth from Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí's surrealist 1929 film Un Chien Andalou

1920s–1940s[link]

In the 1920s and 1930s, filmmakers did not set out to make "art films", and film critics did not use the term "art film". However, there were films that had more sophisticated aesthetic objectives, such as Carl Theodor Dreyer's The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) and Vampyr (1932), surrealist films such as Luis Buñuel's Un chien andalou (1929) and L'Âge d'Or (1930), or even films dealing with political and current-event relevance such as Sergei Eisenstein's famed and influential masterpiece Battleship Potemkin. The U.S. film Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927) by German Expressionist director F. W. Murnau uses distorted art design and groundbreaking cinematography to create an exaggerated, fairy-tale-like world that was rich with symbolism and imagery. Jean Renoir's film The Rules of the Game (1939) was a comedy of manners that transcended the conventions of the "comedy of manners" genre by creating a biting and tragic satire of French upper class society in the years before WW II; a poll of critics from the British Film Institute ranked it as the third greatest film ever, placing behind Citizen Kane and Vertigo.^[18]

Some of these early artistically-oriented films were financed by wealthy individuals rather than film companies, particularly in cases where the content of the film was controversial or unlikely to attract an audience. In the late 1940s, UK director Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger made The Red Shoes (1948), a film about ballet that stood out from mainstream genre films of the era. In 1945, David Lean would direct Brief Encounter, an adaptation of Noël Coward's play Still Life, which observes a passionate love affair between an upper class man and a middle class woman amidst the social and economical issues that Britain faced at the time.

1950s[link]

In the 1950s, some of the well-known films with artistic sensibilities include La Strada (1954), a film about a young woman who is forced to go to work for a cruel and inhumane circus performer in order to support her family and eventually coming to terms with her situation, Carl Theodor Dreyer's Ordet (1956), centering around family with a lack of faith amongst it but with a son who believes that he is Jesus Christ and convinced that he is capable of performing miracles, Federico Fellini's Nights of Cabiria (1957), which deals with a prostitute's failed attempts to find love, and her suffering and rejections, and Wild Strawberries (1957), by Ingmar Bergman, whose narrative concerns an elderly medical doctor and professor whose nightmares lead him to re-evaluate his life, and The 400 Blows (1959) by François Truffaut, whose main character is a young man trying to come of age despite the abuse from his parents, schoolteachers, and society in general. In Poland, the Khrushchev Thaw permitted some relaxation of the regime's cultural policies, and productions such as A Generation, Kanal, Ashes and Diamonds, Lotna (1954–1959), all directed by Andrzej Wajda, showed the Polish Film School style.

Asia[link]

Toshirō Mifune in Rashomon, a 1950 film by Japanese director Akira Kurosawa, that depicts four contradictory accounts of a rape and murder.

In India, there was an art film movement in Bengali cinema known as "Parallel Cinema" or the "Indian New Wave". It was an alternative to the mainstream commercial cinema known for its serious content, realism and naturalism, with a keen eye on the social-political climate of the times. This movement is distinct from mainstream Bollywood cinema and began around the same time as the French New Wave and Japanese New Wave. The most influential filmmaker involved in this movement was Satyajit Ray. His most famous films were The Apu Trilogy (1955–1959), which tells the story of a poor country boy's growth to adulthood. Bimal Roy's Two Acres of Land (1953) tells the story of a farmer during a famine in Bengal. Other acclaimed Bengali filmmakers involved in this movement include Mrinal Sen and Ritwik Ghatak.

Japanese filmmakers produced a number of films that broke with convention. Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon (1950), the first Japanese film to be widely screened in the West, depicts four witnesses' contradictory accounts of a rape and murder. In 1952, Kurosawa directed Ikiru, a film about a Tokyo bureaucrat struggling to find a meaning for his life. Tokyo Story (1953) by Yasujirō Ozu explores social changes of the era by telling the story of an aging couple who travel to Tokyo to visit their grown children, but find the children are too self-absorbed to spend much time with them. Seven Samurai (1954) by Kurosawa, tells the story of a farming village that hire seven masterless samurai to combat bandits. Fires on the Plain (1959) by Kon Ichikawa explores the Japanese experience in World War II by depicting a sick Japanese soldier struggling to stay alive. Ugetsu (1953) by Kenji Mizoguchi is a ghost story set in the late 16th century which tells the story of peasants whose village is in the path of an advancing army. A year later, Mizoguchi directed Sansho the Bailiff (1954), which tells the story of two aristocratic children sold into slavery; in addition to dealing with serious themes such as the loss of freedom, the film features features beautiful images and long and complicated shots.

1960s[link]

The 1960s was an important period in art film; the release of a number of groundbreaking films giving rise to the European art cinema. Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless (1960) used innovative visual and editing techniques such as jump cuts and hand-held camera work. Godard, a leading figure of the French New Wave, would continue to make innovative films throughout the decade, proposing a whole new style of filmmaking. Jules et Jim by François Truffaut deconstructed a complex relationship of three individuals through innovative screenwriting, editing, and camera techniques. Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni helped revolutionize filmmaking, with such films as La Notte (1961), a complex examination of a failed marriage that dealt with issues such as anomie and sterility; Eclipse (1962), about a young woman who is unable to form a solid relationship with her boyfriend because of his materialistic nature; Red Desert (1964), his first color film, which deals with the need to adapt to the modern world; and Blowup (1966), his first English-language film, which examines issues of perception and reality as it follows a young photographer's attempt to discover whether he had photographed a murder.

Swedish director Ingmar Bergman started off the 1960s with chamber pieces like Winter Light (1963) and The Silence (1963), which deal with such themes as emotional isolation and a lack of communication. His films from the later half of the decade, such as Persona (1966), Shame (1968), and A Passion (1969), deal with the idea of film as an artifice. The intellectual and visually expressive films of Tadeusz Konwicki, such as All Souls' Day (Zaduszki, 1961), and especially Salto (1962) inspired discussions about war and raised existential questions on behalf of their everyman protagonists.

Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita (1960) depicts a succession of nights and dawns in Rome as witnessed by a cynical journalist. In 1963, Fellini made 8½, an exploration of creative, marital and spiritual difficulties shot in sumptuous black-and-white by cinematographer Gianni di Venanzo. The 1961 film Last Year at Marienbad by director Alain Resnais examines perception and reality, using grand tracking shots that became widely influential. Robert Bresson's Au Hasard Balthazar (1966) and Mouchette (1967) are notable for their naturalistic, elliptical style. Spanish director Luis Buñuel also contributed heavily to the art of film, with shocking, surrealist satires like Viridiana (1961) and The Exterminating Angel (1962).

