Chapter 1

What is Art: Introduction and Assumptions

LEARNING PLAN

Activating Student’s Schemata

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 bank manager choosing what tie to wear together with his shirt and
shoes, a politician shuffling her music track while comfortably seated on her car looking for her
favorite song, a student marveling at the intricate designs of a medieval cathedral during his
field trip, and a market vendor cheering for her bet in a dance competition on a noontime TV
program all 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. One whose
exposure to music is only limited to one genre finds it lacking not to have been exposed to
more. One, whose idea of a cathedral is limited to the locally available ones, finds enormous joy
in seeing other prototypes in Europe. Plato had the sharpest foresight when he discussed in the
Symposium that beauty, the object of any love, truly progresses. As one moves through life, one
locates better, more beautiful objects of desire (Scott, 2000). One can never be totally content
with what is just before him. Human beings are drawn toward what is good and ultimately,
beautiful.

Learning Objectives

By the end of this lesson, you should be able to:

1. understand the role of humanities and arts in man’s attempt at fully realizing
his end;
2. clarify misconceptions about the art;
3. characterize the assumptions of arts; and
4. engage better with personal experiences of and in art.
Abstraction

Topic 1:
Why study the 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 the
world through his works. Through his
bare hands, man constructed
infrastructures that tended to his
needs, like his house. He sharpened
swords and spears. He employed fire
in order to melt gold. The initial Figure 1. Cave Painting from pinterest.com
meaning of the word “art” has
something to do with all these craft.

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). Art then suggested the
capacity to produce an intended result from carefully planned steps or method. When a man to
build a house, he plans meticulously to get to what the prototype promises and he executes the
steps to produce the said structure, then he is engaged in art. The Ancient World did not have
any conceived notion of art in the same way that we do now. To them, art only meant using the
bare hands to produce something that will be useful to one’s day-to-day life.

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, 1938). It was only
during the Renaissance Period that the word reacquired a meaning that was inherent in its
ancient form of craft. Early Renaissance artists saw their activities merely as craftsmanship,
devoid of a whole lot of intonations that are attached to the word now. It was during the
seventeenth century when the problem and idea of aesthetic, the study of beauty, began to
unfold distinctly from the notion of technical workmanship, which was the original conception of
the word “art.” It was finally in the eighteenth century when the word has evolved to distinguish
between the fine arts and the useful arts. The fine arts would come to mean “not delicate or
highly skilled arts, but ‘beautiful’ arts” (Collingwood, 1938). This is something more akin to what
is now considered art.

“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. Even if one goes back to the time before written records of man’s civilization has
appeared, he can find cases of man’s attempt of not just crafting tools to live and survive but
also expressing his feelings and thoughts. The Galloping Wild Boar found in the cave of
Altamira, Spain is one such example. In 1879, a Spaniard and his daughter were exploring a
cave when they saw pictures of a wild boar, hind, and bison. According to experts, these
paintings were purported to belong to Upper Paleolithic Age, several thousands of years before
the current era. Pre-historic men, with their crude instruments, already showcased and
manifested earliest attempts at recording man’s innermost interests, preoccupations, and
thoughts. The humanities, then, ironically, have started even before the term has been coined.
Human persons have long been exercising what it means to be a human long before he was
even aware of his being one. The humanities stand tall in bearing witness to this magnificent
phenomenon. Any human person, then, is tasked to participate, if not, totally partake in this long
tradition of humanizing himself.

Topic 2:
Art is Universal

Literature has provided key works of art. Among the most popular ones being taught in
school are the two Greek epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey. The Sanskrit pieces Mahabharata
and Ramayana are also staples in this field. These works, purportedly written before the
beginning of recorded history, are believed to be man’s attempt at recording stories and tales
that have been passed on, known, and sung throughout the years. Art has always been
timeless and universal, spanning generations and continents through and through.

In every country and in every generation, there is always art. Oftentimes, people feel that
what is considered artistic are only those which have been made long time ago. This is a
misconception. Age is not 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. Otherwise, works of other Filipinos who have long died would have been
required in junior high school too. The pieces mentioned are read in school and have remained
to be with us because they are good. They are liked and adored because they meet our needs
and desires. Florante at Laura never fails to teach high schools 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 whiled
away their time in the past. We do not necessarily like a
kundiman for its original meaning. We just like it. We enjoy it. Or just
as one of the characters in the movie Bar Boys thought,
kundiman makes one concentrate better.

The first assumption the about the humanities is that art

has been crafted by all people regardless or 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. Some people say that art is art for its intrinsic worth. In
John Stuart Mill’s Utilitarianism (1879), enjoyment in the arts
Figure 2. Ibong Adarna
belongs to a higher good, one that lies at the opposite end of
base pleasures. Art will always present because human beings
will always express themselves and delight in these expressions. Men will continue to use art
while art persists and never gets depleted.

