What is Art?

Art is vibrant because through it, Man fulfils his needs to express and to
communicate. Man in his long history has always tried to understand his
world and to express his sentiments. He developed ways of expressing and,
through time, these expressions became finer. Art originated from these
expressions. Art results from the cultivation of the finer manners of these
expressions that Man has mastered. The Arts evolved to possess a value of
their own which beca1ne the measure of beauty. These expressions become the
instruments Man uses to answer the fundamental questions about Life and
to make sense out of living. With Art comes the experience of beauty. The
experience of beauty is equated with the feelings of delight and pleasure, as
with the deeper spiritual joy that overcomes one in the encounter between art
and perceiver. The study of Beauty is ca.lled Aesthetics. Chapter 2 explains
Art, ~ts principles and its functions, and its focal position in the experience
of beauty.
Nature produces the sources of Art. The source can be an incident in
the bucolic Katayaghan hills with the flaming clouds in La Union, setting of the
Manuel Arguilla classic "How My Brother Leon Brought Home a Wife." It can be
the face of woman with the enigmatic smile in Leonardo da Vinci's portrait, Mona
Lisa, or the sweet night captured in the melodious Moonlight Sonata by Ludwig
van Beethoven.
 Man articulates what he sees, hears, feels, smells, tastes, and thinks
about nature and the world around him. Around him are objects and
conditions which may seem incomprehensible to him. He may want to
understand phenomena which he could not explain like war, famine, and
drought. These conditions make him anxious. Man tries to make sense of
this world. He attempts to answer these inquiries about how and why these
conditions should happen. He articulates his thoughts and feelings in palpable
forms (like language and writing) so that his fellow man may share in what he
wishes to say. He does not only share his thoughts but shares experiences that
delight, enlighten, or even confuse.
Certainly, his inquisitiveness will bring him to realize that he lives in a
world far bigger than he can imagine. He realizes that other people think a~d
behave differently. Other people, too, certainly have different experiences. But
most of all, he realizes that a world exists far beyond the boundaries he knows
of.
This realization stimulates him to ask further questions. His answers
will not be sufficient. He will seek other answers from other men. While
seeking for answers, his confusions are compounded. He explores all
possibilities to learn more and in the process, he documents his knowledge. He
te\}s stories, writes, draws, and sings. He will not only want to be more graphic
but to be engrossing as well so he acts out in actions what he wants to show.
Many times, he combines all of these actions to be better understood. He wants
others to feel what he feels and, at the same time, to experience some pleasure
in how he expresses his thoughts.
These acts of communication are then refined. In achieving higher
levels of expression where the meanings in his thoughts become clearer to
others, Man has created Art.
Art, therefore, grew as Man's response to and his interactions with
nature also grew. Nature produces the conditions that prod Man to chant his
longings, narrate his adventures, dance his passion, sing his loves, and paint
his world. These chants, narrations, dances, songs, and paintings become
the means where Man is able to make sense of his existence. Making sense
of his existence allows him to survive. Art, this vast archive of meaning and
knowledge, documents Man's eternal links with nature, keeping Humanity
in harmony with its world. It is a world which embraces the physical,
metaphysical, and supernatural spheres with Man situated in the center.
Humankind produces endless thoughts and feelings, but not all these
articulations can be Art. Art involves higher levels of articulations where
thoughts and feelings move, delight, and enlighten. Expressing in the hi~he~t
levels requires craft and talent nurtured through years and years of apphcation.
The notion of Art, therefore, assumes two.aspects: a skilful as well as an
imaginative rendering of a meaningful insight.

WHAT IS ART? .
Art will never have a single satisfactory definition. What may be Art 111
one community may not be Art in another. But their roots are common. .
111
Art, or 'ars ' in Latin means "skill" which suggests some compet~nc~
10 performing and completing some activity. It also implies that there are similar

::,.tis Art?
 qualities in the e'.\.pression and ..1pplic.1tion 0f creative skill when nh\lL'riL1l t)r ide.1 is
• transformed to produce another idea or 0bject.
TI1e following principles should explain tht' fl'c1tu res of Art.