Italian director Federico Fellini

Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky's film Andrei Rublev (1966) is a portrait of the medieval Russian icon painter of the same name. The film is also about artistic freedom and the possibility and necessity of making art for, and in the face of, a repressive authority. A cut version of the film was shown at the 1969 Cannes Film Festival, where it won the FIPRESCI prize.^[19] At the end of the decade, Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) wowed audiences with its scientific realism, pioneering use of special effects, and unusual visual imagery. In Soviet Armenia, Sergei Parajanov's The Color of Pomegranates, which was banned by Soviet authorities, and also long unavailable in the west, was praised by critic Mikhail Vartanov as "revolutionary" ^[20] and in the early 1980s, Les Cahiers du Cinéma placed the film in its top 10 list.^[21] In Iran, Dariush Mehrjui's The Cow (1969), about a man who becomes insane after the death of his beloved cow, sparked the new wave of Iranian cinema.

1970s[link]

In the early 1970s, directors shocked audiences with violent films such as A Clockwork Orange (1971), Stanley Kubrick's brutal exploration of futuristic youth gangs and Last Tango in Paris (1972), Bernardo Bertolucci's taboo-breaking, sexually-explicit and controversial film. Nevertheless, other directors did more introspective films, such as Andrei Tarkovsky's meditative science fiction film Solaris (1972), supposedly intended as a Soviet riposte to 2001. In 1975, Tarkovsky directed another two films which garnered critical acclaim overseas, The Mirror and Stalker. Terrence Malick, who directed Badlands (1973) and Days of Heaven (1978) shared many traits with Tarkovsky, such as his long, lingering shots of natural beauty, evocative imagery, and poetic narrative style.

Another feature of 1970s art films was the return to prominence of bizarre characters and imagery, which abound in the tormented, obsessed title character in German New Wave director Werner Herzog's Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1973), and in cult films such as Alejandro Jodorowsky's psychedelic The Holy Mountain (1973) about a footless, handless dwarf and an alchemist seeking the mythical Lotus Island^[22]The film Taxi Driver (1976) by Martin Scorsese continues the themes that A Clockwork Orange explored: an alienated population living in a violent, decaying society. The gritty violence and seething rage of Scorsese's film contrasts other films released in the same period, such as David Lynch's dreamlike, surreal Eraserhead (1977). In 1974 John Cassavetes would offer a sharp commentary on American blue-collar life in A Woman Under the Influence, which features an eccentric housewife slowly descending into madness.

1980s[link]

In 1980, director Martin Scorsese shocked audiences who had become used to the escapist blockbuster adventures of Steven Spielberg and George Lucas with the gritty, harsh realism of his film Raging Bull. In this film, actor Robert De Niro took method acting to an extreme to portray a boxer's decline from a prizewinning young fighter to an overweight, "has-been" nightclub owner. Ridley Scott's Blade Runner (1982), while labeled as a fast-paced action film, could rather be seen as a science fiction art film, along with 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). Blade Runner explores themes of existentialism: what it means to be human. A box office failure, the film became popular in the arthouse circuit as a cult oddity after the release of a "Director's cut" became successful on VHS. In the middle of the decade, Japanese director Akira Kurosawa used realism to portray the brutal, bloody violence of Japanese samurai warfare of the 16th century in Ran (1985). Ran followed the plot of King Lear, in which an elderly king is betrayed by his children. Sergio Leone also contrasted brutal violence with emotional substance in his epic tale of a mobster's life in Once Upon a Time in America.

While extensive sets are more associated with mainstream film than with art film, Japanese director Akira Kurosawa had many sets built for his 1985 film Ran, including this recreation of a medieval gate

Other directors in the 1980s chose a more intellectual path, exploring philosophical and ethical issues. Andrzej Wajda's Man of Iron (1981) is a critique of the Polish communist government which won the 1981 Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. Another Polish director, Krzysztof Kieślowski made The Decalogue for television in 1988, a largely melancholic film series that explores ethical issues and moral puzzles. Two of these films were released theatrically as A Short Film About Love and A Short Film About Killing. In 1989 Woody Allen would make, in the words of The New York Times critic Vincent Canby his most "securely serious and funny film to date" in Crimes and Misdemeanors, which deals with multiple stories of people trying to find a moral and spiritual simplicity in life facing dire issues and thoughts surrounding the choices they make. French director Louis Malle chose another moral path to explore with the dramatization of his real-life childhood experiences in Au revoir, les enfants, which depicts the Nazi occupation government's deportation of French Jews to concentration camps during World War II.

Kieślowski was not the only director to transcend the distinction between the cinema and television: Ingmar Bergman made Fanny and Alexander (1982) which was shown on television in an extended five-hour version. In the UK, Channel 4, a new television channel, financed in whole or part many films released theatrically via its Film 4 subsidiary. Wim Wenders offered another approach on life from a spiritual standpoint in his 1987 film Wings of Desire, a depiction of a "fallen angel" who lives among men, which won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. In 1982, experimental director Godfrey Reggio released Koyaanisqatsi, a film without dialogue which emphasizes cinematography and philosophical ideology. It consists primarily of slow motion and time-lapse photography of cities and natural landscapes which creates a visual tone poem.^[23]

Another approach used by directors in the 1980s was to create bizarre, surreal alternate worlds. Martin Scorsese's After Hours (1985) is a comedy-thriller that depicts a man's baffling adventures in a surreal nighttime world of chance encounters with mysterious characters. David Lynch's Blue Velvet (1986), is a film noir-style thriller mystery filled with symbolism and metaphors about polarized worlds and inhabited by distorted characters that are hidden in the seamy underworld of a small town became surprisingly successful considering its highy distubing subject matter. Peter Greenaway's The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (1989) is an outlandish fantasy/black comedy about cannibalism and extreme violence with an intellectual theme: a critique of 'elite culture' in Thatcherian Britain.

1990s[link]

In the 1990s, directors took inspiration from the success of 1986's Blue Velvet and The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover by creating films with bizarre alternate worlds and elements of surrealism. In 1990, Japanese director Akira Kurosawa's Dreams depicted his imaginative reveries in a series of vignettes that range from idyllic pastoral country landscapes to horrific visions of tormented demons and a blighted post-nuclear war landscape. In 1991, director Joel Coen's Barton Fink, which won the Palme d'or at the Cannes Film Festival, told an enigmatic story about a writer who encounters a range of bizarre characters including an alcoholic, abusive novelist and a serial killer. David Lynch's 1997 film Lost Highway is a psychological thriller that explores fantasy worlds, bizarre time-space transformations, and mental breakdowns using surreal imagery.

