CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK

Agencies of the Artworld

The Conceptual Framework is a system used by art students to highlight and explain all the information and ideas that consist within and about an artwork. The Conceptual Framework consists of four agencies; artist, artwork, world and audience.

Each of these agencies describe and integral aspect of an artwork. You use all of these agents when interpreting and explain art. You should also attempt to use the Conceptual Framework when shaping and generating your own art making practice.

In art criticism and art history, the conceptual framework provides a way to evaluate and explain the significance of particular artists, artworks, audience responses and representations of the world at a certain time and over time. Changes to the interpretation of these relationships are conditional to a particular time and place and to the point of view or frame that is applied to such interpretations.

The conceptual framework observes the relationships between the ARTWORK and the ARTIST, WORLD, AUDIENCE.

ARTIST

Artist - what is the role of the artist?

The artist has a functional relationship to each of the agencies in the conceptual framework generated by the frames. The function of the artist is not a fixed category and can be understood as roles that are assigned or assumed within the field at different times and places and in relation to the different value systems that are used to interpret their role. The intentions and characteristics artists develop within these complex networks of relationships contribute to practice.

You want to ask yourself 4 main questions:

Who is the artist? (include relevant biographical information, i.e. if you were talking about Ai Weiwei, you would look at his Chinese background as a major aspect of his artwork)
What does the artist do? (i.e. what does the artist do with their work, and what do they perceive the role of an artist is)
How does the artist produce artworks? (refer to the practice framework questions when analysis how they produce their work)
Why do they do what they do? (i.e. look at personal beliefs, etc.)

The agency of the artist includes:

a person making artworks individually, collaboratively as a group, school, movement or enlisting others to produce their work
practitioners such as artists, craftspeople, designers, architects, filmmakers, performance artists, digital and multimodal practitioners.

ARTWORK

Artwork

Artworks are intentionally conceived and made by artists working individually or collaboratively. Artworks have properties and forms that are material, virtual, physical and symbolic that exists in combinations of materials, technical skills, concepts and subjects.

Artworks exist as a representation of ideas that reflect such things as personal responses, cultural views, symbolic interpretations and critical reinterpretations of other ideas. Artworks are representations of meanings when viewed by audiences. The form of production or reproduction affects how audiences view and infer meaning about the work.

Artworks can be considered:

in physical, material, virtual and ephemeral forms
as 2D, 3D, 4D and time-based works
as art, craft, and design as two- and three-dimensional works (including architecture), four-dimensional and time-based works, as well as multimodal and interactive media, temporal, ephemeral and relational forms, synthetic realities and other new and emergent technologies and forms.

A lot of conceptual framework questions look at the relationship between the artwork and another aspect of the conceptual framework. The artwork is often a representation of ideas that reflect upon: personal responses/experiences, cultural views, symbolic interpretations and critical reinterpretations of other ideas (post-modernism)

Also look at the medium of of artwork, and see if there is any significance of the medium (or media) the artist has used in an attempt to relay these ideas. For example, the use of relic Chinese vases, as a 3D sculpture, in Ai Weiwei’s ‘Coca Cola’ is a potent symbol of traditional and communist Chinese values. Weiwei chooses to vandalise these vases with the blatant brandishing of ‘Coca Cola’ using industrial paint. Coca Cola's logo is often associated with capitalist discourse, an economic and societal construct which is quite dissident from the archetypal Chinese dogma, and presents itself as a rebuttal against the corrupted nature of communist China Weiwei is so vehemently against.

WORLD

World

This aspect of the conceptual framework looks at the artwork being an embodiment of its world - i.e., the social/economic/political context the artwork was produced in. For example, a large majority of Renaissance artworks are a reflection of the aristocratic lifestyles of the rich and gives audiences insight into how the noble enjoyed (or maybe not enjoyed) a life of wealth and prosperity.

The agency of the world functions as a source of interests, ideas, conditions and events represented by artists in artworks. The agency of the world designates the systematic ideas of the time, existing theoretical commitments and what is considered plausible and credible in the field of visual arts, representations of experience, class, ideology, age and events of significance.