Man creates Art.

Although it takes its source from nature, Art i~ ,wt 11c1t11rc, but is m,m 's
artil...--ulatil"lll about an aspect of nature. The Pasig River was once a beautiful river
and this inspired ~ational Artist Nicanor Abelardo to compose the " Mutya ng
Pasig." Tht"' \:leautitul Pasig, therefore, is not Art, but Abelardo's expression about
tht"' Pasig in his music is. A female mod.el who poses nude will never be art but the
painting that depicts her will be.

Art exists with Man.

\\'here there is "t\fan in any time and in any place, there will be Art. Art
will lh·t• wi.th Man because it serves Man' s need to express. Art will always be a
pa.rt of our lives. Look or listen anywhere and you will see or hear Art in everyday
litt.>: the c..uvings in the c.1binet, music on the mobile phones, the building styles of
lli.lf churches, the statues inside these churches, the relief designs in our coconut
grJ.te~. stringed beads around our arms, a woven skirt, brass wares in salas, and the
paintings in the jeepneys we ride. \A/e can go on and on.
Art can also be found in more formally-produced events like painting
~'\hibits in the neigborhood gallery, a play in the university, or a concert of a choral
group in the plaza.

Art imitates.
The ancient Greeks called this mimt'~is as they held the principle that Art
represents (or ' copies' ) nature. Art mirrored a reality. Acting was the mimicking of
real actions. \V11en Oedipus blinded himself after realizing that he h ad married his
mother locasta, the actor playing Oedipus was only playing a role, representing the
Jct 1.)f blinding. MoYements interpretiqg passion in dance mimicked real passions.
Da \ "ind' s TTit· L1~t Suppa was a visual representation of the supper that took place
in Jerusalt>m before Christ was convicted.
ln Ptlt'tir~ "·hich summarized all that he thought about Art from the creative
practkes of his day in the 5th century B.C., Aristotle discoursed on the dramatic
traditi(m of tragt?d~ . Tragedy, as a complete form that represents reality, represented
thl, ,Kb ot ht>rot~s in their battles with fah,' and the cosmic order. Because it copies
nature, Art should stay consistent with the real. For instance, a play's time duration
is Clm::;ist~nt with the rt.'al when its actions run only from the time the sun rises
until the sun sets tl) mark a complete cycle from d,n, n to dusk. Tragedy, depicting
t.',,mpletl:' time, shl)uld han-> action set only within this one-day limit.

Art interprets. .
\\'e 1.·,mnot ..md should not find c,al.'."t replicas of nature in v,orks ot art.
\\-~ .:-,mn(1t .,lsl, Stc't' the s.1mt:' things in nature the way Lm artist can see things. In
dt>pictin~ reality. tlw artist puts in some amount of v,·hat he thinks and fe~ls should
bt-, pla(t>d in it. A land~ape rendition may h,we a darker c0lor than _w h,1t it really
h.15 in n,Hure. Vinl\.'nt Van Gogh p<tinted his cyprt>sses (umdsrnpc n,,t1, Cypres~t'~,
l &~N) with bt,ld flowin g t)utlitws th.1t did nt)t look exactly lik~ _real cypresses ma
fit.>ld . His famt.,us Starr.I/ Nis'1t ~1ppt'clfS like as dreamy i,•eb ot lu:es th ..,t do not look
ut all \ike any scr(•ne ni~ht. lt is strt•wn with unnc1tu~al stcUS u~_h ke an~· \H' hav~
1l ::,een m en'r ~~ at any night. Ptlblo Pic~1ss0 cut up his hurn,m hgur~s mto cubes.
 Botong Francisco collaged' multiple rural image~ in a two-dimensional plane in
his murals. This manner gave to us the feeling of multiple focuses and concerns i
Philippine rural life. n
Interpretation is the artist's prerogative. His interpretative powers allow
art to take separate dimensions from what is in the usual. Interpretation is not an
arbitrary ~ecisio~. It is_cons.ciously concei~ed as ~he a~tist adds feelings and insights
to the sub1ect akin to his attitude towards 1t. In distorting the human figure in his
paintings, for example, Picasso arouses our curiosity, or even anger, but he does so
to reprE:sent his depiction of man as a fragmented social being. .
In fact, art is better appreciated through the artist's interpretation of a ·
subject rather than through his exact copying of it.
Many art forms interpret rather than depict their subjects because these
arts have abstract natures. This is true for music and dance which express subjects
through their tones and movements, respectively. Many paintings, too,_interpret
subjects in manners that do not faithfully copy reality. These interpretative creations
we often lump together under the label Abstract Art.