Other directors in the 1990s explored philosophical issues and themes such as identity, chance, death, and existentialism. The 1990s films My Own Private Idaho and Chungking Express explored the theme of identity. Gus Van Sant's My Own Private Idaho (1991) is an independent road movie/buddy film about two young street hustlers which explores the theme of the search for home and identity. It was called a "high-water mark in '90s independent film",^[24] a "stark, poetic rumination",^[25] and an "exercise in film experimentation"^[26] of "high artistic quality".^[16] Wong Kar-wai's Chungking Express (1994)^[27] explores the themes of identity, disconnection, loneliness, and isolation in the "metaphoric concrete jungle" of modern Hong Kong. The film uses a visual style that could be seen as music video-influenced, and also bears similarities to the French New Wave. While the British Film Institute called it one of the best Asian films of contemporary cinema, it is considered to be a film for cineophiles, because it is "largely a cerebral experience" which you enjoy "because of what you know about film".

Daryush Shokof's film Seven Servants (1996), makes a most original high art cinema piece about a man who wants to "unite" the world races until his last breath. The film remains a surprising visionary experience both in form and concept for anyone who sees it for the first time ever. One year after Seven Servants, Abbas Kiarostami's film Taste of Cherry (1997),^[28] which won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, tells a similar tale as in the Seven Servants with a different twist in which it is about a man trying to hire a person to bury him after he commits suicide. The film was shot in a minimalist style, with long takes, a leisurely pace, and long periods of silence. The film was also notable for its use of long shots and overhead shots which creates a sense of distance between the audience and the characters. Zhang Yimou's early 1990s works such as Ju Dou (1990), Raise the Red Lantern (1991), The Story of Qiu Ju (1992) and To Live (1994) explore human emotions through a poignant narrative. To Live won the Grand Jury Prize.

Several 1990s films explored existentialist-oriented themes related to life, chance, and death. Robert Altman's Short Cuts (1993) explored themes of chance, death, and infidelity by tracing ten parallel and interwoven stories. The film, which won the Golden Lion and the Volpi Cup at the Venice Film Festival, was called a "many-sided, many mooded, dazzlingly structured eclectic jazz mural" by Chicago Tribune critic Michael Wilmington. Krzysztof Kieślowski's The Double Life of Véronique (1991) is a drama about the theme of identity and a political allegory about the East/West split in Europe which features stylized cinematography, an ethereal atmosphere, and unexplained supernatural elements. Abbas Kiarostami's film Taste of Cherry (1997)^[28] about a man trying to hire a person to bury him after he commits suicide. The film, which was shot in a minimalist style, with long takes, won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival.

Darren Aronofsky's film Pi (1998) is a dream-like "...incredibly complex and ambiguous film filled with both incredible style and substance" about a paranoid math genius' "search for peace."^[29] The film creates a David Lynch-inspired,"... eerie Eraserhead-like world"^[30] shot in "black-and-white, which lends a dream-like atmosphere to all of the proceedings", which explore issues such as "metaphysics and spirituality"^[31] Matthew Barney's The Cremaster Cycle (1994–2002) is a cycle of five symbolic, allegorical films that create a self-enclosed aesthetic system that aims to explore the process of creation. The films are filled with allusions to reproductive organs and sexual development, and they use narrative models drawn from biography, mythology, and geology.

Some 1990s films mixed an ethereal or surreal visual atmosphere with the exploration of philosophical issues. Satantango (1994), by the Hungarian director Bela Tarr is a 7½ hour long film, shot in black and white, that deals with Tarr's favorite theme, that of inadequacy, as con man Irimias comes back to a village at an unspecified location in Hungary, setting himself up as leader and as a Messiah figure to the gullible villagers. Kieslowski's Three Colors trilogy (1993–4), particularly Blue (1993) and Red (1994) deal with human relationships, and how people cope with them alongside their day-to-day lives. The trilogy was called "explorations of spirituality and existentialism"^[32] that created a "truly transcendent experience".^[33]

2000s[link]

A number of films from the 2000s with art film qualities were notable due to their use of innovative filmmaking or editing techniques. Memento (2001), a psychological thriller directed by Christopher Nolan is about a man suffering from short-term memory loss. The film is edited so that the plot is revealed backwards in ten-minute chunks, simulating the condition of memory loss. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) is a romance film directed by Michel Gondry about a man who hires a company to erase the memory of a bad relationship. The film used a range of special effect techniques and camera work to depict the destruction of the man's memories and his transitions from one memory to another.

Timecode (2000), a film directed by Mike Figgis, uses a split screen to show four continuous 90 minute takes that follow four storylines. Russian Ark (2002), a film directed by Alexander Sokurov took Figgis' use of extended takes even further; it is notable for being the first feature film shot in a single, unedited take. Waking Life (2001), an animated film directed by Richard Linklater uses an innovative digital rotoscope technique to depict a young man stuck in a dream.^[34]

The stars and director of the film Mulholland Drive at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival. Left to right: Actor Naomi Watts, Director David Lynch, and actors Laura Harring and Justin Theroux.

Several 2000s-era films explored the theme of amnesia or memory, but unlike Memento, they did so using narrative techniques rather than filmmaking and editing methods. Mulholland Drive (2001), directed by David Lynch is initially about a young woman who moves to Hollywood and discovers that an amnesiac is living in her house, although as the plot progresses it becomes apparent the film is holding something deeper in terms of its plot and characters. Oldboy (2003), directed by Park Chan-wook, is about a man imprisoned by a mysterious and brutal captor for 15 years who must then chase his old memories when he is abruptly released. Peppermint Candy (2000), directed by Lee Chang-dong, starts with the suicide of the male protagonist, and then uses reverse chronology (like Memento) to depict the events of the last 20 years which led the man to want to kill himself.

