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, ars which means a “craft or specialized
form of skill, like carpentry or smithying or surgery” (Collingwood, 1938).
 Ars in 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).
 The fine arts would come to mean “not delicate or highly skilled arts, but “beautiful
arts” (Collingwood, 1983).
 “The humanities 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. Art Is Universal
 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.
 lliad 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.
 In every 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)
 In the 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 representation of reality, is a perception of reality.
 In the 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 certain formula to the detriment of substance and
faithfulness to 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 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, 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, perception of art is always a value
judgment. It depends on who the perceive is, his tastes, his biases, and what he
has insidesent.