Art expresses and communicates.

Expressing is in Man's inherent character. He was created that way: Not
only are quests for answers written down or painted, but also Man's outbursts
of joy or laments of sadness. Babies cry whenever they are hungry. They giggle
at amusing moments.,We shout in joy during moments of extreme happiness.
Expressing is Man's greatest articulation that celebrates the highest spirits of
humankind.
But artists are special men. They feel and see what ordinary men fail to feel
and see. We get our insights about the w0rld we live in from artists. The works of
artists provide us with the deeper meanings about life. Philosophers, poets, and
playwrights produce their thoughts in thei?· works with deeper insights than bakers
who invent cake recipes. ·
Not only do artists pierce deeper into ur;nwell ing the inner recesses of
humankind (which may include Man's p ychoiogy, his inner conflicts, or his
hidden desires, for instance), they abo use their craft to express their thoughts in
compelling ways.
Art provides Man the venue lo express, and in expressing, Man
communicates. Expressing can be completed in many forms. But Art, of a higher
level than most common ways of expressing, does not merely communicate
thought and emotions. It expresses these with an accompanying impact that
evokes a powerful reaction in the listener or viewer. This impact differentiates
ordinary communication from artistic expression; artistic expression evokes feeling
combined with the viewer's/listener's discovery of an insight.

Art affects, delights, and evokes a reaction.

Artists' works evoke strong reactions because of the skill artists employ.
They master ways to use the mediums to organize their ideas (words for poetry,
tones for music, and movements for dance) so that the viewers-listeners respond
with strong feelings. Strong feelings accompany the powerful subjects that major
art works depict.
Many opine that the sexiest music ever produced was Maurice Ravel's
12 Bolero, so that listening to the music's produces some steamy reactions in the

2 Whal is Art?
 ~
I

listener. Similarly, one feels the celebratory power of the Catholic Church when
one listens live to Handel's Messiah (1741) - remember the popular "Hallelujah
Chorus"? - performed with a full symphony orchestra including a full
complement of voices of a large chorus.
Rizal's Noli and Fili catalyzed Filipinos to rise in arms in the last years
of the Spanish colonial period.
Reactions to works of art have not been merely limi~ed to personal
pleasures. Art has been used to effectively move communities to action.
In Venezuela, musician-conducfor Jose Abreu set up his El Sistema (The
System) to transform the lives of 250,000 poor kids. His system of teaching
music and expanding the opportunities to the thousands of youth across his
country to learn classical music proves the power of art to transform lives. El
Sistema helps poor kids achieve their full potential by learning values which
they imbibe while exposed to music. Abreu' s concept is simple: playing in an
orchestra is an experience about bonding, where children work together, listen
to each other and respect one another. Through work in the orchestr~, these
kids absorb the highest values that music can teach, like solidarity, harmony,
mutual compassion, and sublimation.2
This remarkable experiment is documented in another moving film
Tocar y Luchar ("To Play and Fight").
The insights these models present make us discover so many new
things about ourselves and about the world, an d about how art in our midst
can truly reshape lives. Consequently, realizing the pow er that art wields in
transforming lives, many cultural institutions in the Philippines have set on
redesigning their mandate w ith plans and initiatives for Arts t6 transform
people, lives, and our nation.

