Artwork

Artwork
Art is an ever moving, changing process that all artists collectively go through. The artwork the artist creates and the use of plastic elements are a means to an end for the process of art. Tacked onto this is the lasting impression of the artwork, an expression of the artist’s vision that serves as a catalyst of the skill once expressed and the biological immortality once followed through. For the sake of this span of writings, the primary focus will be on the interpretations of visual art.
In the previous section, the definition of artwork is described as containing many diverse components. As well as the elements that define good and bad art is dependent subjective for each spectator of the work. What one person may think is vulgar and primitive, another may see as innovative and genius. For this reason, it is difficult find overlap for a collective audience of different tastes and influences what good artwork means.
Sensuality is one way that overlap is seen, an element that doesn’t deal with artwork exclusively but rather the viewer’s perception of artwork. For instance, in painting and sculpting, the viewer’s senses are both stimulated through the artwork’s tactile and illusionary qualities.
Tactility was first used to describe artwork by Bernhard Berenson, an art historian who’s work focused mainly on work from the early Renaissance Period. Tactility is a property of a material that allows it to be manipulated but still maintain it’s shape. Tactility in observing an artwork means sensuality through physicality and feeling. A prime example is one of Berenson’s artists of intrigue, Giotto. One way the artist Giotto applied the use of tactility was by implying the weight of his figures by using large shapes and bright, solid colors that demanded attention. The artist also painted on a large scale with heavy looking forms and dramatic lines to imply the feeling of weight. Although Giotto’s artistic style is not as naturalistic as others, the feeling of weight is still implied successfully through use of plastic elements.
Some viewers enjoy the feeling of tactility they get from Giotto’s work while others dismiss it for the illusionary or visual elements of more naturalistic artworks. Where tactile work focuses on using plastic elements as implication for sensation, illusionary artwork relies primarily on the viewer’s sight of the subject matter to get the artwork’s message across. While Giotto’s work may not be this person’s piece of pie, naturalistic works by those of Michelangelo or Rafael may get their attention.
When trying to imply impressions of the visual element such as the previous example, weight, the illusionary artist must assume that the viewer already knows how much an object weighs compared to another object- for example, a rock weighing more than a feather –and paints the subject as it is seen.
However different the outcomes of these artworks are, artist who make both illusionary and tactile art are linked by common ground. This common ground is use of the plastic elements in artwork. Just as a musician uses notes to make up a rhythm, a painter uses different shapes and forms to make a painting. As volume in music comes forward and recedes, so does color and line in painting imply perspective. The application of these elements implies both movement, and manages give a story or description about ideas in the artist’s mind.
Despite these examples of overlap, there is still too much variability to what artwork is to different kinds of people. Although it may not be universally agreeable, for the arguments of these writings a working definition of artwork will be as follows:

artwork /ärtˌwərk/

(noun)
1. a highly subjective term used to describe the end result of art
2. The manipulation of plastic elements that describes an idea in the artist’s mind