Topic 3:
Art is not nature

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 the movies. These
critical minds argue that a good movie must reflect reality as closely as possible. Is that so?

Paul Cezanne, a French painter, painted a scene from realty entitled Well and Grinding
Wheel in the Forest of the Chateau Noir. The said scene is inspired by a real scene in a forest
around the Chateau Noir area near Aix in Cezanne’s native Provence. Comparing the two, one
can see that Cezanne’s landscape is quite different from the original scene. Cezanne has
changed some patterns and details from the way they were actually in the photograph. What he
did is not nature. It is art.
 One important characteristic of art is that it is not nature. Art is man’s expression of his
reception of nature. Art is man’s way of interpreting nature. Art is not nature. Art is made by
man, whereas nature is a given around us. It is in this juncture that they be can be considered
opposites. What we find in nature should not be expected to be present in art too. Movies are
not meant to be direct representation of reality. They may, according to the moviemaker’s
perception of reality, be a reinterpretation or even distortion of nature.

This distinction assumes that all of us see

nature, perceive its elements in myriad,
different, yet ultimately valid ways. One can only
imagine the story of the five blind men who one
day argue against each other on what an
elephant looks like. Each of the five blind men
was holding a different part of the elephant. The
first was touching the body and thus, though Figure 3. The Elephant and the Blind the
elephant was like a wall. Another was Men
touching the beast’s ear and was convinced that the elephant was like a fan. The rest were
touching other different parts of the elephant and concluded differently based on their
perceptions. Art is like each of these men’s view of the elephant. It is based on an individual’s
subjective experience of nature. It is not meant, after all, to accurately define what the elephant
is really like in nature. Artists are not expected to duplicate nature just as even scientist with
their elaborate laboratories cannot make nature.

Once this point has been made, a student of humanities can then ask further questions
such as: What reasons might the artist have in creating something? Why did Andres Bonifacio
write “Pag-ibig sa Tinubuang Lupa”? What motivations did Juan Luna have in creating his
masterpiece, the Spoliarium? In whatever work of art, one should always ask why the artist
made it. What is it that he wants to show?

Topic 4:
Art involves experience.

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). When one says that he has an
experience of something, he often means that he knows what that something is about. When
one claims that he has experienced falling in love, getting hurt, and bouncing back, he in effect
claims that he knows the (sometimes) endless cycle of loving. When one asserts having
experienced preparing a particular recipe, he in fact asserts knowing how the recipe is made.
Knowing a thing is different from hearing from others what the said thing is. A radio DJ
dispensing advice on love when he himself has not experienced it does not really know what he
is talking about. A choreographer who cannot execute a dance step himself is a bogus. Art is
always an experience.

Unlike fields of knowledge that involve data, art is known by experiencing. A painter
cannot claim to know how to paint if he has not tried holding a brush. A sculptor cannot produce
a work of art if a chisel is foreign to him. Dudley et al. (1960) affirmed that “[a]ll art depends on
experience, and if one is to know art, he must know it not as fact or information but as
experience.”

A work of art then cannot be abstracted from actual doing. In order to know what an
artwork is, we have to sense it, see or hear it, and see and hear it. To fully appreciate our
national hero’s monument, one must go to Rizal Park and see the actual sculpture. In order to
know Beyonce’s music, one must listen to it to actually experience them.

A famous story about someone who adores Picasso goes something like this; “Years
ago, Gertrude Stein was asked why she bought the pictures of the then unknown artist Picasso.
‘I like to look at them,’ said Miss Stein” (Dudley et al., 1960). At the end of the day, one fully gets
acquainted with art if one immerses himself into it. In the case of Picasso, one only learns about
Picasso’s work by looking at it. That is precisely what Miss Stein did.
In matters of art, the subject’s perception is of
primacy. One can read hundreds of reviews about a
particular movie, but at the end of the day, until he sees the
movie himself, he will be in no position to actually talk about
the movie. He does not know the movie until he
experiences 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
judgement. It depends on who the perceiver is, his tastes, his
biases, and what he has inside him. 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 experiences can never be
known by another. Figure 4. Pablo Picasso

Finally, one should also underscore that every experience with art is accompanied by
some emotion. One either likes or dislikes, agrees or disagrees that a work of art is beautiful. A
stage play or motion picture is particularly one of those art forms that evoke strong emotions
from its audience. With experience comes emotions and feelings, after all. Feelings and
emotions are concrete proofs that the artwork has been experiences.
Reference: Art Appreciation Book, First Edition by Bernardo, Garing and Casaul.