Art processes an experienre.

Art as Experience indicates some encounter with time that instils
knowledge, skill, and an impression. In Art, both the artist and the perceiver
separately experien ce the creative process from two different points.
On one hand, the artist - the initiator of the work -- incites the
experience. The artist himself goes through an experience creating Art. Using
a process developing through time, he musters all the skills he has learned
while allowing the free flow of feelings to merge with his working. Upon the
completion of his work, the artist feels a gratifying sense of accomplishment.
This is the artist's experience.
On the other hand, the viewer-listener, while perceiving a completed
artwork, senses an experience of discovery and delight. The feelings the
perceiver experiences may approximate the same exhilaration of the artist; the
emotions the artist felt is vicariously transmitted to the perceiver.
The theatre director collaborating with his team to produce a musical
play undergoes a satisfying experience of creation. His intention is to put on
stage the play for performance. The performeq. play will bring out a separate
kind of experience from an audience.

Art processes an order.

We cultivate a psychological and philosophical connection to the
13 order in our world. Order is the natural arrangement of things around us ·

What is Art?
 and this or~er extends to the way we think and arrange our ideas. Our logic
: how we view and explain things - is influenced by the order around us. For
mstance, Western men would imbibe the idea of growth as a natural occurrence
that moves in a linear manner, that is, from seed to tree or from infancy to
adulthood to old age and death. The Hindus, however, view growth in a
cyclical way because death simply signals the rebirth into another life.
Embracing life are.objects and events arranged in such an orderly
manner: the eternal shifts of day and night, the lunar cycles, the rise and fall of
tides, and the harvest seasons.
Our perceptions of order are nurtured by the natural order that
surrounds us. The order in the forest differs from that order in large cities
where line~ and symmetrical arrangements of roads and buildings influence the
rigid and precise logic (and lifestyles) of city dwellers.
The arrangements in space take different relationships in various
orders. To the businesspersons in urban Maka~i reared in the ethics of Western
corporate culture, space is a private area that boxes them in boundaries separate
from that of the other private spaces of other persons. No one can intrude into
the impersonal space of this businessman even in a cramped elevator.
Contrastingly in the rural area , the spaces of provincials are shared.
Intrusions into each other's lives ar common and this describe the personal
and communal relationships rural comm unitie. share. Take the jeepney ride,
for example. Stories and thoughts are hared whenever persons sit and wait for
passengers to fill up a je"'pney t1iF in a rural terminal.
Perceptions of order, theref(,re vary according lo cultures. This order
is well reflected in the art worh th;;t Cl1it1Jre:, produce o that the principle that
Artstyle equals Lifestyle may be ,' tr1_. l'> m
The creation of art involv<·s ai, in:1ate !ongmg for order. Artists strive
for this order. It is the order these am st~. !'.i;:' vv:.:-ll aware of nurtured by the
environment where they h,n,e bet>n b;·(•ll.
In an ironic sense, a rtists mtc·r,L1onally create disorder in their works to
show to us the need for order [n dep1ning disorder through "ordered" means,
the artist transmits a feeling of ill-ease in the perceiver. It is a feeling difficult to
explain but which one experience when one lives, for instance, through war.
Tension, anxiety, and insecurity over omc a person's ense of balance. It may be
akin to a feeling in a disharmonized home where parents regularly quarrel, and
children are malnourished and sick.
Consider Picasso's Guernica (1937). The large mural-sized oil painting
(3.5 meters tall and 7.8 meters wide) brought the world's attention to the
widespread death by the bombing of the Basque town Guernica during
the Spanish civil war of 1937. Suffering is captured in the "disorder" and
fragmented rendering of people, animals, and buildings. The painting presents
to us a nightmarish collage of dismembered bodies, telling symbols, and awful
~~. .
The disorder in Guern ~ca is the painting's order. Order in its vanous
forms evokes beauty. Order derilands that the elements achieve some harmony,
and this harmonious merging of elements in Art suggests completion.
Completion implies wholeness. Wholeness establishes stab\lity. .
14 The whole process of order, therefore, points to Art s function of

