Unit 5: Artistic Media
Artists find all sorts of ways to express themselves and use almost any resource that is available. Making extraordinary images and objects from various but somewhat ordinary materials is a mark of creativity. Using charcoal, paper, thread, paint, ink – and even found objects such as leaves – artists continue to search for ways to construct and deliver their message. In this unit, we look at artworks created from two- and three-dimensional media and artworks made using different types of cameras.
Completing this unit should take you approximately 4 hours.
Upon successful completion of this unit, you will be able to:
- identify and describe specific characteristics of the media that artists use;
- explain how the advance of technology affected art practices;
- explain the effect photography had on traditional artistic media;
- differentiate between two-dimensional and three-dimensional media;
- explain the technologies, aesthetics, and techniques that define photography as an artistic medium; and
- explain the technologies, aesthetics, and techniques that define time-based photographic imagery in video, film, performance, and installation.
5.1: Two-Dimensional Media
No painting or drawing is "purely" two-dimensional (2D) since all surfaces have a thickness and 2D planes are a geometric abstraction. However, in 2D or planar-surface-based art, the thickness of the medium is of no or very little importance. With 2D art, we only pay attention to the image rendered on the surface of the medium (paper, canvas, wall, etc.) in its height-by-width aspect ratio.
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Read this text about drawing, the simplest, most efficient, and oldest way to communicate visual ideas.
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Read this text about painting. Did you know that there are six major distinct painting mediums? Those who live in Western societies tend to think about painting when they first think about art.
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This article examines three basic techniques of printmaking: relief, intaglio, and planar.
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Read this article to understand the development of collage, a relatively new approach to creating 2D media.
- Make forum posts: 1
Marshall McLuhan's quote that "the medium is the message" helps us understand the frontiers and limits of the tools we use. Artistic media are not only extensions of our creativity; they are avenues that help us define changes in scale. For example, the introduction of painting extended what drawing can do by leaps and bounds.
Search for one example of each two-dimensional medium we have covered: drawing, painting, printmaking, and collage. Write a short summary of how the nature of each medium dictates the expression of the artist using it. In other words, what makes each medium unique, and how does it limit or expand what the artist is able to do with it?
Click on Discussion Topic 6 to post your thoughts. After posting your response, you can leave a reply to the posts of your classmates as well.
5.2: The Camera
Photography is a relatively-new medium that originated in the 19th century. It is easy to view and understand the changes it wrought. For example, photography made portraiture, which had been very expensive to produce, accessible to the larger population. Many photographic portraits emulated painting styles. Photography freed painters by allowing them to do more with paint than simply copy reality. It opened up new avenues toward abstraction and non-objective art.
- Make forum posts: 1
Photography changed and challenged the notion that art is a precious object – we can reproduce photographs by the thousands and millions. We began to regard art as something that is commonplace rather than a unique work. Further investigations into photographic technologies, such as attempts to reproduce illusions of movement, led to new photo-based media such as film and video.
Visual information has been key to making social networking so popular. From digital cameras to mobile phones, taking pictures has become an everyday experience for most of us.
- How often do you take pictures?
- What device do you usually use to take them?
- How much attention do you devote to composition, lighting, or arrangement in your pictures?
- How do you use the images?
- How do you think you can improve your photos?
Click on Discussion Topic 7 to post your thoughts. After posting your response, you can leave a reply to the posts of your classmates as well.
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Read this text, which describes the historical development of the camera.
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Read this article to learn how photography changed how artists use two-dimensional media.
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Photographers must consider form and content just as much as artists in other mediums. Read this text to learn more.
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This section discusses the difficulties inherent in photography and details of the processes that occur in the darkroom.
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Read this text to explore how photography can recreate images as the human eye sees them. This human element is an enduring central theme in photography.
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Read this text which explains how color film changed the aesthetics of photography, which had been primarily based on black and white (greyscale) before 1935.
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Because it enables artists to replicate and reproduce many copies of reality, photography lends itself to reporting on human events via photojournalism. Read this text to learn more.
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Camera technology has changed at a rapid pace. Barely three generations after Edwin Land invented the instant camera in 1947, smartphone companies began putting cameras (sometimes more than one!) in their phones. Read this text to learn more about these technological developments.
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Read this article, which introduces the time-based representations film and video brought to art and the impact computers and digital technology have had on the visual arts through software and interactivity.
- Make forum posts: 1
The film industry has become a major part of our economy. Like other artistic mediums, it reflects and anticipates the culture surrounding it, although many would argue Hollywood has a culture all its own. Now, independent films (those made outside of the big Hollywood studios) have a larger effect on audiences because they can examine themes and ideas beyond what the big studios decide to finance.
- How often do you see films?
- Do you view films in a theater or on other digital media?
- What kind of films do you like? Do you prefer human interest stories, action films, romances, fantasy, or animation?
- What are your thoughts on film's role to entertain and inform?
- What is your favorite film? Why?
Click on Discussion Topic 8 to post your thoughts. After posting your response, you can leave a reply to the posts of your classmates as well.
5.3: Three-Dimensional Media
Three-dimensional art adds depth to height and width. For example, artists use depth to cut a stone figure against its background material, create a space for performance art, or place objects in a room as in installation art. Three-dimensional art activates all three dimensions of physical space in a way that is different from two-dimensional art.
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Read this overview of three-dimensional (3D) art, which includes much more than sculpture.
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Read this section on the main types of sculptural media. Make sure you can identify them by name.
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This article details the major methods of creating three-dimensional art: carving, casting, modeling, and construction (sometimes called assemblage).
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Read this text, which explains that installation art and performance art are varieties of three-dimensional art.
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Decorative art is the final kind of three-dimensional art we examine. As you read this text, consider how decorative art is different from other kinds of two- and three-dimensional art we have discussed so far in this course.
- Make forum posts: 1
For thousands of years, sculpture has (literally) been the bedrock of three-dimensional art. Carved from stone or wood, or cast in bronze, so often figurative and, from a Western cultural perspective, in a realistic style.
The advent of modern art in the first half of the twentieth century has radically changed the formal characteristics of sculpture and, in some cases, the content. View these three sculptures and comment on the issues of form and content in each one.
- Egyptian Sculpture
- Picasso's Woman in the Garden
- Louise Bourgeois' Cell: Eyes and Mirrors
Click on Discussion Topic 9 to post your thoughts. After posting your response, you can leave a reply to the posts of your classmates as well.
Unit 5 Assessment
- Receive a grade
Take this assessment to see how well you understood this unit.
- This assessment does not count towards your grade. It is just for practice!
- You will see the correct answers when you submit your answers. Use this to help you study for the final exam!
- You can take this assessment as many times as you want, whenever you want.