Amsterdam, Netherlands

Arts and Culture: Art Studies

Master's
Language: EnglishStudies in English
Subject area: arts
Time study: 2 years
University website: www.uva.nl/en
Art
Art is a diverse range of human activities in creating visual, auditory or performing artifacts (artworks), expressing the author's imaginative or technical skill, intended to be appreciated for their beauty or emotional power. In their most general form these activities include the production of works of art, the criticism of art, the study of the history of art, and the aesthetic dissemination of art.
Culture
Culture () is the social behavior and norms found in human societies. Culture is considered a central concept in anthropology, encompassing the range of phenomena that are transmitted through social learning in human societies. Some aspects of human behavior, social practices such as culture, expressive forms such as art, music, dance, ritual, religion, and technologies such as tool usage, cooking, shelter, and clothing are said to be cultural universals, found in all human societies. The concept of material culture covers the physical expressions of culture, such as technology, architecture and art, whereas the immaterial aspects of culture such as principles of social organization (including practices of political organization and social institutions), mythology, philosophy, literature (both written and oral), and science comprise the intangible cultural heritage of a society.
Art
The function of the modern artist was not to convey beauty, but to convey new truths.
Eric Kandel, The Age of Insight (2012)
Art
The temple of art is built of words. Painting and sculpture and music are but the blazon of its windows, borrowing all their significance from the light, and suggestive only of the temple's uses.
Josiah Gilbert Holland, Plain Talks on Familiar Subjects, Art and Life. In Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 43-45.
Art
Usually the work of several generations is needed to develop that formal system which later is called the style of the art, from its simple beginning to the wealth of elaborate forms... The interest of the artist is concentrated on this crystallization, where the material... takes, through his action, the various forms that are initiated by the first formal concepts of this style. After completion the interest must fade again, because... "interest" means... to be with... to take part in a process of life... [H]ow far the formal rules of style represent that reality of life which is meant by the art cannot be decided from the formal rules.
Werner Heisenberg, Physics and Philosophy: The Revolution in Modern Science (1958)
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