As such, the world informs the significance of artistic choice and action as well as audience inference of meaning. Art criticism and art history provide further insights and elaborations of the world. Audiences infer meanings through their interactions with artworks in relation to their thoughts, beliefs and understanding of the world and of art.

Artists’ responses to the world may shape the dynamics of practice as a vigorous and changing entity. Artists can also investigate, interpret and represent the world as a material, conceptual and social experience as well as a place of imaginings, intuition and the personal as ideas for representation.

AUDIENCE

Audience

Audiences play an active role in interpreting and ascribing meanings for artworks and art practices. The audience function is ongoing and changeable, intrinsic to the resolution of meaning and the different interpretations of artworks as they occur in and inhabit different contexts, times and places.

The concept of the audience includes art critics and art historians, teachers, students, entrepreneurs, patrons, curators, dealers, members of the public, auction houses, writers and theorists. Audiences are produced through the display of, and interaction with, artworks.

Audiences for works change over time and bring different intentions, beliefs and values to artworks, artists and interpretations of the world. They inhabit different histories, worlds, identities and beliefs. Art criticism and art history are aligned with the audience function. In their critical and historical accounts about the visual arts, students engage with the agencies in the conceptual framework and their relationships with each other.

APPLYING THE CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK

Patricia Piccinini

Artist

Patricia Piccinini is an Australian artist who works across arrange of mediums such as drawing, photography, sculpture and digital media.

Patricia Piccinini intention in the artwork ‘The Young Family’ is to express the expectation we have of growing human organs in other species, especially pigs. Piccinini is interested in

the boundaries between humans, other animals and biologically engineered species; between the real, the imagined and the scientifically possible.

Patricia Piccinini was influenced by the current research into biological engineering and cloning that is being done by scientists. Her artworks also contain a dreamlike quality and have ties with surrealism. The creature in ‘The Young Family’ has certain similarities to the dead creature in Salvador Dali’s ‘The persistence of memory’.

The artist created the sculpture using a combination of materials such as silicone, fibreglass and human hair.

Artwork

The artwork is titled “The Young Family’ or ‘We are Family’, it was made in 2003 for the Venice Biennale.

‘The Young Family’ is a sculptor made out of a combination of materials such as silicone, fibreglass and human hair.

‘The Young Family’ allures people in because of it very realistic appearance, however when drawn closer the audience notices it a dream-like, obscure creature that has been imagined by the artist and begin to have feelings of disgust or pity towards the creature.

The human like realness of the skin along with the pig like representation of the teats and ears symbolises the idea scientist have on growing human organs in other species such as pigs. Piccinini is starting to question the bioethics we have when it comes to science and technology. Should we do something just because we are capable of doing it? The babies could be a sign of the characteristic and similarities we as humans have with the creature, as we both nurture our offspring. This can create a level of empathy with the audience.

Audience

The artists intentions of questioning the boundaries of biological engineering and cloning is conveyed by the very realistic appearance of the creature and begins to get the audience to question a strange new world of artificial or mutant beings derived from experimental biotechnology

Piccinini is attempting to get everybody to question or think about the consequences of biological engineering. An audience of objective observers would relate to this work very differently to relatives of family that have diseases in which biotechnology could save them.

The audience, at first glance, could be disturbed by the creature due to its obscure appearance however on closer inspection when looking at all the similarities the creature has with humans and how life like it appears an audience could start to feel pity or empathy.

‘The Young Family’ was first exhibited in the Australian Pavilion in the Venice Biennale in 2003 and is often exhibited in art galleries. The work is open to the general public however the main audience would mainly be people interested in art and have some level of art knowledge.

World

Piccinini was influenced by the world of science and biotechnologies. She was inspired by the idea of the ‘artificial’ world merging with reality and her own personal fantasy of what the future will become if we continue to progress in biological engineering.

‘The Young Family’ portrays Piccinini’s own fantasy world of a type of hybrid that crosses a human with the genetics of a different species. Her work exhibits a dream-like quality and what Piccinini’s imagination believes to be the future of the world of science.

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