AD 270 Concepts and Culture

Course Description: This course engages in the direct experiential understanding and development of ideas and intentions within art and design. The emphasis is on understanding the relationship of art/design and its maker to culture at-large as a method of contextualizing a student’s current and future work. The comparative study of cultural products, visual representation, and visual conditioning, both historically and in contemporary society, will be discussed.

• Understand the relationships of the artist and designer to the larger culture
• Understand the impact of media, processes, visual choices, and context on an artwork’s meaning
• Explore the roles of art and design in society: representation, expression and psychology, spirituality, social influence (commercialism, commodity, etc.), collaboration/community building, functionalism, and formalism.
• Implementation of artistic research: history, influence, and perceiving relationships; including its effect on the student’s own practice
• Ongoing cultivation of the ability to be self-critical

• Use visual media to construct meaning
• Demonstrate the ability to analyze and present work (written and verbal forms)
• Explore the functions of art and design and understand how the functions of art and design have changed in contemporary society: to decorate, to record, to heal, to play, to influence, to use, to describe or inform, to entertain, to revere (ritual), to transform
• Exposure to artists and designers as a synthesis of technical, visual, conceptual, historical, and theoretical bases
• Participate in group-critique and self-critique
• Preliminary preparations for the statement of intent in AD303: Individual Art Review

• Understand the relationships of the artist and designer to the larger culture
• Understand the impact of media, processes, visual choices, and context on an artwork’s meaning
• Understand the value of artistic research: history, influence, and perceiving relationships; including its application to the student’s own practice
• Utilize visual media to construct meaning, while reinforcing shared visual vocabulary and technical approaches within art & design
• Demonstrate in writing the ability to describe, evaluate, and interpret artwork in relation to its concepts, influences, visual components and technical methodologies. (Preliminary preparations for the statement of intent in AD303: Individual Art review)