UNIT 1: Introduction to Art Appreciation

MODULE 1: ASSUMPTION AND NATURE OF ARTS

RATIONALE. Art is something that is perennially around us. Some people may deny having to do
with the arts but it is indisputable that life presents us with many forms of and opportunities for
communion with the arts. A business manager choosing what tie to wear together with his shirt and shoes
or a student shuffling her music track while comfortably lying in her bed looking for her favorite song
manifest concern for values that are undeniably, despite tangentially, artistic.

Despite the seemingly overflowing instances of arts around people, one still finds the need to see more
and experience more, whether consciously or unconsciously. Although not everyone can be considered an
artist, but surely, all are spectators of art. We are able to distinguish what is fine and beautiful from what is
not and what is good quality from poor. This module is about the yearning for the beautiful, the appreciation
of the all-consuming beauty around us, and some preliminary clarifications on assumptions that people
normally hold about art.

OBJECTIVES. At the end of this lesson, it is expected that you should be able to:
• Characterize artistic expression based on personal experiences from art.
• Understand the role of humanities and arts in man’s attempt at fully realizing his end.
• Discuss the nature of art’s preliminary expression.
• Clarify misconceptions about art; Differentiate art from nature.
• Categorize works of art by citing personal experiences.
• Characterize the assumptions of the arts.

ART AND THE HUMANITIES

Why study Humanities?

For as long as man existed in this planet, he has cultivated the land, altered the conditions of the fauna and
the flora, in order to survive. Alongside these necessities, man also marked his place in this world through
his works – infrastructures, sharpened swords and spears, employed fire to melt gold. Greek philosopher
Plato claimed that man, more than anything else, is his soul and his capacity to think. Another Greek
philosopher, Aristotle, added that man being social and political is what sets him apart, the masters of
thought disappointed by missing out on one of the most important aspects of man: his capacity to create
and appreciate these creations. The result of this facet of man is art and the humanities.

“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. Back to the time before written records
of man’s civilization has appeared, he can find cases of man’s attempts of not just crafting tools to live and
survive but also expressing his feelings and thoughts.

What can you see from the picture?

Why do you think this was crafted?
What emotions or thought you think people had to create
this?

This is the Galloping Wild Boar found in the cave of Altamira,

Spain.
According to experts, these paintings were purported to
Photo source: Public Domain
belong to Upper Paleolithic Age. Pre-historic men with their
 crude instruments already showcased and manifested earliest attempts at recording man’s innermost
interests, preoccupations, and thoughts.

Humanities then, ironically, have been started even before the term has been coined. Any human person,
then, is tasked to participate, if not, totally partake in this long tradition of humanizing himself.

WHAT IS ART?
• Art comes from the ancient Latin word “ars” which means a “craft
or specialized form of skill”, like carpentry or smithying or surgery.
Art then suggested the capacity to produce an intended result from
carefully planned steps or method. In Ancient World, art is only
meant using the bare hands to produce something that will be
useful to one’s day-to-day life.

The meaning of “ARS” evolved through the ages:

Ancient Latin - ars means craft or specialized form of skill.
Medieval - any special form of book-learning such as grammar or logic, magic or astrology.
Latin
Renaissance - the word was reacquired as inherent in its ancient form of craft; craftsmanship.
- the problem and idea of aesthetics (the study of beauty), began to unfold distinctly
th
17 Century from the notion of technical workmanship (which was the original conception of the
word “art”).
- the word evolved to distinguish between the fine arts and the
18th Century useful arts. ▪ Fine Arts – not delicate or highly skilled arts
but beautiful arts.
(Collingwood,
1938) Art definition given by various authors:
1. Art is a product of man’s need to express himself. – F. Zulueta
2. Art is concerned with the communication of certain ideas and feelings by means of sensuous
medium, color, sound, bronze, marble, words and film. – C. Sanchez
3. Art is that which brings life in harmony with the beauty of the world. – Plato
4. Art is an attitude of spirit, state of mind – one which demands for its own satisfaction and fulfilling, a
sharping of matter to new and more significant form. – John Dewey

ASSUMPTIONS OF ART

1. Art is UNIVERSAL
• Art has always been timeless and universal, spanning generations and continents through and
through.
• Age is not a factor in determining art. An “art is not good because it is old, but old because it is
good”.
• Art has been crafted by all people regardless of origin, time, place and that it stayed on because it
is liked and enjoyed by people continuously. A great piece of work will never be obsolete.
• Art will always be present because human beings will always express themselves and delight in
these expressions.

