Second Level of Meaning: Subject
We can subdivide what we call content into categories we call subjects. Over time, we say certain artworks show evidence of specific genres (typical subjects of art), such as landscapes, portraiture, or street photography. The popular genres of film are sci-fi, romantic comedy, and mystery. Subjects organize the traditions that express how we create certain artistic pieces and influence our expectations of art.
Generally, these categories of ideas (sometimes called subjects) can also be called a genre of art; that is, a fairly loose category of images that share the same content. Here is a brief list of the type of genres that
you may see in a work:
- Landscape
- Self-portrait
- Still life
- Portrait
- Abstraction: work whose elements and principles are manipulated to alter the subject in some way.
- Allegory: representing a mythological scene or story
- Daily life: sometimes also called genre painting
- Decoration: work created to embellish surroundings
- Fantasy: work created to invent new visual worlds
- Historical: actual representation of a historic event
- Nude: male nude and female nude are separate categories
- Political: two forms: propaganda and criticism
- Power: work created to connect to specific spiritual strength
- Religious: two forms: religious representation or religious action
- Social: work created to support a specific social cause
What you will discover when you think about some of these subjects is
that you may already have a vision of how this subject should appear.
For example: visualize a portrait or self-portrait. You can see the
head, probably from the shoulders up, with
a little background painted fairly accurately. This is moderately
true, though some works may surprise you. Artists often reinvent how a
subject is portrayed. Some works of art can be part of a certain genre
by using a metaphor: one image that stands
for another.
A good example is this Quilt of Gees Bend by Missouri Pettway from Gees Bend, Alabama. Made of strips of old work clothes, corduroy, and cotton sacking material, it becomes a portrait of the artist's husband. Missouri's daughter Arlonzia describes the quilt: "It was when Daddy died. I was about 17, 18. He stayed sick for about eight months and passed on. Mama say, 'I going to take his work clothes, shape them into a quilt to remember him, and cover up under it for love.'"
Contemporary artists often reinterpret artworks from the past. This can change the context
of the work (the historical or cultural background in which the
original work was created), but the content remains the same. Dorothea
Lange's
Migrant Mother, Nipomo Valley from 1936, uses the subject
matter of a mother and her children to symbolize the hardships faced
during the Great Depression. The woman's face speaks of worry and
desperation about how to provide for her
children and herself. Comparatively, San Francisco photographer Jim
Thirtyacre's image Working Mother from 2009 reflects this sentiment in the context of the first major economic crisis of the 21st century.
Dorothea Lange, Migrant Mother, 1936. Photograph. Farm Security Administration collection, U.S. Library of Congress
It is important to note that many cultures do not use particular
genres – portraiture, for example, in their art. For some cultures, the
representation of an actual human face is dangerous and can call up
spirits who will want to live in the image: so
their masks,
while still face-like, are extremely stylized. Traditional Islamic
images are forbidden to depict figures and other material objects. In
their place,
artists use the genre of decoration.
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.