t is Art ?
 Guemico
by Picasso
bringing a sense of stability to Humankind. In a world of confusion and chaos,
beauty in Art gives us a sense of well-being. Sensing order links Man with the
order of the cosmos. It is harmony that Man aspires for. Harmony is Man's craving,
and so is order. And as there i order in nature, so is there order in society.
Planning accompanies order. An art work is never an accident but a
consciously mapped out activity where the end creation - a complete painting, a
story with an ending, a full oratorio, or a finished monument - is what an artist
strives for.
Order results when existing rnaterials are merged in new combinations to
form a new object. This i creation, an innate fu nction of Man. Art is the expression
of this order.

Art embodies values and the most important of these is beauty.

Because Art refle _~ cultu re, whatever Man creates will invariably embody
parts of this cultu re h~ ,)me:-, trom. His culture collects a matrix of values about
what it deems po itivc gooJ, nJtural, 3nd the oppo ites of these. These social
values are reflected in the Art that Man crectles.
One va lue is Beauty, and this will be expres ed by what the culture deems
"good." Beauty suggests balann~, order, and harmony in the eyes of the culture.
Harmony, as an organic sense> o f order, reflects a view of reality that embraces
all things. Harmony lies in the manner a family is run, in the way a landscape is
planned, in the direction the sun sets its light on a glass window, in the method of
thinking, in governing a tribe, or in the relationships between two ethno- linguistic
groups. The artist who aspires for order and harmony in his artwork, therefore,
uses the very qualities that a particular culture defines harmony with. Connecting
with that culture's view, in most cases, spontaneously evoke a pleasurable reaction
from the perceivers that also come from this same culture.
The delightful and pleasurable experience that a perceiver goes through
is called the aesthetic experience, from the Greek aisthesthai ("to perceive"). One
perceives with the senses. In a practical sense, a perfumed smell harmonizes with
our senses. A rotten smell disgusts and may even be dangerous (because large
amounts of bacteria trigger a foul smell).
Reactions to Art are culture-bound. Yet, each personality in the same
culture may react differently to art. Values that change by time artd place (or
mil~eu) ~ffect l~rgely ~e aesthetic experience. Aesthetics develops through long
penods m the mteractlons among the Art work, the artists, and their perceivers.
15 Aesthetics is the way a community deals with the creative expressions its artists

What is Art?
 produce. · .
But one can go through an aesthetic experience even if one views an ugly
subject. Note that the value "ugly" may be given to a subject, a content, or Art's
matter, which we should distinguish from the manner Art is presented. The idea-
of ugliness is shared by many of us: a deformed man, war, inhuman treatment
of prisoners, a row of dilapidated shanties wallo"ving in appalling poverty, or
a mass grave of civilians. The matter may be ugly but the manner this matter is
presented can evoke that pleasurable feeling in the perceiver. Sensing beauty is
not related to looking at ugly things in art. Beauty is achieved in the way ugly
subjects are presented. Even the ugliest subjects can elicit sympathy in us and,
thus, move us in many ways. ·
A beautiful experience is when one connects both intellectually and
emotionally to Art.

. 2Ch~rlotte Higgins, "Land of hope and 6 iory,'' The Guardian, Nov. 24, 2006 <http://www.guard-
1an.c0.uk/mus1c/2006/nov/24/classicalmusicandopera>. Visited Nov. 9, 2009.
. The El Sistema was one of the models discussed at the CCP Arts Forum , a conference of Philip-
pine cultu~al workers and artists, that focused on the theme of "Art for Transform ation," May 8-10, 2009,
at the National Arts Center in Makilin g, Laguna.