Some of the notable films from the 2000s that have been considered to have art film-qualities differed from mainstream films in controversial subject matter or in narrative form. Elephant (2003), a film directed by Gus Van Sant, for example, depicting mass murder at a high school that echoed the Columbine High School massacre, won top prize at the Cannes Film Festival. Other of his films include Gerry, Last Days, and Paranoid Park. Todd Haynes' complex deconstruction of Bob Dylan's persona, I'm Not There (2007), tells its story using non-traditional narrative techniques, intercutting the storylines of the six different Dylan-inspired characters. Mexican director Guillermo del Toro's film Pan's Labyrinth uses computer-generated imagery (CGI) technology to create a fantastical world that a ten year-old girl imagines to block out the horror of the Spanish Civil War. Encyclopædia Britannica calls del Toro's film "...a wonderful marriage of Hollywood genre [film] and European art film".^[35]

Lewis Beale of Film Journal International stated that Australian director Andrew Dominik's western film The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007) is "a fascinating, literary-based work that succeeds as both art and genre film."^[36] Unlike the more action-oriented Jesse James films of the past, Dominik's unconventional epic, perhaps more accurately, details the outlaw's relinquishing psyche during the final months of his life as he finds himself succumbing to the paranoia of being captured and developing a rather precarious friendship with his eventual assassin, Robert Ford. In 2009, director Paul Thomas Anderson claimed that his film Punch Drunk Love, about a shy, repressed rageaholic was "an art house Adam Sandler film", a reference to the unlikely inclusion of "frat boy" comic Sandler in the film; critic Roger Ebert claims that Punch Drunk Love "...may be the key to all of the Adam Sandler films, and may liberate Sandler for a new direction in his work. He can't go on making those moronic comedies forever, can he? Who would have guessed he had such uncharted depths?"^[37]

2010s[link]

The CNN review of Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010) called it "an art film for everyone", unlike his earlier films, which were "considered inaccessible art house fare". This film, which won the 2010 Cannes Palme d'Or "...ties together what might just be a series of beautifully shot scenes with moving and funny musings on the nature of death and reincarnation, love, loss and karma." ^[38] Weerasethakul is an independent film director, screenwriter, and film producer who works outside the strict confines of the Thai film studio system. His films deal with dreams, nature, sexuality (including his own homosexuality)^[39] and Western perceptions of Thailand and Asia. His films display a preference for unconventional narrative structures (like placing titles/credits at the middle of a film) and for working with non-actors.

Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life (2011) was finally released after decades of being in development. It also won the Palme d'Or at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival and was highly praised by critics. In Stamford, Connecticut, a message was posted in the Avon Theater about the film and the theater's no-refund policy due to "some customer feedback and a polarized audience response" about the film. The theater stated that it "stands behind this ambitious work of art and other challenging films".^[40] Drive (2011), directed by Nicolas Winding Refn, is commonly called an art-house action film.^[41]

Related concepts[link]

Art television[link]

A television genre or style of art television has been identified, which shares some of the same traits of art films. Television shows such as David Lynch's Twin Peaks series and BBC's The Singing Detective also have "...a loosening of causality, a greater emphasis on psychological or anecdotal realism, violations of classical clarity of space and time, explicit authorial comment, and ambiguity."

As with much of Lynch's other work (notably the film Blue Velvet), Twin Peaks explores the gulf between the veneer of small-town respectability and the seedier layers of life lurking beneath it. The show is difficult to place in a defined television genre: stylistically, it borrows the unsettling tone and supernatural premises of horror films, and simultaneously offers a bizarrely comical parody of American soap operas with a campy, melodramatic presentation of the morally dubious activities of its quirky characters. The show represents an earnest moral inquiry distinguished by both weird humor and a deep vein of surrealism.

Other television shows that have been called "art television", such as The Simpsons, use a "...flurry of cultural references, intentionally inconsistent characterization, and considerable self-reflexivity about television conventions and the status of the programme as a television show."^[42] HBO's The Wire might also be qualified as "art television" as it has garnered a larger amount of critical attention from academics than most television shows. For example, the film theory journal Film Quarterly has featured the show on its cover.^[43]

See also[link]

• Auteur theory
• Czechoslovak New Wave
• Documentary films
• Experimental film
• Film genres
• Independent Film Channel
• Independent Spirit Award
• List of directors associated with art film
• Souvenirs from Earth Art TV Station
• Sundance Film Festival
• Swansea Bay Film Festival
• Television studies
• Toronto Film Festival

References[link]

Clockwise from upper left: a self-portrait from Vincent van Gogh, an African Chokwe statue, detail from the Birth of Venus by Sandro Botticelli and a Japanese Shisa lion

Art is a term that describes a diverse range of human activities and the products of those activities, but is most often understood to refer to painting, film, photography, sculpture, and other visual media. Music, theatre, dance, literature, and interactive media are included in a broader definition of art or the arts.^[1] Until the 17th century, art referred to any skill or mastery and was not differentiated from crafts or sciences, but in modern usage the fine arts are distinguished from acquired skills in general.

Many definitions of art have been proposed by philosophers and others who have characterized art in terms of mimesis, expression, communication of emotion, or other values. During the Romantic period, art came to be seen as "a special faculty of the human mind to be classified with religion and science".^[2]

The nature of art, and related concepts such as creativity and interpretation, are explored in a branch of philosophy known as aesthetics.^[3]

Definition[link]

Works of art can tell stories or simply express an aesthetic truth or feeling. Panorama of a section of A Thousand Li of Mountains and Rivers, a 12th-century painting by Song Dynasty artist Wang Ximeng.

The Encyclopædia Britannica Online defines art as "the use of skill and imagination in the creation of aesthetic objects, environments, or experiences that can be shared with others". By this definition of the word, artistic works have existed for almost as long as humankind: from early pre-historic art to contemporary art; however, some theories restrict the concept to modern Western societies.^[4] The first and broadest sense of art is the one that has remained closest to the older Latin meaning, which roughly translates to "skill" or "craft." A few examples where this meaning proves very broad include artifact, artificial, artifice, medical arts, and military arts. However, there are many other colloquial uses of the word, all with some relation to its etymology.

20th-century Rwandan bottle. Artistic works may serve practical functions, in addition to their decorative value.

The second and more recent sense of the word art is as an abbreviation for creative art or fine art and emerged in the early 17th century.^[5] Fine art means that a skill is being used to express the artist's creativity, or to engage the audience's aesthetic sensibilities, or to draw the audience towards consideration of the finer things.

The word art can describe several things: a study of creative skill, a process of using the creative skill, a product of the creative skill, or the audience's experience with the creative skill. The creative arts (art as discipline) are a collection of disciplines that produce artworks (art as objects) that are compelled by a personal drive (art as activity) and convey a message, mood, or symbolism for the viewer to interpret (art as experience). Art is something that stimulates an individual's thoughts, emotions, beliefs, or ideas through the senses. Artworks can be explicitly made for this purpose or interpreted on the basis of images or objects. Although the application of scientific knowledge to derive a new scientific theory involves skill and results in the "creation" of something new, this represents science only and is not categorized as art.

