SUBJECT AND CONTENT

What makes art appreciation difficult for most people is because of the idea that art should
represent a certain object or image which the audience will derive its meaning from. Failure to
recognize a specific object discourages one’s interest and understanding of the art. Hence,
failure to experience and appreciate it. This lesson will enlighten you of the other components
that will help you better understand art. Notably, your eyes play a massive role in art
appreciation. However, this is but one aspect. You must not only experience art itself.
Cognizance of the process makes a big difference.
 
Ariola (2014) put forward two types of subject of art. 
These are the representational or objective art and non-representational or non-objective
art.  
Representational or objective art are work of arts that is easily recognizable by the audience.
These arts are sometimes called figurative arts simply because it is very easy for the audience
to make out what the object is depicted in the art work. 
On the other hand, non-representation arts or non – objective arts do not relate to the real
world. Though these arts are also made up of visual elements, they do not represent a specific
object that can be identified or recognized. Instead, colors, shapes, and lines translate the
artist’s emotion to the audience.   Moreover, there are various sources of subjects. 
These are the following: 
1. Animals
2. History
3. Mythology
4. Landscape
5. Cityscape
6. Seascape
7. Religion/Beliefs
8. Dreams and Fantasies 

How do you determine the content of an art? Art’s content has different layers of meaning.
Caslib, Garing and Casaul (2018) identified three levels of giving meaning to the content of art
work. 

These are factual level, conventional level and subjective level.  

1. Factual Level is giving meaning to art based on what the audience see that are recognizable
and identifiable objects or forms and how these relate to one another. 
2. Conventional Level is giving meaning to art based on the existing and acknowledged
interpretation of symbols, signs and other cyphers.
3. Subjective level is giving meaning to art based on the viewers’ background or circumstance-
what he knows, learned, experienced, values and stands for. All these come into play in giving
interpretation in the subjective level.

Given the painting of “The Creation of Adam” by Michelangelo, it can be seen that Adam and
God both stretched their arms. Adam is positioned on the ground while God is afloat together
with figures presumed to be angels or cherubs. Everyone is naked except God. 

Factually, one can interpret that this painting depicts a scene from the Creation Story. 
From the conventional point of view, how the bodies of Adam and God were depicted in the
painting alluded to the conventional idea that humans are created in the likeness of God. This
also depicts the ideal proportioned and muscular body should be portrayed. 

Lastly, from a subjective point of view, let’s look at the subjective meaning given by Frank Lynn
Meshberger (1990)  cited in Caslib, Garing and Casaul (2018). According to Meshberger, the
painting is about endowment of Adam in which intellect is the most significant qualities that God
endowed to human beings. He derived this interpretation from the shroud and drapery which he
deemed to be aligned with how human brain is shaped. This interpretation is perhaps influenced
by his medical background, experiences, and exposure to history and arts.
PHILOSOPHICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ART
Leo Tolstoy  propounds the discussion on arts as a communication of emotion,  he highlighted
the principles of universal art which for him, universal art illustrates that people are "already
united in the oneness of life's joys and sorrows by communicating "feelings of the simplest, most
everyday sort, accessible to all people without exception, such as the feelings of merriment,
tenderness, cheerfulness, peacefulness, and so on".  

