Art

- An expression of one’s thoughts and feelings

- Beauty that isn't natural by definition.
- The expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, usually in
the form of a visual medium such as painting or sculpture, to create works that
are valued primarily for their aesthetic value or emotional power.

Three Themes of Art

● Art is Universal
- All art lets us express ourselves in our own way.
- Just like language, art is applicable for anyone and can be understood by
everyone.
● Art is not nature
- Art is unnatural and is an artificial creation of man
- On many products designed by man, art is a perceived, imagined notion.
Even the imitation of nature necessitates the creator's passion and
practice.
● Art involves experience
- Art must undergo time for it to be perfect
- Art is an expression of a person’s experience

Elements of Art

1. Line
- The most fundamental graphic element is the line. A line is an observable
route formed by a moving point in space. It is one-dimensional, with width,
direction, and length variations.
Types of Lines:

● Vertical lines - Straight up and down lines that are perpendicular to

horizontal lines and move through space without tilt. Because they reach
toward the sky and appear unyielding, they imply height and strength.
 ● Horizontal lines - straight lines that move from left to right, parallel to the
horizon. They imply openness, distance, tranquility, and stability.

● Diagonal lines - straight lines that slant in any direction other than
horizontal or vertical are known as diagonal lines. They imply mobility or a
lack of stability when used.

● Zigzag lines - made up of a sequence of diagonal lines that are linked at

their ends. They can communicate agitation and anxiety, as well as
movement and excitement.

● Curved lines - those that progressively bend and change direction. They
might be wavy or spiral in nature.

2. Shape
- A two-dimensional, flat, or height-and-width-limited element of art.
- Shapes are made out of combined lines.
2 Kinds of Shapes:
 ● Geometric shapes - Geometric shapes like circles, triangles, and squares
are rare in nature because they have exact, consistent proportions.
● Organic shapes - Organic shapes are connected with natural objects such
as plants and animals.

3. Form
- a three-dimensional and volume-enclosing work of art that includes height,
width, and depth (as in a cube, a sphere, a pyramid, or a cylinder).
4. Color
- Color is an art element composed of hue, chroma, and intensity.
- Color is present when light strikes an object and is reflected back into the
eye, a reaction to a hue arising in the optic nerve.

● Hue - Hue refers to the dominant color family. Primary and Secondary
colors (Yellow, Orange, Red, Violet, Blue, and Green)
● Chroma - the quality of a color's purity, intensity, or saturation. For
example, A gray color is a neutral -- an extreme low chroma. Fire-engine
red may be a high-chroma red.
● Intensity - the brightness or dullness of a color. A color as we see it on a
color wheel is at full intensity (bright).

5. Value
- The lightness or darkness of tones or colors
- defines how light or dark a given color or hue can be.

● Tint - A tint is where an artist adds a colour to white to create a lighter

version of the colour.
● Shade - A shade is where an artist adds black to a colour to darken it
down.
● Hue - Basic colours.

6. Texture
- a term used to describe how things feel or appear to feel when they are
touched
7. Space
- an aspect of art that defines positive and negative areas or gives a work of
art a sense of depth.
- the distances or areas around, between, and within components of a
piece.
Modern Art
Modern art defines the forms and ideas of art developed during the period
roughly from the 1860s to the 1970s, and encompasses artistic work made during that
time period. The word is most commonly linked with art in which old traditions have
been abandoned in favor of innovation.
Although the term encompasses a wide range of forms, there are several
fundamental ideas that define modernist art: An emphasis on materials, techniques, and
processes; a rejection of history and conservative values (such as realistic depiction of
subjects); innovation and experimentation with form (the shapes, colors, and lines that
make up the work) with a tendency to abstraction; and a focus on materials, techniques,
and processes. Various social and political concerns have also influenced modernism.
These were frequently utopian, and modernism was connected with idealized ideals of
human existence and society, as well as a faith in progress.

Contemporary Art
Contemporary art is art created in the second part of the twentieth century or the
twenty-first century. Contemporary artists operate in a world that is increasingly
globalized, culturally varied, and technologically advanced.
Nonetheless, identity politics, the body, globalization and migration, technology,
current society and culture, time and memory, and institutional and political critique are
all common topics in contemporary art.

Modern Art VS Contemporary Art

Art that was developed between the 1860s (some suggest the 1880s) and the
late 1960s is known as modern art (some say only through the 1950s). Art created after
that is considered contemporary (e.g., conceptual, minimalist, postmodern, feminist).
Both Modern and Contemporary Art can be considered revolutionary, however
Contemporary Art emphasizes innovation and freedom more than Modern Art.
Contemporary art focuses on societal influence, with society as the major focus,
whereas Modern art is an expression of personality.