Often, if the skill is being used in a common or practical way, people will consider it a craft instead of art. Likewise, if the skill is being used in a commercial or industrial way, it may be considered commercial art instead of fine art. On the other hand, crafts and design are sometimes considered applied art. Some art followers have argued that the difference between fine art and applied art has more to do with value judgments made about the art than any clear definitional difference.^[6] However, even fine art often has goals beyond pure creativity and self-expression. The purpose of works of art may be to communicate ideas, such as in politically, spiritually, or philosophically motivated art; to create a sense of beauty (see aesthetics); to explore the nature of perception; for pleasure; or to generate strong emotions. The purpose may also be seemingly nonexistent.

The nature of art has been described by philosopher Richard Wollheim as "one of the most elusive of the traditional problems of human culture".^[7] Art has been defined as a vehicle for the expression or communication of emotions and ideas, a means for exploring and appreciating formal elements for their own sake, and as mimesis or representation. Art as mimesis has deep roots in the philosophy of Aristotle.^[8] Goethe defined art as an other resp. a second nature, according to his ideal of a style founded on the basic fundaments of insight and on the innermost character of things.^[9] Leo Tolstoy identified art as a use of indirect means to communicate from one person to another.^[8] Benedetto Croce and R.G. Collingwood advanced the idealist view that art expresses emotions, and that the work of art therefore essentially exists in the mind of the creator.^[10][11] The theory of art as form has its roots in the philosophy of Immanuel Kant, and was developed in the early twentieth century by Roger Fry and Clive Bell. More recently, thinkers influenced by Martin Heidegger have interpreted art as the means by which a community develops for itself a medium for self-expression and interpretation.^[12] George Dickie has offered an institutional theory of art that defines a work of art as any artifact upon which a qualified person or institution has conferred "the status of candidate for appreciation".^[13]

History[link]

Venus of Willendorf, circa 24,000–22,000 BP

Sculptures, cave paintings, rock paintings and petroglyphs from the Upper Paleolithic dating to roughly 40,000 years ago have been found, but the precise meaning of such art is often disputed because so little is known about the cultures that produced them. The oldest art objects in the world—a series of tiny, drilled snail shells about 75,000 years old—were discovered in a South African cave.^[14] Containers that may have been used to hold paints have been found dating as far back as 100,000 years.^[15]

Cave painting of a horse from the Lascaux caves, circa 16,000 BP

Many great traditions in art have a foundation in the art of one of the great ancient civilizations: Ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, Persia, India, China, Ancient Greece, Rome, as well as Inca, Maya, and Olmec. Each of these centers of early civilization developed a unique and characteristic style in its art. Because of the size and duration of these civilizations, more of their art works have survived and more of their influence has been transmitted to other cultures and later times. Some also have provided the first records of how artists worked. For example, this period of Greek art saw a veneration of the human physical form and the development of equivalent skills to show musculature, poise, beauty, and anatomically correct proportions.

In Byzantine and Medieval art of the Western Middle Ages, much art focused on the expression of Biblical and religious truths, and used styles that showed the higher glory of a heavenly world, such as the use of gold in the background of paintings, or glass in mosaics or windows, which also presented figures in idealized, patterned (flat) forms. Nevertheless a classical realist tradition persisted in small Byzantine works, and realism steadily grew in the art of Catholic Europe.

Renaissance art had a greatly increased emphasis on the realistic depiction of the material world, and the place of humans in it, reflected in the corporeality of the human body, and development of a systematic method of graphical perspective to depict recession in a three-dimensional picture space.

The stylized signature of Sultan Mahmud II of the Ottoman Empire was written in Arabic calligraphy. It reads Mahmud Khan son of Abdulhamid is forever victorious.

The Great Mosque of Kairouan (also called the Mosque of Uqba) is one of the finest, most significant and best preserved artistic and architectural examples of early great mosques; dated in its present state from the 9th century, it is the ancestor and model of all the mosques in the western Islamic lands.^[16] The Great Mosque of Kairouan is located in the city of Kairouan in Tunisia.

In the east, Islamic art's rejection of iconography led to emphasis on geometric patterns, calligraphy, and architecture. Further east, religion dominated artistic styles and forms too. India and Tibet saw emphasis on painted sculptures and dance, while religious painting borrowed many conventions from sculpture and tended to bright contrasting colors with emphasis on outlines. China saw the flourishing of many art forms: jade carving, bronzework, pottery (including the stunning terracotta army of Emperor Qin), poetry, calligraphy, music, painting, drama, fiction, etc. Chinese styles vary greatly from era to era and each one is traditionally named after the ruling dynasty. So, for example, Tang Dynasty paintings are monochromatic and sparse, emphasizing idealized landscapes, but Ming Dynasty paintings are busy and colorful, and focus on telling stories via setting and composition. Japan names its styles after imperial dynasties too, and also saw much interplay between the styles of calligraphy and painting. Woodblock printing became important in Japan after the 17th century.

Painting by Song Dynasty artist Ma Lin, circa 1250. 24,8 × 25,2 cm

The western Age of Enlightenment in the 18th century saw artistic depictions of physical and rational certainties of the clockwork universe, as well as politically revolutionary visions of a post-monarchist world, such as Blake's portrayal of Newton as a divine geometer, or David's propagandistic paintings. This led to Romantic rejections of this in favor of pictures of the emotional side and individuality of humans, exemplified in the novels of Goethe. The late 19th century then saw a host of artistic movements, such as academic art, Symbolism, impressionism and fauvism among others.

The history of twentieth century art is a narrative of endless possibilities and the search for new standards, each being torn down in succession by the next. Thus the parameters of Impressionism, Expressionism, Fauvism, Cubism, Dadaism, Surrealism, etc. cannot be maintained very much beyond the time of their invention. Increasing global interaction during this time saw an equivalent influence of other cultures into Western art, such as Pablo Picasso being influenced by African sculpture. Japanese woodblock prints (which had themselves been influenced by Western Renaissance draftsmanship) had an immense influence on Impressionism and subsequent development. Later, African sculptures were taken up by Picasso and to some extent by Matisse. Similarly, the west has had huge impacts on Eastern art in the 19th and 20th centuries, with originally western ideas like Communism and Post-Modernism exerting a powerful influence on artistic styles.

