Conceptual Framework

The Conceptual Framework helps you to break down meaning held within artworks and is just another way to extract layers of meaning from an artwork. The Conceptual Framework specifically looks at Artsist, Artwork, World and Audience for the meaning they bring to the artwork. All art is somehow influenced by the time it was made, who it was made by, world current events and preconcieved ideas and values of the audience viewing the artwork and the conceptual framework simply structures these ideas in an easy to follow way. It is expected that the Conceptual Framework will be utilised by you throughout your artmaking and theory experiences in collaboration with the frames to facilitate deep understanding of the works you are both making and viewing.

Through looking at Artist - World - Audience - Artwork you are ‘framing’ the information and concepts you are drawing out of the artwork. 

Consider the main words in CONCEPTUAL and FRAMEWORK …

Below is the Stage 6 Syllabus expectations of how the Conceptual Framework is understood.

Board Of Studies (2003) Visual Arts Stage 6 Syllabus. p. 23 seen in full: http://www.boardofstudies.nsw.edu.au/syllabus_hsc/pdf_doc/visualarts_syl.doc

                                   

Students learn about the conceptual framework that provides a model for understanding the agencies in the artworld — the artist, artwork, world and audience. Students also learn about how this framework provides for the understanding of the intentional and functional relations between artists and their artworks, audiences and artists, audiences and artworks etc.

 

Through the conceptual framework, students learn about:

 

•      the role of the artist — the who, what, how, and why. The concept of the artist encompasses practitioners such as artists, craftspeople, designers and architects. The artist can be thought of as an individual or as a group, school, movement, etc.

 

•      the role and value of the audience as a body of critical consumers. The concept of the audience includes art critics and art historians as well as teachers, students, entrepreneurs, patrons and other members of the public. Audiences for works change over time and bring different meanings to artworks, artists and interpretations of the world.

 

•      artworks as real objects, as material, physical and virtual objects. The concept of artworks includes art, craft and design as two- and three-dimensional works (including architecture), and four-dimensional and time-based works. Artworks also exist as representations of ideas that reflect such things as personal responses, cultural views, symbolic interpretations and critical reinterpretations of other ideas.

 

•      how interests in the world are represented in art (eg art as a representation of experience, class, ideology, age, events of significance).

In the Preliminary and HSC courses students learn about how these agencies and the relations between them can be critically and historically evaluated and explained in the examples they work with. The selection of artists, works, aspects of the world and audiences is left to the discretion of teachers in the learning opportunities offered to students.

 

The conceptual framework also provides a useful model for students in artmaking. It assists them to develop their own intentions in what they make as artworks and as a body of work, how they may interpret the world and anticipate audience responses.

Understanding the Conceptual Framework is important for your written HSC and to be able to decode your own artmaking ideas.

To help you remember the term Conceptual Framework break down the words CONCEPTUAL and FRAMEWORK …

Use the internet to search for the dictionary meaning of Concept:

Use the internet to search for the dictionary meaning of Frame:

Through looking at Artist - World - Audience - Artwork we are ‘framing’ how we look at concepts related to a particular artwork.

Look at the artists linked on the right to gain an idea of how the CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK  and THE FRAMES can be used togeather to investigate an artwork in a sophisticated way.