Subjective and Objective Perspectives
This page will help you differentiate between subjective and objective ways of looking at art. When you think about this difference, focus on how to distinguish aspects related to the medium of the artwork itself, compared to your own reactions and experience of it.
The first level in approaching art is learning to look at it. During future discussions, we will spend more time in pure observation than
you probably have done before. Generally, we tend to look at art in
terms of "liking" it first and "looking"
at it later. From this perspective, the subjective (that is,
the knowledge that resides in the emotions and thoughts of the viewer)
almost completely dominates our way of looking at art.
In the arts, it is especially important to begin developing an
informed or objective opinion rather than just an instinctual reaction.
An objective view is one that focuses on the object's physical
characteristics as the main source of information.
This does not mean that you will remove or invalidate your
subjective feelings about a work; in fact, you will find that the more
informed you become, the more artwork will affect you
emotionally and intellectually. It does mean
that you will learn alternative ways to approach art, ways that
allow you to find clues to meaning and to understand how art reflects
and affects our lives.
It is complex, but the satisfaction of looking at art comes from exploring the work to find meaning, not shying away because we may not initially understand it.
Saylor Academy Knowledge Check
Source: Christopher Gildow, http://opencourselibrary.org/art-100-art-appreciation/
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.