ART APPRECIATION

THREE LANGUAGES
OF THE ARTS

1. Primary Language: Built into us as a

part of our human legacy. It is built
into the very center of humanity, and
when it lies uncultivated and
becomes foreign to us, we become
less.
2. Secondary Language: It is made up of the
conventions, the traditions, styles which have
accumulated over the ages. The greater the
number of works of arts we come to know and
appreciate intimately, the larger our
vocabulary becomes of these conventions.
3. Third Language: Is the language in
which this and other books on the arts are
written or documented. It deals with the
ability to talk about the arts meaningfully
and expressively.
 WHAT AFFECT AND
INFLUENCE THE WORK
OFThere
1. Style Factor: THE ARTIST?
are certain common denominators of
subject matter, treatment and emphasis, which appear
repeatedly in art works of a given period.
2. Historical Factor: Most of the artistic creations of any of
the past epochs had relations to historical developments in the
artist’s environment.
3. Geographical Factor: Artists are basically conditioned and
influenced by their places of origin, the environment, its
ecosystems and ethnicity.
4. Political, Psychological and Sociological Factor: Socio-
economic and political systems and behavioral patterns
contribute to the development or change in style in art.
5. Religious Factor: religious movements such as
Christianity, the Reformation, the Counter-Reformation
and Humanism brought tremendous changes in social and
political structures that in the process had also influenced
directly changes in the direction of art styles in the West.
6. Technological Factor: Technology produces new art
forms.
 THE BASIC RELATIONSHIPS
IN ART
4 Basic Relationships in Art
1. Subject matter: What is it about? What does it depict or represent?
What is it trying to say?
2. The Artist: Who created it? What does his work reveal about what sort
of person is he?
3. The Audience: What is the relevance of the artwork? Of what value is
it to them?
4. Its own form: What is the nature and structure of the artwork? What
are the expressive elements used to convey the meaning of the work?
What are the principles which were integrated in conveying the meaning
of the art?
 SUBJECT MATTER
Subject is a term used for whatever is represented in
a work of art. (Dudley, 6th Ed.).
A subject answers the question what is it or what is
it about?
However, it should be noted that not all arts have
subject. Those arts with subject are called objective
or representational art, while those that do not
have are called non-objective or non-
representational art.
 Representational or Objective Art
-depicts something that can easily
be recognized which is real and part
of this world. Even events or history
that will represent as subjects should
be happening in the real world.
 a. Portraiture - (pictures of men and
women) It became popular before the
invention of the camera; was enjoyed
only by elites: kings and noblemen;
nowadays charcoal is one of the
mediums used in portraits. e.g. self-
portrait by Vincent Van Gogh.
b. Animals and Plants or Flora and
Fauna - It represents animals and plants. It
became the trend due to man's first
encounters with plants and animals for
survival; even now painters prefer animals
and plants, specifically flowering plants as
subjects for their paintings.
 c. Still life - representing inanimate objects
or non-living things placed on a table or
another setting to become a subject in a
certain artwork. It is always available and
capable to be organized. e.g. a basket of
fruits, a bag of groceries, a pack of
cigarettes, a bunch of flowers and a bucket
of chicken.
 d. Country Life - copying scenes
happening in the community. e.g. a
barrio fiesta, a fluvial paradem a
bountiful rice harvest, a big catch of
fishes and a natural calamity;
Amorsolo's works and many realists
and impressionists.
 e. Landscape - It depicts pictures of land
forms. e.g. the volcano, the mountain, the hill,
the valley, the plain, the plateau, the cliff and
the like.
f. Seascape - pictures of any of the water
forms e.g. the ocean, the sea, the river, the
lake, the brook, the pond, the falls and the like.
g. Cityscape - pictures of an arial view of a
city or a portion of it.
h. Events - some example are:
Spoliarium and the Blood Compact
of Juan Luna and the Christian Vigins
Exposed to the Populace of Felix
Ressurecion Hidalgo; Moses
Commanding the Red Sea to Divide.
i. Religious Items - the Holy
Family, Jesus Christ, angels, saints
and religious objects; Raphael
Sanzio's Madonna paintings,
Madonna of the Rocks is one of the
painting of Leonardo da Vinci.
 j. Mythological, fictional and
cartoon characters - like Raphael
Sanzio's Galatea, a mythological
character; supernatural beings and
fantasies, tecnological items and
objects.
Non-Representational or
Non-Objective Art
represents nothing except its
own form. e.g. the Pyramids
of Egypt, Mondrian's Non-
Figurative Paintings, the
symphonies of Mozart.
 Abstract - Abstraction
indicates a departure
from reality in
depiction of imagery in
art. This departure
from accurate
 WOMEN AS SUBJECT OF THE
VISUAL ARTS
Among the masterpieces are those of Venus, Mona Lisa,
Saskia, Batsheba, Luwalhati, Lolly, Marisa, Marlyn and many
otehr anonymous women.
the earliest of these works were the statues of women
discovered in Willendorf, Austria around 25,000 to 20,000
B.C.
Hundreds of these statues measuring 4 3/8 inches and made
of stone, mammoth ivory or terra cotta wre discovered called
Venus of Willendorf.
VENUS OF WILLENDORF
Early tradition reveals that these figures were
fertility idols used during rituals of childbirth, as a
guardian or for the purpose of magic.
As a collection, it encompasses the different stages
of a female and her development to womanhood
from birth, adolescence, pregnancy, childbirth to
death.
Simply called the Sculpture of a woman, many of
these sculptures are displayed at the national
museum of Austria.
 APHRODITE
Aphrodite, in Greek mythology, the
goddess of love and beauty, is the first
lifelike statue that shows the female figure
in three dimension forms.
Her nude figure stands by a huge vase;
and with the towel on her way to a bath or
just out of the bath.
a product of the genius of Praxiteles who
came up with this complex composition.
 VENUS
Venus, the Roman counterpart of
Aphrodite, was the subject of Sandro
Boticelli's painting The Birth of Venus
which is the celebration of the birth of
a fully developed woman.
Venus is shown being brought by the
wind in the seacoast and tossed in a
storm of roses with the help of the two
lovers, Zephyr and Chloris, while a
court maid holding her clotes prepares
to meet her.
Her elegant pose is based on old
statues.
 MONA LISA
The most popular portrait in the history of
art is the Mona Lisa of Leonardo Da Vinci.
The absence of Mona Lisa's eyebrows on
her very prominent forehead were sorts of
beauty marks of the period.
The most startling aspect would be the
direct gaze of Mona Lisa to anyone who
would look at her.
To a woman in those times, this was
uncommon because in the old book of
etiquette a woman should never stare
directly at any man.
WORKS OF FERNANDO AMORSOLO