Modernism, the idealistic search for truth, gave way in the latter half of the 20th century to a realization of its unattainability. Theodor W. Adorno said in 1970, "It is now taken for granted that nothing which concerns art can be taken for granted any more: neither art itself, nor art in relationship to the whole, nor even the right of art to exist."^[17] Relativism was accepted as an unavoidable truth, which led to the period of contemporary art and postmodern criticism, where cultures of the world and of history are seen as changing forms, which can be appreciated and drawn from only with irony. Furthermore the separation of cultures is increasingly blurred and some argue it is now more appropriate to think in terms of a global culture, rather than regional cultures.

Forms, genres, media, and styles[link]

Detail of Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa, showing the painting technique of sfumato

The creative arts are often divided into more specific categories, each related to its technique, or medium, such as decorative arts, plastic arts, performing arts, or literature. Unlike scientific fields, art is one of the few subjects that are academically organized according to technique [2]^{[dead link]}. An artistic medium is the substance or material the artistic work is made from, and may also refer to the technique used. For example, paint is a medium used in painting, and paper is a medium used in drawing.

An art form is the specific shape, or quality an artistic expression takes. The media used often influence the form. For example, the form of a sculpture must exist in space in three dimensions, and respond to gravity. The constraints and limitations of a particular medium are thus called its formal qualities. To give another example, the formal qualities of painting are the canvas texture, color, and brush texture. The formal qualities of video games are non-linearity, interactivity and virtual presence. The form of a particular work of art is determined by the formal qualities of the media, and is not related to the intentions of the artist or the reactions of the audience in any way whatsoever as these properties are related to content rather than form.^[18]

A genre is a set of conventions and styles within a particular medium. For instance, well recognized genres in film are western, horror and romantic comedy. Genres in music include death metal and trip hop. Genres in painting include still life and pastoral landscape. A particular work of art may bend or combine genres but each genre has a recognizable group of conventions, clichés and tropes. (One note: the word genre has a second older meaning within painting; genre painting was a phrase used in the 17th to 19th centuries to refer specifically to paintings of scenes of everyday life and is still used in this way.)

The Great Wave off Kanagawa by Hokusai (Japanese, 1760–1849), colored woodcut print

The original Fountain by Marcel Duchamp, 1917, photographed by Alfred Stieglitz at the 291 after the 1917 Society of Independent Artists exhibit. Stieglitz used a backdrop of The Warriors by Marsden Hartley to photograph the urinal. The exhibition entry tag can be clearly seen.^[19]

The style of an artwork, artist, or movement is the distinctive method and form followed by the respective art. Any loose brushy, dripped or poured abstract painting is called expressionistic. Often a style is linked with a particular historical period, set of ideas, and particular artistic movement. So Jackson Pollock is called an Abstract Expressionist.

A particular style may have specific cultural meanings. For example, Roy Lichtenstein—a painter associated with the American Pop art movement of the 1960s—was not a pointillist, despite his use of dots. Lichtenstein used evenly spaced Ben-Day dots (the type used to reproduce color in comic strips) as a style to question the "high" art of painting with the "low" art of comics, thus commenting on class distinctions in culture. Pointillism, a technique in late Impressionism (1880s) developed especially by the artist Georges Seurat, employs dots to create variation in color and depth in an attempt to approximate the way people really see color. Both artists use dots, but the particular style and technique relate to the artistic movement adopted by each artist.

These are all ways of beginning to define a work of art, to narrow it down. "Imagine you are an art critic whose mission is to compare the meanings you find in a wide range of individual artworks. How would you proceed with your task? One way to begin is to examine the materials each artist selected in making an object, image video, or event. The decision to cast a sculpture in bronze, for instance, inevitably effects its meaning; the work becomes something different from how it might be if it had been cast in gold or plastic or chocolate, even if everything else about the artwork remains the same. Next, you might examine how the materials in each artwork have become an arrangement of shapes, colors, textures, and lines. These, in turn, are organized into various patterns and compositional structures. In your interpretation, you would comment on how salient features of the form contribute to the overall meaning of the finished artwork. [But in the end] the meaning of most artworks... is not exhausted by a discussion of materials, techniques, and form. Most interpretations also include a discussion of the ideas and feelings the artwork engenders."^[20]

Skill and craft[link]

Adam. Detail from Michelangelo's fresco in the Cappella Sistina (1511)

Art can connote a sense of trained ability or mastery of a medium. Art can also simply refer to the developed and efficient use of a language to convey meaning with immediacy and or depth. Art is an act of expressing feelings, thoughts, and observations.^[21] There is an understanding that is reached with the material as a result of handling it, which facilitates one's thought processes. A common view is that the epithet "art", particular in its elevated sense, requires a certain level of creative expertise by the artist, whether this be a demonstration of technical ability, an originality in stylistic approach, or a combination of these two. Traditionally skill of execution was viewed as a quality inseparable from art and thus necessary for its success; for Leonardo da Vinci, art, neither more nor less than his other endeavors, was a manifestation of skill. Rembrandt's work, now praised for its ephemeral virtues, was most admired by his contemporaries for its virtuosity. At the turn of the 20th century, the adroit performances of John Singer Sargent were alternately admired and viewed with skepticism for their manual fluency, yet at nearly the same time the artist who would become the era's most recognized and peripatetic iconoclast, Pablo Picasso, was completing a traditional academic training at which he excelled.

A common contemporary criticism of some modern art occurs along the lines of objecting to the apparent lack of skill or ability required in the production of the artistic object. In conceptual art, Marcel Duchamp's "Fountain" is among the first examples of pieces wherein the artist used found objects ("ready-made") and exercised no traditionally recognised set of skills. Tracey Emin's My Bed, or Damien Hirst's The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living follow this example and also manipulate the mass media. Emin slept (and engaged in other activities) in her bed before placing the result in a gallery as work of art. Hirst came up with the conceptual design for the artwork but has left most of the eventual creation of many works to employed artisans. Hirst's celebrity is founded entirely on his ability to produce shocking concepts. The actual production in many conceptual and contemporary works of art is a matter of assembly of found objects. However there are many modernist and contemporary artists who continue to excel in the skills of drawing and painting and in creating hands-on works of art.

Value judgment[link]

Aboriginal hollow log tombs. National Gallery, Canberra, Australia

This section may stray from the topic of the article into the topic of another article, Art_(disambiguation). Please help improve this section or discuss this issue on the talk page. (November 2010)

Somewhat in relation to the above, the word art is also used to apply judgments of value, as in such expressions as "that meal was a work of art" (the cook is an artist), or "the art of deception", (the highly attained level of skill of the deceiver is praised). It is this use of the word as a measure of high quality and high value that gives the term its flavor of subjectivity.