Art in Early Civilizations (Timeline)

Art Periods/ Characteristics Chief Artists Historical

and Major Events
Movements Works
Stone Age (30,000 Cave painting, fertility Lascaux Cave Ice Age ends
b.c.–2500 b.c.) goddesses, megalithic Painting, Woman of (10,000
structures Willendorf, b.c.–8,000 b.c.);
Stonehenge New Stone Age
and

first permanent
settlements
(8000 b.c.–2500
b.c.)

Mesopotamian (3500 Warrior art and Standard of Ur, Sumerians invent

b.c.–539 b.c.) narration in stone relief Gate of Ishtar, Stele writing (3400
of Hammurabi’s b.c.); Hammurabi
Code writes his law

code (1780 b.c.);

Abraham founds
monotheism

Egyptian (3100 b.c.–30 Art with an afterlife Imhotep, Step Narmer unites
b.c.) focus: pyramids and Pyramid, Great Upper/Lower
tomb painting Pyramids, Bust of Egypt (3100 b.c.);
Nefertiti Rameses II
battles

the Hittites (1274

b.c.); Cleopatra
dies (30 b.c.)
Greek and Hellenistic Greek idealism: Parthenon, Myron, Athens defeats
(850 b.c.–31 b.c.) balance, perfect Phidias, Persia at
proportions; Polykleitos, Marathon (490
architectural Praxiteles b.c.);
Peloponnesian
orders(Doric, Ionic,
Corinthian) Wars (431
b.c.–404 b.c.);
Alexander the
Great’s
conquests

(336 b.c.–323
b.c.)

Roman (500 b.c.– a.d. Roman realism: Augustus of Julius Caesar

476) practical and down to Primaporta, assassinated (44
earth; the arch Colosseum, b.c.); Augustus
Trajan’s Column, proclaimed

Pantheon Emperor (27

b.c.); Diocletian
splits Empire
(a.d. 292); Rome
falls

(a.d. 476)
Indian, Chinese, and Serene, meditative art, Gu Kaizhi, Li Birth of Buddha
Japanese(653 and Arts of the Floating Cheng, Guo Xi, (563 b.c.); Silk
b.c.–a.d. 1900) World Hokusai, Hiroshige Road opens
(1st-century b.c.);

Buddhism
spreads to China
(1st–2nd
centuries a.d.)
and Japan

(5th-century a.d.)

Byzantine and Islamic Heavenly Byzantine Hagia Sophia, Justinian partly

(a.d. 476–a.d.1453) mosaics; Islamic Andrei Rublev, restores Western
architecture and Mosque of Roman Empire
amazing Córdoba, the (a.d.

maze-like design Alhambra 533–a.d. 562);

Iconoclasm
Controversy (a.d.
726–a.d.

843); Birth of
Islam (a.d. 610)
and Muslim
Conquests (a.d.

632–a.d. 732)
Middle Ages Celtic art, Carolingian St. Sernin, Durham Viking Raids
(500–1400) Renaissance, Cathedral, Notre (793–1066);
Romanesque, Gothic Dame, Chartres, Battle of Hastings
Cimabue, (1066);

Duccio, Giotto Crusades I–IV

(1095–1204);
Black Death

(1347–1351);
Hundred Years’
War (1337–1453)

Early and High Rebirth of classical Ghiberti’s Doors, Gutenberg

Renaissance culture Brunelleschi, invents movable
(1400–1550) Donatello, Botticelli, type (1447);
Turks conquer
Leonardo,
Michelangelo, Constantinople
Raphael (1453);
Columbus lands
in New World
(1492); Martin

Luther starts
Reformation
(1517)

Venetian and Northern The Renaissance Bellini, Giorgione, Council of Trent

Renaissance spreads northward to Titian, Dürer, and
(1430–1550) France, the Low Bruegel, Bosch, Counter-Reforma
Jan van tion (1545–1563);
Countries, Poland,
Germany, and England Eyck, Rogier van Copernicus
der Weyden proves the Earth
 revolves around
the Sun (1543

Mannerism Art that breaks the Tintoretto, El Magellan

(1527–1580) rules; artifice over Greco, Pontormo, circumnavigates
nature Bronzino, Cellini the globe
(1520–1522)

Baroque (1600–1750) Splendor and flourish Reubens, Thirty Years’ War

for God; art as a Rembrandt, between
weapon in the religious Caravaggio, Palace Catholics and
of Versailles Protestants
wars
(1618–1648)

Neoclassical Art that recaptures David, Ingres, Enlightenment

(1750–1850) Greco-Roman grace Greuze, Canova (18th century);
and grandeur Industrial
Revolution

(1760–1850)

Romanticism The triumph of Caspar Friedrich, American

(1780–1850) imagination and Gericault, Revolution
individuality Delacroix, Turner, (1775–1783);
Benjamin French
Revolution
West
(1789–1799);
Napoleon
crowned emperor
of France (1803)
Realism (1848–1900) Celebrating working Corot, Courbet, European
class and peasants; en Daumier, Millet democratic
plein air revolutions of
1848
rustic painting

