ART APPRECIATION

COLLEGE DEPARTMENT
S.Y: 2024-2025
 Art Appreciation
Course Tile : Art Appreciation
No. of Units : 3 units

Course Description:
Art Appreciation is a unit course that develops student’s ability to appreciate,
analyze, and critique works of art. Through interdisciplinary and multimodal
approaches, this course equips students with a broad knowledge of the
practical, historical, philosophical, and social relevance of the arts in order to
hone students’ ability to articulate their understanding of the arts. The course
also develops students’ competency in researching and curating art as well as
conceptualizing, mounting, and evaluating art productions. The course aims to
develop students’ genuine appreciation for Philippine arts by providing them
opportunities to explore diversity and richness and their rootedness in Filipino
culture.
Introduction
The Meaning of the Humanities
From time immemorial man has puzzled over the meaning of his
existence. “What am I? Why am I what I am? Why am I in this world?
Where do I go from here?” These are some of the questions he has sought
answers to go in an effort to “make sense” out of life’s apparent confusion.
Through the ages, many attempts have been made to answer these
questions, and records of these attempts can be found in the writings of
great thinkers as well as in the arts. Yet even now it seems that man has not
yet found the definitive answer to what he really is. The meaning of his
existence has become all the more puzzling today when his traditional
functions are being taken over by machines.
 We learn what it is to be human by studying humanity. But to do
this we obviously cannot depend on direct contact with fellow human
beings. Our contacts within our short lifetime will naturally be confined to
a limited set of people, places, and events. Thus, we have to depend heavily
on vicarious experience, and we reach out to people of different cultures in
different times and places through whatever means would bring us nearer to
them. This encounter is made possible for us in the humanities.
What, then, are the humanities?
Broadly speaking, they are records of man’s quest for answers to the
fundamental questions he asks about himself and about life. The content of
the humanities is anything that is inherently human-man’s experiences, his
values, his sentiments, his ideals, his goals. The humanities are thus
expressions of man’s feelings and thoughts.
 The term “humanities” was first applied to the writings of ancient
Latin authors which were read not only for their clarity of language and
forceful literacy style but also, and more especially for their moral teaching.
During the Medieval Age, the humanities dealt with the metaphysics of
the religious philosopher. The goal was the cultivation of the spiritual life
and the preparation for the hereafter.
During the Renaissance, the word came to refer to the set of disciplines
taught in the universities, which included grammar, rhetoric, history,
literature, music, philosophy, and theology- a body of knowledge aimed to
make man” human, cultured, and refined.” This developed from the
concept which recognized man’s essential worth and capacity for
self-advancement in this world.
 In our century, the humanities serve to provide the student with
certain skills and values through the arts. Instruction places his area of
specialization within the broader perspective of the human condition and
ideal as imaginatively rendered in painting, sculpture, architecture,
photography, dance, drama, and cinema as well as in the traditional
components of the humanities.
The humanities thus provide more than just an appreciation of what is
“the true. The good, and the beautiful,” concepts that vary from age to age,
from the country. They are aimed to shape the student’s subjective energies
(his feelings, attitudes, and aspirations) in accordance with a particular
view of the social world in which he dreams, acts, and fulfils himself. The
view about man and his world changes and so too the content and direction
of the humanities; but in all cases, their principal task remains the same,
which is to make man conscious and critical of, and sensitive and
responsive to the norms and hopes of his society.
The Humanities and the Sciences
The humanities are distinct from the sciences, which are studies
dealing with the external world of man, as well as with the facets of man’s
being that can be subjected to observation, measurement, and
experimentation. The sciences enable man to understand and control nature
and to harness its energy to make his life more comfortable and convenient.
The humanities, on the other hand, deal with man’s internal world- with
his personality and experiences, matters that cannot be exactly measured,
classified, or controlled. For this reason, the study of the humanities cannot
be as precise nor as well-structured and uniform as the study of, say
biology or physics. The humanities’ approach is subjective; it makes much
use of perception, feeling, intuition, and insight.
 There is too, a difference between the humanities and the social
sciences. While both are concerned with man, the focus of the humanities is
