Art Appreciation Reviewer

Lesson 1

Why study the Humanities or the Arts?

 Arts are a mirror of culture, they arise from culture and communicate the most important, non-verbal and non-
linear aspects of culture
 They are channels of communication at deeper levels than the linear and inadequate ones of verbal speech.
 For as long as man existed in this planet, he has cultivated the land, altered the conditions of the fauna and the
flora, all to survive.
 Through his bare hands, man constructed infrastructures that will tend to his needs, like his house. He sharpened
swords and spears, he employed fire to melt gold. The initial meaning of the word art has something to do with
all these craft.

Ancient Latin

 The word art come from the ancient latin “ars” which means “craft” or specialized form of skill.
 Art suggested the capacity to produce an intended results based on plans step or method
 The ancient world did not have any conceived notion of art in the same way that we do now. To them, art only
meant using bare hands to produce something that will be useful to one’s day to day life.

Medieval Latin

 It meant any special form of book-learning, such as grammar or logic, magic or astrology

Early Renaissancce

 It was only during renaissance that the word reacquired a meaning that was inherent in its ancient form-craft.
 Artists saw their activities merely as craftsmanship, devoid of a whole lot of intonations that are attached to the
word now.

Seventeenth Century

 The problem and idea of aesthetics, the study of beauty, began to unfold distinctly from the notion of technical
workmanship that is the original conception of the word “art”.

Eighteenth Century

 The word has evolved to distinguish between the fine arts and the useful arts.
 The fine arts would come to mean “not delicate or highly skilled arts, but ‘beautiful’ arts”.
 This is something that is more similar to what is now considered art.

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Assumptions of Art

 Art is Universal
o These works, purportedly written before the beginning of recorded history.
o Art has always been timeless and universal, spanning generations and continents through and through.
o People feel that what is considered artistic are only those which have been made long time ago
o Age is not a factor in determining art.
o “art is not good because it is old, but old because its good”
o A great piece of work will never be obsolete.
o Art will always be present because human beings will always express themselves and delight in these
expressions.
 Art is not Nature
o Art is man’ expression of his perception of nature. Art is man’s way of interpreting nature.
o It is based on an individual’s subjective experience of nature.
o Artists are not expected to duplicate nature just as even scientists with their elaborate laboratories
cannot make nature.
 Art Involves Experience
o As an artist: in order for an artist to claim that he is a good painter he/she must know to hold a brush
and so on and so forth.
o As an audience of an art: in order to know what an artwork is, we have to sense it, see it, or hear it.
o An important aspect of experiencing art is its being highly personal, individual, and subjective.
o One cannot argue with another person’s evaluation of art because one’s experience can never be known
by another.
o One should also underscore that every experience with art is accompanied by some emotion.

Lesson 2

The Role of Creativity in Art Making

 Creativity requires thinking outside the box.

 Creativity is what sets apart one artwork from another.

Art as a product of Imagination

 Through imagination, one is able to craft something bold, something new and something better allows endless
possibilities.
 Art also inspires imagination.
 “Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to we now know and understand,
while imagination embraces the entire world, and all world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”
–Albert Einstein

Art as Expression

 Expression make an individual in character (individulalizes)

 An artist has the freedom to express herself the way he/she wants to.
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  There is no specific technique in expression.
 Makes people’s art not a reflection of what outside or external to them, but a reflection of their inner selves.

 Robin George Coliingwood

o English philosopher
o He said that what an artist does to an emotion I not influence them, but to help to express them.
o Through expressions, he is able to explore his own emotions and at the same time, create something
beautiful out of it.
o He further illustrated that expressing emotions is something different form describing emotions.
o States that description destroys the idea of expression, as it classifies the emotion, making it ordinary
and predictable.

 Visual Arts
o Those that appeal to the sense of sight and are mainly visual in nature.
o Artists produce visual arts driven by their desire to reproduce things they have seen in the way that they
perceived.
 Film
o Refers to the art of putting together successions of still images to create an illusion of movement.
o Filmmaking stimulates experiences or creates one that is beyond the scope of our imagination as it aims to
deliver ideas, feelings or beauty to its viewers.
 Performance Arts
o A live art and the artists medium is the human body which he or she uses to perform, but also employs other
kinds of art such as visual art, props, or sound.
o 4 elements are;
 Time
 The place of the performance
 Performer’s body
 Communication towards the audience
 Poetry Performance
o Exhibit clarity and beauty and to stimulate strong emotions of joy, anger, love, sorrow, and so on.
o It uses word’s emotional, musical, and spatial values that goes beyond it literal meaning to narrate,
emphasize, argue or convince.
 Architecture
o It is the making of beautiful buildings, however not all building are beautiful.
o Buildings should embody these three important elements; plan, construction, and design; if they wish to
merit the title architecture.
 Dance
o A series of movements that follows the rhythm of the music accompaniment.
o A creative form which allows people to freely express themselves. It has no rules.
o Dancers are not confined to set steps and rules but are free to create and invent their own movement as
long as they deem it graceful and beautiful.
 Literary Art
o It focuses on writing using a unique style, not following a specific format or norm.
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 o It may include both fiction and non-fiction such as novels, biographers, and poems.
 Theater
o Performances usually follow a script.
o Like in filmmaking, theater also consider several elements such as acting, gesture, lighting, sound effects,
musical score, scenery and props.
o Some genre includes drama, musical, tragedy, comedy, and improvisation.
 Applied Arts
o Incorporated elements of style design to everyday items with the aim of increasing their aesthetically value.
o Artists bring beauty, charm and comfort into many things that are useful in everyday life.
o Industrial design, interior design, fashion and graphic design are considered applied arts.

