Reading Art- Understanding Iconography

Reading Art-Understanding Iconography
M. Agustina Barton
ART 101
May 6, 2011
University of Phoenix

Reading Art-Understanding Iconography
Artists view the same world from a different perspective. Although everybody has the potential to be creative, not all people have the potential to develop creativeness. Because artists see the world differently, they introduce us to new ways to see our world.
The four roles of the artists are the following:
  1. Help us see the world in innovative ways.
  2. Artists create record in their work their time and place.
  3. Artists make useful objects more enjoyable and they impregnate beauty and a new meaning to the object.
  4. They give form to the irrelevant ideas and emotional state.

An example of the first role of the artist is the Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s work called The Gates. This art work consisted in wrapping the Central Park in New York. According to Sayre (1995-2011) “saffron-colored fabric panels were dropped from the top of 7,503 saffron-painted steel gates, each 16 feet tall, to billow in the wind about 7 feet above the ground. The gates were positioned 12 feet apart.” (Pearson 1995-2011, p.1). The Gates was designed to transform the view The New Yorkers had of the Central Park.
Another art example of the second role of the artists is John Ahearn and Rigoberto Torres’s sculpture called Pat. Torres and Ahearn were lived in South Bronx in New York City. Torres and Ahearn made sculptures out of the South Bronx residents and Pat was one of them.   Rigoberto and John wanted to capture the spirit of the South Bronx and the members of this community.
The Gates holds a symbolic significance. According to Sayre The Gates, ” the work represented the rejuvenation of the city after the tragedy of 9/11, a festive   celebration of life. This art work brings positives to the New York after the terrorist attacks.
When an artist creates art, he or she shows through his or her work of art, feelings and...