Examples: Literary works written even before the beginning of recorded history such the Greek stories, the
Iliad and the Odyssey, is still known in the present. Works of Jose Rizal (e.g. Noli Me Tangere), Jose dela
Cruz (Ibong Adarna) and Francisco Balagtas (e.g. Florante at Laura) are not being read because they are
old. They have remained taught in school because they are good and adored because they meet our needs
and desires. When we listen to a kundiman or perform folk dances, we still enjoy the way our Filipino
ancestors whiled away their time in the past. We do not necessarily like a kundiman for its original meaning.
We just like and enjoy it.
 2. Art is NOT NATURE
• Art is man’s expression of his reception of nature. Art is made by man, whereas nature is a given
around us.
• All of us see nature; perceive its elements in myriad, different, yet ultimately valid ways. It is based
on an individual’s subjective experience of nature.
• In whatever work of art, one should always ask why the artist made it. What is that he wants to
show?

Mount Saint Victoire © Bernard C. View from Terrain des Peintres in Provence by Paul Cézanne

On the photo above (right), Paul Cézanne, a French Painter, painted a scene from reality, the Mount Saint Victoire. Comparing
the two, one can see that Cézanne’s landscape is quite different from the original scene. Cézanne has changed some patterns
and details from the way they were actually in the photograph.
3. Art involves EXPERIENCE
• “A painter cannot claim to know how to paint if he has not tried holding a brush.”
• All art depends on experience, and if one is to know art, he must know it not as a fact or information
but as experience. In order to know what an artwork is, we have to “sense it”, “see or hear it”, and
“see and hear it”. One fully gets acquainted with art if one immerses himself into 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.
• Degustibus non disputandum est (“matters of taste” are not “matters of dispute”). One cannot argue
with another person’s evaluation of art because one’s experience can never be known by another.
One should also underscore that every experience with art is accompanied by some emotion (one
either likes or dislikes).

ART APPRECIATION: CREATIVITY, IMAGINATION AND EXPRESSION

Not every beautiful thing that can be seen or experienced may truly be called a work of art. Art is product
of man’s creativity, imagination, and expression. The role of ART as described by Jean-Paul Sartre, a
famous French philosopher of 20th Century, “Art is a creative work that depicts the world in a
completely different light and perspective, and the source is due to human freedom.” Each artwork
beholds beauty of its own kind, the kind that the artist sees and wants the viewers to perceive. More often
than not, people are blind to this beauty and only those who have developed a fine sense of appreciation
can experience and see the art the same way the artist did. Refining one’s ability to appreciate art allows
us to deeply understand the purpose of an artwork and recognize the beauty it possesses. (Collins & Riley,
1931)

The Role of Creativity in Art Making

• Creativity requires thinking outside the box.
• It is often used to solve problems that have never occurred before, conflate function and style, and
simple make life a more unique and enjoyable experience.
• In art, creativity is what sets apart one artwork from another. It embraces originality, putting own
flavor into work.
• Nowadays, creativity can be quite challenging. What you thought unique and creative idea may not
what it seems to be after extensive research and that someone else has coincidentally devised
before the idea in another part of the world. Take a look at the case below:
 “It’s More Fun in the Philippines” used by the Department
of Tourism (DOT) boomed popularity in 2011, but later
on it was found out that it was allegedly plagiarized from
Switzerland’s tourism slogan, “It’s More Fun in
Switzerland”, back in 1951. In DOT’s defense, former
DOT Secretary Ramon Jimenez Jr. claimed that it was
“purely coincidental.”

Photo source: Rappler.com

Art as a Product of Imagination, Imagination as a Product of Art

Where do you think famous writers, painters and musicians get their ideas? Where do ideas in making
creative solutions begin? It all starts in the human mind. It all begins with imagination.
• Imagination goes beyond the walls of the norm. It allows endless possibilities. Through imagination,
one is able to craft something bold, something new and something better in the hopes of creating
something that will stimulate change.
• An artwork does not need to be a real thing, but can be something that is imaginary.
• “Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and
understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and
understand” – Albert Einstein
• Imagination produces art, art also inspires imagination.
Imagine being in an empty room surrounded by blank, white walls and floor. Would you be inspired to work
in such a place?

Often, you will find coffee shops, restaurants and libraries with paintings hung or sculptures and other
pieces of art placed around the room to add beauty to the surroundings. This desire to be surrounded by
beautiful things dates back to our early ancestors – paintings in the cave walls, burial jars with intricate
designs, molded clays, and carved stones. These creative pieces were made not only because they were
functional to men, but also because beauty gave them joy. (Collins & Riley, 1931)
Art as Expression
Sometimes, one word is not enough to describe the nature of what you truly feel. You try to release
yourself from this tormenting and disabling state by doing something, which is called expressing oneself.
According to Robin George Collingwood, an English philosopher in his publication The Principles of Art
(1938) that what an artist does to an emotion is not to induce it, but to express it. Through expression, he
is able to explore his own emotions and at the same time, create something beautiful out of them.