Making judgments of value requires a basis for criticism. At the simplest level, a way to determine whether the impact of the object on the senses meets the criteria to be considered art is whether it is perceived to be attractive or repulsive. Though perception is always colored by experience, and is necessarily subjective, it is commonly understood that what is not somehow aesthetically satisfying cannot be art. However, "good" art is not always or even regularly aesthetically appealing to a majority of viewers. In other words, an artist's prime motivation need not be the pursuit of the aesthetic. Also, art often depicts terrible images made for social, moral, or thought-provoking reasons. For example, Francisco Goya's painting depicting the Spanish shootings of 3rd of May 1808 is a graphic depiction of a firing squad executing several pleading civilians. Yet at the same time, the horrific imagery demonstrates Goya's keen artistic ability in composition and execution and produces fitting social and political outrage. Thus, the debate continues as to what mode of aesthetic satisfaction, if any, is required to define 'art'.

The assumption of new values or the rebellion against accepted notions of what is aesthetically superior need not occur concurrently with a complete abandonment of the pursuit of what is aesthetically appealing. Indeed, the reverse is often true, that the revision of what is popularly conceived of as being aesthetically appealing allows for a re-invigoration of aesthetic sensibility, and a new appreciation for the standards of art itself. Countless schools have proposed their own ways to define quality, yet they all seem to agree in at least one point: once their aesthetic choices are accepted, the value of the work of art is determined by its capacity to transcend the limits of its chosen medium to strike some universal chord by the rarity of the skill of the artist or in its accurate reflection in what is termed the zeitgeist.

Art is often intended to appeal to and connect with human emotion. It can arouse aesthetic or moral feelings, and can be understood as a way of communicating these feelings. Artists express something so that their audience is aroused to some extent, but they do not have to do so consciously. Art may be considered an exploration of the human condition; that is, what it is to be human.^[22]

Purpose of art[link]

A Navajo rug made circa 1880

Mozarabic Beatus miniature. Spain, late 10th century

Art has had a great number of different functions throughout its history, making its purpose difficult to abstract or quantify to any single concept. This does not imply that the purpose of Art is "vague", but that it has had many unique, different reasons for being created. Some of these functions of Art are provided in the following outline. The different purposes of art may be grouped according to those that are non-motivated, and those that are motivated (Levi-Strauss).

Non-motivated functions of art[link]

The non-motivated purposes of art are those that are integral to being human, transcend the individual, or do not fulfill a specific external purpose. In this sense, Art, as creativity, is something humans must do by their very nature (i.e., no other species creates art), and is therefore beyond utility.

1. Basic human instinct for harmony, balance, rhythm. Art at this level is not an action or an object, but an internal appreciation of balance and harmony (beauty), and therefore an aspect of being human beyond utility.

   "Imitation, then, is one instinct of our nature. Next, there is the instinct for 'harmony' and rhythm, meters being manifestly sections of rhythm. Persons, therefore, starting with this natural gift developed by degrees their special aptitudes, till their rude improvisations gave birth to Poetry." -Aristotle^[23]

2. Experience of the mysterious. Art provides a way to experience one's self in relation to the universe. This experience may often come unmotivated, as one appreciates art, music or poetry.

   "The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science." -Albert Einstein^[24]

3. Expression of the imagination. Art provide a means to express the imagination in non-grammatic ways that are not tied to the formality of spoken or written language. Unlike words, which come in sequences and each of which have a definite meaning, art provides a range of forms, symbols and ideas with meanings that are malleable.

   "Jupiter's eagle [as an example of art] is not, like logical (aesthetic) attributes of an object, the concept of the sublimity and majesty of creation, but rather something else – something that gives the imagination an incentive to spread its flight over a whole host of kindred representations that provoke more thought than admits of expression in a concept determined by words. They furnish an aesthetic idea, which serves the above rational idea as a substitute for logical presentation, but with the proper function, however, of animating the mind by opening out for it a prospect into a field of kindred representations stretching beyond its ken." -Immanuel Kant^[25]

4. Ritualistic and symbolic functions. In many cultures, art is used in rituals, performances and dances as a decoration or symbol. While these often have no specific utilitarian (motivated) purpose, anthropologists know that they often serve a purpose at the level of meaning within a particular culture. This meaning is not furnished by any one individual, but is often the result of many generations of change, and of a cosmological relationship within the culture.

   "Most scholars who deal with rock paintings or objects recovered from prehistoric contexts that cannot be explained in utilitarian terms and are thus categorized as decorative, ritual or symbolic, are aware of the trap posed by the term 'art'." -Silva Tomaskova^[26]

Motivated functions of art[link]

Motivated purposes of art refer to intentional, conscious actions on the part of the artists or creator. These may be to bring about political change, to comment on an aspect of society, to convey a specific emotion or mood, to address personal psychology, to illustrate another discipline, to (with commercial arts) to sell a product, or simply as a form of communication.

1. Communication. Art, at its simplest, is a form of communication. As most forms of communication have an intent or goal directed toward another individual, this is a motivated purpose. Illustrative arts, such as scientific illustration, are a form of art as communication. Maps are another example. However, the content need not be scientific. Emotions, moods and feelings are also communicated through art.

   "[Art is a set of] artefacts or images with symbolic meanings as a means of communication." -Steve Mithen^[27]

2. Art as entertainment. Art may seek to bring about a particular emotion or mood, for the purpose of relaxing or entertaining the viewer. This is often the function of the art industries of Motion Pictures and Video Games.
3. The Avante-Garde. Art for political change. One of the defining functions of early twentieth century art has been to use visual images to bring about political change. Art movements that had this goal—Dadaism, Surrealism, Russian Constructivism, and Abstract Expressionism, among others—are collectively referred to as the avante-garde arts.

   "By contrast, the realistic attitude, inspired by positivism, from Saint Thomas Aquinas to Anatole France, clearly seems to me to be hostile to any intellectual or moral advancement. I loathe it, for it is made up of mediocrity, hate, and dull conceit. It is this attitude which today gives birth to these ridiculous books, these insulting plays. It constantly feeds on and derives strength from the newspapers and stultifies both science and art by assiduously flattering the lowest of tastes; clarity bordering on stupidity, a dog's life." -André Breton (Surrealism)^[28]

4. Art for psychological and healing purposes. Art is also used by art therapists, psychotherapists and clinical psychologists as art therapy. The Diagnostic Drawing Series, for example, is used to determine the personality and emotional functioning of a patient. The end product is not the principal goal in this case, but rather a process of healing, through creative acts, is sought. The resultant piece of artwork may also offer insight into the troubles experienced by the subject and may suggest suitable approaches to be used in more conventional forms of psychiatric therapy.
5. Art for social inquiry, subversion and/or anarchy. While similar to art for political change, subversive or deconstructivist art may seek to question aspects of society without any specific political goal. In this case, the function of art may be simply to criticize some aspect of society.
   