Impressionism Capturing fleeting Monet, Manet, Franco-Prussian

(1865–1885) effects of natural light Renoir, Pissarro, War
Cassatt, Morisot, (1870–1871);
Degas Unification of
Germany

(1871)

Post-Impressionism A soft revolt against Van Gogh, Belle Époque

(1885–1910) Impressionism Gauguin, Cézanne, (late-19th-century
Seurat Golden Age);
Japan

defeats Russia
(1905)

Fauvism and Harsh colors and flat Matisse, Kirchner, Boxer Rebellion
Expressionism surfaces (Fauvism); Kandinsky, Marc in China (1900);
(1900–1935) emotion distorting World War

form (1914–1918)

Cubism, Futurism, Pre– and Post–World Picasso, Braque, Russian

Supremativism, War 1 art experiments: Leger, Boccioni, Revolution
Constructivism, De Stijl new Severini, Malevich (1917); American
women
(1905–1920) forms to express franchised
modern life
 (1920)

Dada and Surrealism Ridiculous art; painting Duchamp, Dalí, Disillusionment

(1917–1950) dreams and exploring Ernst, Magritte, de after World War I;
the Chirico, Kahlo The Great
Depression
unconscious
(1929–1938);
World War II
(1939–1945) and
Nazi horrors;

atomic bombs
dropped on
Japan (1945)

Abstract Post–World War II: Gorky, Pollock, de Cold War and

Expressionism pure abstraction and Kooning, Rothko, Vietnam War
(1940s–1950s) and expression Warhol, (U.S. enters
Pop Art Lichtenstein 1965); U.S.S.R.
without form; popular
(1960s) art absorbs suppresses
consumerism Hungarian revolt
(1956)
Czechoslovakian
revolt

(1968)
 Postmodernism and Art without a center and Gerhard Richter, Nuclear freeze
Deconstructivism reworking and mixing Cindy Sherman, movement; Cold
(1970– ) past styles Anselm Kiefer, War fizzles;
Frank Gehry, Communism
collapses
Zaha Hadid
in Eastern
Europe and
U.S.S.R.
(1989–1991)

Functions and Philosophical Importance of Art

An artist's main goal is to express oneself via their passion. Philosophically, art
serves a variety of functions that inform us about its purpose and significance. The latin
word function means a performance or an execution

Functions of Art
1. Individual
- Passion is a desire that provides the artist to reflect, contemplate,
or introspect. (Showing the absurdity of things to the world is not
the primary task of art)
2. Social
-
Art is shared by an individual in a society, i.e, the social
consciousness.
- Art is a collective self-awareness and a collective experience that is
shared in a society.
- Art and society are inseparable. In other words, art has a greater
influence on society precisely because of the different opinions of
the different individuals, by the teaching of values in every society,
and by translating the experiences throughout history.
- Thus, art affects the fundamental aspect of society. Eg: choral
singing, art exhibit, etc.
3. Cultural and Historical
- Art preserves and transmits the cultural heritage of a place and its
period of existence.
- It transfers values and thoughts from one generation to another
through communications that preserve history.
4. Economic
 - The vital source of the economic life of the people that emerge in
the society.
- It promotes both culture and traditions and turns them into crafts,
tourism, and cultural spots.
5. Political
- According to Van Gogh (Alive the Experience), this particular art
that functions politically always carries the social function.
- An example would be politicians creating their posters, flyers, and
other political paraphernalia during elections. But these arts cannot
be realized without the support of society.
6. Physical
- Architectural constructions, interior designs, graphic designs, etc,
are examples of the physical function of art that needs to be
realized.
- The actualization of art can be seen through its finality, that is, its
physical output.
7. Aesthetic
- Artworks are products of beauty and it is the greatest aim in such a
way that the desire for meaningful decorations and elegant interior
designs are served to its best.

Thus, because of the different functions of art and its contributions to history, it
seems that the definition, purpose, importance and reasons of art satisfy man’s need for
expression.

Philosophical Importance
Art helps enhance our creativity. Creativity came from the latin word creo,
meaning to create or make. Creativity is the totality of art in which it aims for beauty.
One must rely on how an artist critically understands their own work. Hence, creativity is
the process of imagination or a product of intensive experience in which an artist needs
to express their emotions.
According to Erik Wahl, “the purpose of art is not to produce a product but to
produce thinking.”

Two conceptual Foundations for the Critics:

1. Examine the basic concepts that underlie the activities of critics and enable them
to speak and write more intelligibly about the arts.
2. Arrive at true conclusions about art, aesthetic value, expression, and the other
concepts that critics employ.