What you need to know about me is that I was in the Beloved Professor Joel Elgin’s wonderful Art Appreciation class learning to be suave.  Other than simply becoming a cooler person, I’ve learned about the different types of art, how to analyze them, and how they’re made.  I’ve also learned that there’s no such word as color.  Hues are fabulous, but colors simply don’t exist.  Pink and purple are also just figments of our imagination, that’s good to know.  That means the shirt that my little brother always wears is really just low-value red.  That sounds so much better, don't you think?

So here's the deal: there are two main functions of art, the personal and the social.  One personal function of art is psychological expression which depicts psychological states and emotions.  Another is love, sex, and relationships.  Yup, just what is sounds like: lots and lots of naked people.  Okay, so not always, but often.  Death & morbidity is also a personal function focusing on.... yeah.  Moving on, we have spiritual concern which is broken into two categories: religious and spiritual.  Religious art depicts historical events from world religions.  Spiritual art is a search for the artist's universal purpose or niche, if you will.  Finally, we have aesthetic expression.  What's beautiful?  Well, you'll find out if you look at works of art in this category.  These works can have a basis in nature (abstraction) or not (non-objective).

Social art can focus on political and ideological expression or social description or be satirical.  The former tries to affect social change.  Works of social description depict everyday activities.  Finally, satire pokes fun at society and politics, sometimes quite aggresively.

I'll end this page with a wonderful quote.  "Every person always finds in each work of art only that for which his soul has prepared him.  Therein lies the strengh and inexhaustable quality in a work of art." -Alexj Jawlensky

Darn tootin'