Philosophical Perspectives on Art 

I. Art as an Imitation 
Plato (2000) in his masterpiece, the Republic, particularly paints a picture of artist as imitators
and art as imitation. In his description of the ideal republic, Plato advises against the inclusion of
art as a subject in the curriculum and the banning of artist in the Republic. In Plato’s
metaphysics or view of reality, the things in this world are only copies of the original, the
external, and the true entities that can only be found in the World of Forms. Human beings's
endeavor to reach the Forms all throughout this life, starting with formal education in school. For
example, the chair that one sits on is a real chair.  It is the imperfect copy of the perfect “chair”
in the World of Forms. Much a true for “beauty” in this world. When one ascribes beauty to
another person, he refers to an imperfect beauty that participates only the form of beauty in the
World of Forms. Plato was convinced that artists merely reinforce the belief in copies and
discourage men to reach for the real entities in the World of Forms. 
Plato was deeply suspicious of arts and artists for two reasons:  
1. they appeal to the emotion rather to the rational faculty of men; and  
2. they imitate rather than lead one to reality
Poetry and painting, the art forms that Plato was particularly concerned with, do not have any
place in the ideal state that Socrates in Plato’s dialogue envisions. 
Plato is critical of the effects of art, specifically poetry to the people of the ideal state. Poetry
arouses emotions and feelings and thus, clouds to the rationality of people. Poetry has a
capacity to sway minds without taking into consideration the use of proper reason. As such, it
leads one further away from the cultivation of the intellect that Plato campaigned for.  For Plato,
art is dangerous because it provides a petty replacement for the real entities that can be
attained through reason. 

II. Art as a Representation 
Aristotle, Plato’s most important student in philosophy, agreed with his teacher that art is a form
of imitation. However, in contrast to the disgust that his master holds for art, Aristotle considered
art as an aid to philosophy in revealing truth. The kind of imitation that art does is not antithetical
to the reaching of fundamental truths in the world. Talking about tragedies, for example,
Aristotle (1902) in the Poetics claimed that poetry is a literary representation in general. Akin to
other art forms, poetry only admits of an attempt to represent what things might be.  For
Aristotle, all kinds of art including poetry, music, dance, painting, sculpture, do not aim to
represent reality as it is.  What art endeavors to do is to provide a vision of what might be or the
myriad possibilities in reality. Unlike Plato who thought that art is an imitation of another
imitation, Aristotle conceived of Art as representing possible versions of reality. 
In the Aristotelian worldview, art serves two particular purposes. 
1. Art allows for the experience of pleasure. Experiences that are otherwise repugnant can
become entertaining in art. 
2. Art has an ability to be instructive and teaches its audience things about life, thus, it is
cognitive as well.    

III. Art as a Disinterested Judgment

Immanuel Kant considered the judgement of beauty, the cornerstone of art, as something that
can be universal despite its subjectivity. He mentioned that judgement of beauty, and therefore,
art, is innately autonomous from specific interests. It is the form of art that is adjudged by one
who perceived art to be beautiful or more so, sublime. Therefore, even aesthetics judgement for
Kant is a cognitive activity. Kant recognized that judgement of beauty is subjective. However,
Kant advanced the proposition that even subjective judgment is based on some universal
criterion for the said judgement. In the process, Kant responded to the age-old question of how
and in what sense can a judgement of beauty, which is ordinarily is considered objective or
universal.  For Immanuel Kant, when one judges a particular painting as beautiful, one in effect
is saying that the said painting has induced a particular feeling of satisfaction from him and he
expects the painting to rouse the same feeling from anyone. There is something in the work of
art that makes it capable of inciting the same feeling of pleasure and satisfaction from any
perceiver, regardless of his condition.  

IV. Art as a Communication of Emotion 

Leo Tolstoy, the author of War and Peace and Anna Karenina, has provided another
perspective on what art is. In his book, What is Art (1897), Tolstoy defended the production of
the sometimes truly extravagant art, like operas, despite extreme poverty in the world. For him,
art plays a huge role in communication to its audience’s emotions that the artist previously
experienced. Art then serves as a language, a communication device that articulates feelings
and emotions that are otherwise unavailable to the audience. In the same way that language
communicated information to other people, art communicates emotions. In listening to music, in
watching an opera, and in reading poems, the audience is at the receiving end of the artist
communication his feelings and emotions. Tolstoy is fighting for the social dimension of art. 

Art is the central to man’s existence because it makes accessible feelings and emotions
of people from the past, present, from one continent to another. Even at present, one can
commune with early Cambodians and their struggles by visiting the Angkor Wat or can definitely
feel for early royalties of different Korean dynasties by watching Korean dramas.