Objective versus Subjective Art
• What is subjective art?
Art based on opinion, judgment, assumption,
beliefs; varies person to person.
• What is objective art?
Art that is observable: able to be seen, heard,
touched, smelled, tasted, factual
• What are the advantages of studying both?
Objective Art
Realist Artist Andrew Wyeth: Master Bedroom, watercolor
Andrew Wyeth, Curtain Call
Maria Sibylla Merian was a naturalist and scientific illustrator
who studied plants and insects and made
detailed paintings about them. Her detailed
observations and documentation of the
metamorphosis of the butterfly make her a
significant, albeit not well known,
contributor to entomology (the scientific
study of insects).
Nature Studies
A painting showing the metamorphosis of
Thysania agrippina produced in 1705.
Another version exists in which all but the
opened-winged butterfly is reversed.
Subjective Art
"Stuart Davis in Gloucester,” part of a collection of over 60 paintings and
works on paper that survey Stuart Davis’s work in the Gloucester, MA.
Glouster Landscape, Stuart Davis
The left side
suggests an
interior scene,
while the right side
evokes urban
architecture or a
factory
environment.
Bright red and blue
frame the heavy
black outlines.
Davis's blaring colors, geometric shapes, and bold lines helped capture
the quickening pulse of early-twentieth-century America. In the 1920s
and 1930s, when most of his contemporaries were still using nineteenthcentury techniques, Davis delved into abstraction, appropriating images
and rhythms from jazz bars, backstreets, and the industrial clutter of
cities.
Essential Questions:
How can you turn and uninteresting subject into an interesting
drawing?
What’s the difference between looking at something analytically
compared to emotionally?
In what ways does our point of view change our relationship
with an object?
How can observation be used as a tool?
Enduring Understanding:
Close observation can both
enhance our information and
expressive ideas.
Now we are going to be creating our own
subjective and objective dyptich. We will
complete the following:
1.
2.
3.
A blind contour drawing of a man
made tool or organic object.
Subjective: three drawings of the
same object in colored pencil first,
then enhancing one of the drawings
using expressive marks to show
movement (manmade) or location
(organic).
Objective: three drawings of the
same object in color pencil and
graphite pencil from different
viewpoints: frontal view, alternative
angle, and a zoomed in area.