Lesson 3: Functions and Philosophical Perspective on Art

Aristotle

 He claimed that every particular substance in the world has an end, telos in greek, which translates to
“purpose”
 Man, in Aristotle’s view of reality, is bound to achieve a life of fulfillment and happiness, or in greek,
eudaimonia.
 Man’s natural end, telos, is connected with his function; which is his rationality.

Arroyo Fountain

 A historical landmark in Iloilo City

 Located in front of the Casa Real de Iloilo
 Named after Senator Jose Maria Arroyo, who authored the law, Republic Act No. 32222, that established
Iloilo Metropolitan Waterworks in 1925.
 Also known as “Kilometre Zero”, used to measure distances from Iloilo City to other points in Panay, the
Western Visayas Region, and other places in the Philippines.

FUNCTIONS OF ART

 Personal Functions of Art

o The personal functions of art highly subjective.
o An artist may create an art out of the need for self-expression.
o Can also be a mere entertainment for its intended audience.
o The artist may not even intend to mean anything with his work.
o An art may also be therapeutic.
 Social Functions of Art
o An art have a social function when it addresses a particular collective interest as opposed to a personal
interest.
o Political Art is a very common example of art with a social function.
o Art may convey message of protest, contestation, or whatever message the artist intends in his work to
carry.
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  Physical Functions of Art
o These art are easiest to spot and understand.
o It can be found in artworks that are crafted to serve some physical purpose.
o Architecture, jewelry-making, even interior designs are all forms of art that have physical function.

Does Art Always Have to Be Functional?

 A functional object cannot be claimed to be beautiful unless it can perform its functional sufficiently
 It certainly determines beauty in some works of art, an efficient functional object is not necessarily beautiful.

Philosophical Perspective on Art

 Art as an Imitation
o In The Republic, a renowned masterpiece of Plato, he described the artists as imitators and art as mere
imitation or mimesis.
o Plato was convinced that artists merely reinforce the beliefs in copies and discourage men to reach for
the real entities in the World of Forms.
o Plato was deeply suspicious of arts and artists for two reasons: (1st) They appeal to the emotion than the
rational faculty of mean. (2nd) They imitate rather than lead one to reality.
o For Plato, art is dangerous because it provides a petty replacement for the real entities that can only be
attained through reason.
 Art as a Representation
o Aristotle considered art as an aid to Philosophy in revealing truth.
o For him, all kinds of art, do not aim to represent reality as it is. What art endeavors to do is provide a
vision of what might be or the myriad possibilities or reality.
o Unlike Plato who thought art is an imitation of another imitation, Aristotle conceived of arts as
representing possible versions of reality.
o Art allows for the experience of pleasure.
o Art also has an ability to be instructive and teach its audience things about life; thus it is cognitive as
well.
 Art as Disinterested Judgment
o Kant considered that the judgment of beauty, the cornerstone of art, as something that can be universal
despite its subjectivity.
o Judgment of beauty and art, is innately autonomous from specific interests.
o Even aesthetic judgment is a cognitive activity.
o For Kant, the one who judge a particular painting as beautiful, one in effect is saying that the said
painting has induced particular feeling of satisfaction from him and that he expects the painting to rouse
the same feeling from anyone.
 Art as a Communication of Emotion
o For Leo Tolstoy, art plays a huge role in communication to its audience’s emotion that the artist
previously experienced.
o Art then serves as language, a communication device that articulates feelings and emotions that are
otherwise unavailable to the audience.

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 o Art is central to man’s existence because it makes accessible feeling and emotions of people from the
past and the present, from one continent to another.

Summary

 Art has remained to be relevant in our daily lives because most of it has played some form of function for a man.
 The different functions of art may classified as either personal, social, physical.
 An art’s function is personal if it depends on the artists herself or sometimes still, the audience of the art.
 Social function in art if and when it has a particular social function, when it addresses a collective need of a
group of people.
 Physical function has something to do with direct, tangible uses of art.
 Not all products of art have function. This should not disqualify them as art though.
 Some of the most important thinkers in history, mentioned that art may serve as either as imitation,
representation, a disinterested judgment, or a communication of emotion.