Artspeak: A Strategy Towards Visual Literacy in Art
Edition: 2
Copyright: 2025
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The ARTSPEAK curriculum deeply examines foundational aesthetic theories, tracing their evolution across diverse cultures and eras. Students culminate the coursework by applying these principles through a hands-on studio project, taking a comprehensive approach to understanding and expressing artistic ideas. Additionally, this course includes carefully crafted multiple-choice questions that reinforce the development of culturally contextualized, historically informed, and evidence-based art analysis and interpretation skills to aid in both the comprehension and creation of art.
Introduction: Aesthetics: What is Art?
Part One: Art and Immortality
Chapter One: Prehistoric Art: Who Are We?
Death
Fertility
Stonehenge: Death and Fertility
Chapter Two: Heaven and Earth
A New Worldview
Meeting Places
Power and Religion
Alchemy
Bosch
Part Two: Art and Renaissances
Chapter Three: Classicism: The Western Lens
War
Beauty as Civic Ethic
Craftsmanship as Competition
The Arcadian State of America
Chapter Four: Cultural Convergences
Urbanization
Globalization
Colonization
Part Three: Art to Present
Chapter Five: Prestige: Art as Commodity in the Modern Age
The Impact of the Industrial Revolution
The Impact of Photography
The Impact of Science
The Impact of Art Institutions
Chapter Six: The Unfolding Story
Modernism to Postmodernism
Social Art
Civic Art
Wabi Sabi
Eco-Art
Emerging Trends
Studio Project
Andrea Ciaston lived in New York City for ten years, completing her art education. She earned her BFA from Pratt Institute in Drawing and an MFA in Painting from Hunter College, part of the City University of New York. She then earned her Doctorate in Studio Practice from New York University. In the 1990’s she moved to the Pacific Northwest and lived in wilderness areas near Mt. Shasta, California and Mt. Ashland, Oregon for over a decade. She has taught studio art and art history at colleges and universities both on the east and west coasts. She is the recipient of the Faculty Recognition Award at Lane Community College in 2013 and the John and Suanne Roueche/League of Innovation Award for Excellence in Teaching and Leadership in Community Colleges in 2015. She currently lives, teaches, and continues her studio practice in Eugene, Oregon.
Artspeak is a refreshing introduction into the reading and understandings of the visual arts, in that, as stated in its introductory sentence, "Art tells the story of those who make it." A visual strategy of Artspeak takes the reader from the art work back to the artist or artists who created it. It is there that the cultural, spiritual, economic or scientific influences are fleshed out all depending on which applies to its creation and its particular milieu. The text applies this method to a wide range of samples from the earthworks of Stonehenge and the Great Pyramids to stunning works of James Turrel's architecturally formed "Skyscape". Artspeak touches down on a wide range of the visual arts on a global scale from the political world of ancient Greece and its molding of an ideal form to the black and white silhouetted shapes of a Kara Walker's exposure of the historical and contemporary political reality in America for a person of color. There is a richness to Artspeak's approach to understanding a work of art, an insightful visual strategy applied.
Robert DeVine
Artist and Art Studio Professor
New Second Edition Now Available!
The ARTSPEAK curriculum deeply examines foundational aesthetic theories, tracing their evolution across diverse cultures and eras. Students culminate the coursework by applying these principles through a hands-on studio project, taking a comprehensive approach to understanding and expressing artistic ideas. Additionally, this course includes carefully crafted multiple-choice questions that reinforce the development of culturally contextualized, historically informed, and evidence-based art analysis and interpretation skills to aid in both the comprehension and creation of art.
Introduction: Aesthetics: What is Art?
Part One: Art and Immortality
Chapter One: Prehistoric Art: Who Are We?
Death
Fertility
Stonehenge: Death and Fertility
Chapter Two: Heaven and Earth
A New Worldview
Meeting Places
Power and Religion
Alchemy
Bosch
Part Two: Art and Renaissances
Chapter Three: Classicism: The Western Lens
War
Beauty as Civic Ethic
Craftsmanship as Competition
The Arcadian State of America
Chapter Four: Cultural Convergences
Urbanization
Globalization
Colonization
Part Three: Art to Present
Chapter Five: Prestige: Art as Commodity in the Modern Age
The Impact of the Industrial Revolution
The Impact of Photography
The Impact of Science
The Impact of Art Institutions
Chapter Six: The Unfolding Story
Modernism to Postmodernism
Social Art
Civic Art
Wabi Sabi
Eco-Art
Emerging Trends
Studio Project
Andrea Ciaston lived in New York City for ten years, completing her art education. She earned her BFA from Pratt Institute in Drawing and an MFA in Painting from Hunter College, part of the City University of New York. She then earned her Doctorate in Studio Practice from New York University. In the 1990’s she moved to the Pacific Northwest and lived in wilderness areas near Mt. Shasta, California and Mt. Ashland, Oregon for over a decade. She has taught studio art and art history at colleges and universities both on the east and west coasts. She is the recipient of the Faculty Recognition Award at Lane Community College in 2013 and the John and Suanne Roueche/League of Innovation Award for Excellence in Teaching and Leadership in Community Colleges in 2015. She currently lives, teaches, and continues her studio practice in Eugene, Oregon.
Artspeak is a refreshing introduction into the reading and understandings of the visual arts, in that, as stated in its introductory sentence, "Art tells the story of those who make it." A visual strategy of Artspeak takes the reader from the art work back to the artist or artists who created it. It is there that the cultural, spiritual, economic or scientific influences are fleshed out all depending on which applies to its creation and its particular milieu. The text applies this method to a wide range of samples from the earthworks of Stonehenge and the Great Pyramids to stunning works of James Turrel's architecturally formed "Skyscape". Artspeak touches down on a wide range of the visual arts on a global scale from the political world of ancient Greece and its molding of an ideal form to the black and white silhouetted shapes of a Kara Walker's exposure of the historical and contemporary political reality in America for a person of color. There is a richness to Artspeak's approach to understanding a work of art, an insightful visual strategy applied.
Robert DeVine
Artist and Art Studio Professor