   

   Spray-paint graffiti on a wall in Rome
   Graffiti art and other types of street art are graphics and images that are spray-painted or stencilled on publicly viewable walls, buildings, buses, trains, and bridges, usually without permission. Certain art forms, such as graffiti, may also be illegal when they break laws (in this case vandalism).
6. Art for propaganda, or commercialism. Art is often utilized as a form of propaganda, and thus can be used to subtly influence popular conceptions or mood. In a similar way, art that tries to sell a product also influences mood and emotion. In both cases, the purpose of art here is to subtly manipulate the viewer into a particular emotional or psychological response toward a particular idea or object.^[29]
7. Art as a fitness indicator. It has been argued that the ability of the human brain by far exceeds what was needed for survival in the ancestral environment. One evolutionary psychology explanation for this is that the human brain and associated traits (such as artistic ability and creativity) are the human equivalent of the peacock's tail. The purpose of the male peacock's extravagant tail has been argued to be to attract females (see also Fisherian runaway and handicap principle). According to this theory superior execution of art was evolutionary important because it attracted mates.^[30]

The functions of art described above are not mutually exclusive, as many of them may overlap. For example, art for the purpose of entertainment may also seek to sell a product, i.e. the movie or video game.

Controversial art[link]

Théodore Géricault's Raft of the Medusa, circa 1820

Théodore Géricault's Raft of the Medusa (c. 1820), was a social commentary on a current event, unprecedented at the time. Édouard Manet's Le Déjeuner sur l'Herbe (1863), was considered scandalous not because of the nude woman, but because she is seated next to men fully dressed in the clothing of the time, rather than in robes of the antique world. John Singer Sargent's Madame Pierre Gautreau (Madam X) (1884), caused a huge uproar over the reddish pink used to color the woman's ear lobe, considered far too suggestive and supposedly ruining the high-society model's reputation.

In the twentieth century, Pablo Picasso's Guernica (1937) used arresting cubist techniques and stark monochromatic oils, to depict the harrowing consequences of a contemporary bombing of a small, ancient Basque town. Leon Golub's Interrogation III (1981), depicts a female nude, hooded detainee strapped to a chair, her legs open to reveal her sexual organs, surrounded by two tormentors dressed in everyday clothing. Andres Serrano's Piss Christ (1989) is a photograph of a crucifix, sacred to the Christian religion and representing Christ's sacrifice and final suffering, submerged in a glass of the artist's own urine. The resulting uproar led to comments in the United States Senate about public funding of the arts.

Art theories[link]

In the nineteenth century, artists were primarily concerned with ideas of truth and beauty. The aesthetic theorist John Ruskin, who championed what he saw as the naturalism of J. M. W. Turner, saw art's role as the communication by artifice of an essential truth that could only be found in nature.^[31]

The definition and evaluation of art has become especially problematic since the 20th century. Richard Wollheim distinguishes three approaches to assessing the aesthetic value of art: the Realist, whereby aesthetic quality is an absolute value independent of any human view; the Objectivist, whereby it is also an absolute value, but is dependent on general human experience; and the Relativist position, whereby it is not an absolute value, but depends on, and varies with, the human experience of different humans.^[32]

The arrival of Modernism in the late nineteenth century lead to a radical break in the conception of the function of art,^[33] and then again in the late twentieth century with the advent of postmodernism. Clement Greenberg's 1960 article "Modernist Painting" defines modern art as "the use of characteristic methods of a discipline to criticize the discipline itself".^[34] Greenberg originally applied this idea to the Abstract Expressionist movement and used it as a way to understand and justify flat (non-illusionistic) abstract painting:

Realistic, naturalistic art had dissembled the medium, using art to conceal art; modernism used art to call attention to art. The limitations that constitute the medium of painting—the flat surface, the shape of the support, the properties of the pigment—were treated by the Old Masters as negative factors that could be acknowledged only implicitly or indirectly. Under Modernism these same limitations came to be regarded as positive factors, and were acknowledged openly.^[34]

After Greenberg, several important art theorists emerged, such as Michael Fried, T. J. Clark, Rosalind Krauss, Linda Nochlin and Griselda Pollock among others. Though only originally intended as a way of understanding a specific set of artists, Greenberg's definition of modern art is important to many of the ideas of art within the various art movements of the 20th century and early 21st century.

Pop artists like Andy Warhol became both noteworthy and influential through work including and possibly critiquing popular culture, as well as the art world. Artists of the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s expanded this technique of self-criticism beyond high art to all cultural image-making, including fashion images, comics, billboards and pornography.

Classification disputes[link]

Disputes as to whether or not to classify something as a work of art are referred to as classificatory disputes about art.

Classificatory disputes in the 20th century have included cubist and impressionist paintings, Duchamp's Fountain, the movies, superlative imitations of banknotes, conceptual art, and video games.^[35]

Philosopher David Novitz has argued that disagreement about the definition of art are rarely the heart of the problem. Rather, "the passionate concerns and interests that humans vest in their social life" are "so much a part of all classificatory disputes about art" (Novitz, 1996). According to Novitz, classificatory disputes are more often disputes about societal values and where society is trying to go than they are about theory proper. For example, when the Daily Mail criticized Hirst's and Emin's work by arguing "For 1,000 years art has been one of our great civilising forces. Today, pickled sheep and soiled beds threaten to make barbarians of us all" they are not advancing a definition or theory about art, but questioning the value of Hirst's and Emin's work.^[36] In 1998, Arthur Danto, suggested a thought experiment showing that "the status of an artifact as work of art results from the ideas a culture applies to it, rather than its inherent physical or perceptible qualities. Cultural interpretation (an art theory of some kind) is therefore constitutive of an object's arthood."^[37][38]

Anti-art is a label for art that intentionally challenges the established parameters and values of art;^[39] it is term associated with Dadaism and attributed to Marcel Duchamp just before World War I,^[39] when he was making art from found objects.^[39] One of these, Fountain (1917), an ordinary urinal, has achieved considerable prominence and influence on art.^[39] Anti-art is a feature of work by Situationist International,^[40] the lo-fi Mail art movement, and the Young British Artists,^[39] though it is a form still rejected by the Stuckists,^[39] who describe themselves as anti-anti-art.^[41][42]