on man as an individual. In the social sciences, the main interest is on types
and groups of human beings, and on the institutions and processes of
society.
Are the humanities necessary? Yes, as much as the sciences are. Man
needs an image of himself, an understanding of his nature. Through words,
tones, mass, line, color, or design, the arts provide man with a measure of
his own passions and desires, his relation with other men and his
environment, as well as his potentials.
Both the sciences and the humanities are necessary for the development
of the complete, social man, ready to take on his responsibilities in this
rapidly changing world and to enjoy life as he lives it.
 Lesson 1
ASSUMPTIONS AND NATURE OF ARTS
What is Art?
• Art is something that is perennially around us.
• Some people may deny having to do with arts but it is indisputable that
life
• Presents us with many forms of and opportunities for communion with the
arts.The word ART comes from the ancient Latin, art which means a
“craft or specialized form of skill, like carpentry or smithying or surgery”
(Collingwood,1938).
• Artin Medieval Latin came to mean something different. It meant “any
special form of book- learning, such as grammar or logic, magic or
astrology”(Collingwood, 1983).
• Thefine arts would come to mean “not delicate or highly-skilled arts,
but“beautiful arts” (Collingwood, 1983).
• “Thehumanities constitute one of the oldest and most important means of
expression developed by man” (Dudley et al., 1960). Human history has
witnessed how man evolved not just physically but also culturally, from
cave painters to men of exquisite paintbrush users of the present.
 Assumptions of Art
1. Assumptions of Art
• Timeless, spanning generations and continents through and through.
• Misconception: Artistic made long time ago.
• Age is not a factor in determining art.
• Literature has provided key words of art.
• Iliad
and the Odyssey are the two Greek Epics that one’s being taught in
school.
• The Sanskrit pieces Mahabharata and Ramanaya are also staples in this
fields.
• Inevery country and in every generation, there is always art. Often times, people
feel that what is considered artistic are only those which have been made long time
ago. This is a misconception. Age is not a factor in determining art. “An art is not
good because it is old, but old because it is good” (Dudley et al., 1960)
• Inthe Philippines, the works of Jose Rizal and Francisco Balagtas are not being
read because they are old.
• Florante at Laura never fails to teach high school students the beauty of love, one
that is universal and pure.
• Ibong Adarna, another Filipino masterpiece, has always captured the imagination
of the young with its timeless lessons.
• When we recite the Psalms, we feel in communion with King David as we feel one
with him in his conversation with God.
• When we listen to a Kundiman or perform folk dances, we still enjoy the way our
Filipino ancestors while away their time in the past.
2. Art Is Not Nature
• Art, not directed by the representation of reality, is a perception of reality.
• Inthe Philippines, it is not entirely novel to hear some consumers of local
movies remark that these movies produced locally are unrealistic. They
contend that local movies work around a certain formula to the detriment
of substance and faithfulness to the reality of movies.
• Paul
Cezanne, a French painted a scene from reality entitled well and
Grinding Wheel in the Forest of the Chateau Noir.
3. Art Involves Experience
• It does not have full detail but just an experience. Actual doing of something.
• Getting this far without a satisfactory definition of art can be quite weird for some.
For most people, art does not require a full definition. Art is just experience. By
experience, we mean the “actual doing of something” (Dudley et al., 1960) and it
also affirmed that art depends on experience, and if one is to know art, he must
know it not as fact or information but as an experience.
•A work of an art then cannot be abstracted from actual doing. In order to know what
an artwork is, we have to sense it, see and hear it.
• An important aspect of experiencing art is its being highly personal, individual, and
subjective. In philosophical terms, the perception of art is always a value judgment.
It depends on who he perceives is, his tastes, his biases, and what he has inside.
Activity 1.
A. Choose one artwork under each category that you are familiar with. Cite a
Filipino artwork related to the category you chose and answer the question
provided.

Movie, Novel, Poem, Music, Architectural structure, Clothing

Why you choose it? Relate it to the topic has been discussed. Elaborate
your answer.
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B. Answer the following questions based on your own understanding/
interpretation of the lesson you learned. 5 points each.

1. If you were an artist, what kind of artist you want to be?

2. Why is an art, not nature?
3. Art is ageless. Explain this statement?
4. Why does art involve experience?
5. Cite other misconceptions about art.
 ASSIGNMENTS:

Please Study your notes for ORAL RECITATION next

meeting !

THANK YOU FOR LISTENING & GOD BLESS