• Expressing emotions is something different from describing emotions.

Description – classifies the emotion, making it ordinary and
predictable Expression – individualizes
• Expression makes people’s art not a reflection of what is outside or external to them, but a reflection
of their inner selves.

There are countless ways of expressing oneself through art. These include, but is not limited to, popular
art expressions:

Visual Arts

- It appeals to the sense of sight and are mainly visual in nature.

- Artists produce visual arts driven by their desire to reproduce things that they
have seen in the way that they perceived them (Collins & Riley, 1931)
- The kind of art form that is most likely more exposed to, but its variations are
so diverse. Mediums include: paintings, drawings, letterings, printing,
sculptures, digital imaging and more.

Photo: The Church in Auvers-sur-Oise by Vincent Van Gogh © Public Domain

Film

- Film is the art of putting together successions of still images in order to create
an illusion of movement. Filmmaking focuses on its aesthetic, cultural and
social value and is considered as both an art and an industry.
- Films can be created by using one or a combination of some or all of these
techniques: motion-picture camera, animation techniques, Computer-
Generated Imagery (CGI) and more. It takes into account many important
elements such as lighting, musical score, visual effects, direction and more.
- Filmmaking simulates experiences or create one that is beyond the scope of
our imagination as it aims to deliver ideas, feelings, or beauty to its viewers

Photo: Avengers Endgame Movie Poster © Marvel Studios

Performance Art

- A live art; and the artist’s medium is mainly the human body which he or she
uses to perform, but also employs other kind of art such as visual art, props,
or sound.
- Usually consists of 4 elements: time, where the performance took place, the
performer’s or performer’s body, and a relationship between the audience and
the performer(s).
- Intangible – which means it cannot be bought or traded as a commodity.

Photo: Modern Ballet Brasileiro © Barry Goyette

Poetry Performance
- Poetry is an art form where the artist expresses his emotions not by using
paint, charcoal or camera, but expresses them through words.
- It uses a word’s emotional, musical, and spatial values that go beyond its
literal meaning to narrate, emphasize, argue, or convince.
- These words, combined with movements, tone, volume, and intensity of the
delivery, add to the artistic value of the poem.

Photo: Brian Vee performing Spoken Poetry “Tagpuan” © taongjebe

Architecture

- Art is the pursuit and creation of beautiful things while architecture is the
making of beautiful buildings. However, not all buildings are beautiful. Not all
buildings can be considered architecture.
- Important elements: plan, construction and design.
- There should be striking balance of the lines, colors and shapes.

Photo: Art Gallery of Alberta © Robert Lememeyer

Dance

- A series of movements that follows the rhythm of the music accompaniment.

- A creative form that allows people to freely express themselves. It has no
rules. Dancers are not confined to set steps and rules but are free to create
and invent their own movements as longs as they deem them graceful and
beautiful.

Photo: Lyrical Dance ©Jade Harrison School of Dance

 Literary Art

- Uses words – not paint, musical instruments, or chisels – to express

themselves and communicate emotions to the readers.
- It goes beyond the usual professional, academic, journalistic, and other
technical forms of writing. It focuses on writing using a unique style, not
following a specific format or norm.
- May include both fiction and non-fiction such as novels, biographies and
poems.

Photo: William Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet

Theater

- Uses live performers to present accounts or imaginary events before a live

audience. It usually follows a script.
- Elements: acting, gesture, lighting, sound effects, musical score, scenery and
props.
- Similar to performance art, viewer is an important element.
- Some genres include drama, musical, tragedy, comedy and improvisation.

Photo: PETA original hit musical Care Diva ©PhilStar

Applied Arts

- Incorporating elements of style and design to everyday items with the aim of
increasing their aesthetical value.
- Artists in this field bring beauty, charm, and comfort into many things that are
useful in everyday life.
- Industrial design, interior design, fashion design and graphic design are
considered applied arts.
- Applied is often compared to fine arts, where the latter is chiefly concerned on
aesthetic value.

Photo: ©Wikipedia Commons

REFERENCES
Ariola, M.A (2014). Introduction to Art Appreciation: A Textbook in Humanities Second Edition. C&E
Publishing, Inc.
Caslib, Garing, and Casaul (2018). Art Appreciation First Edition. Rex Book Store, Inc.
Collingwood, R.G. (1938). The Principles of Art. Worcestershire: Read Books Ltd. Collins, M.R. and Riley,
O. (1931). Art Appreciation for Junior and Senior High Schools. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc.

END